On a winter day 30 years ago, a Stanford Research Institute engineer ran a demonstration that would change the world. At a San Francisco computer conference, Doug Engelbart unveiled a computer with a mouse -- along with a pointing cursor, "linking," user-friendly help, and integrated text and graphics. No one had ever seen anything like it. Even more radical was the underlying idea: computers weren't just for crunching numbers; they could link people and harness collective human potential.
"It was like a UFO landing on the White House lawn," says Paul Saffo, JD '80, now director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park. "Nothing in computing has been the same since."
On December 9, 1998, three decades after that extraordinary presentation, an eclectic group of engineers, entrepreneurs, students and professors packed Stanford's 1,500-seat Memorial Auditorium for "Engelbart's Unfinished Revolution," hosted by Stanford University Libraries and Saffo's institute.
Presenters at the daylong symposium included computer industry legends like Alan Kay, a co-founder of Xerox PARC, and Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen (who wasn't even born when Englebart made his mouse). Their consensus: Engelbart's innovations have found their way into everything from Windows to the Web.
But the participants also fretted that computing might threaten personal privacy and that Engelbart's vision of using computers to boost collective IQ has fallen short.
In the end, though, the focus returned to Engelbart, who received a standing ovation. Now 73, he runs the Bootstrap Institute in Fremont, Calif., which helps organizations use technology to collaborate and -- on a good day -- change the world.
