1234: Douglas Engelbart (1925-2013)

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Douglas Engelbart (1925-2013)
Actual quote from The Demo: '... an advantage of being online is that it keeps track of who you are and what you’re doing all the time...'
Title text: Actual quote from The Demo: '... an advantage of being online is that it keeps track of who you are and what you’re doing all the time...'

Explanation

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The comic describes and references The Mother of All Demos in honor of Douglas Engelbart, who died on July 2nd, 2013. The demo is renowned for the numerous technologies Engelbart's team introduced, which the comic references before sliding into apocryphal claims. At the first panel he presents various inventions, including the Computer Mouse. The second panel contains the opening lyrics of Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah. The "Secret Chord" is a reference to his "Chord Key Set" he also presented at this demo. This relatively obscure device, essentially a piano with five keys, was meant as an alternative to the well-known keyboard. The third is a reference to contemporary internet memes, specifically cat pictures and YOLO.

The title text is a reference to recent revelations about spying by the United States National Security Agency.

The inventions in detail

The inventions presented are just more like Science Fiction by that time in 1968. Some got success in the public ten or more years later. And some others did not.

Cathode ray tube:

The German physicist Ferdinand Braun did invent the Cathode ray tube, or just CRT, in 1897. The Russian scientist Boris Rosing used this CRT for the first time to receive a video signal. CRT was the most common technology for TV Screens and Computer Monitors in the last century, but now it's succeeded by modern devices like OLED, plasma display, or the most common LCD. Douglas did use this CRT Screen to present not only his face or some other video parts, he additionally embed the output of his Computer Screen to the same output.

A pointing device we call a "Mouse":

Douglas did call this device a "Mouse" but officially it was named "X-Y Position Indicator for a Display System". He did file a patent on June 21, 1967 and received the patent on November 17, 1970. At this demo Douglas did say: "I don't know why we call it a mouse. It started that way and we never changed it."

I can "Copy" text

This is well known as "Copy and Paste", most people still do not know how to use the short cut <CTRL>+C or <CTRL>+V even today, they just use the "Mouse". On some early text based systems it was something like <CTRL>+K+B for the beginning of the section and <CTRL>+K+E to mark the end of the section to copy. At the time of 1968 nobody could imagine this feature, and Douglas just did use his "Mouse".

We have powerful joint file editing

No powerful text editor was available in 1968, and the first successful system did fulfil this "joint file editing" was available on CVS in the middle of the 1980's.

Transcript

San Francisco, December 9th,1968:
Douglas: ...we generated video signals with a cathode ray tube
Douglas: ...we have a pointing device we call a "Mouse"
Douglas: ...I can "Copy" text
Douglas: ...and we have powerful joint file editing
Douglas: ...underneath the file here we can exchange "Direct Messages"...
Douglas: ...users can share files...
Douglas: ...files which can encode audio samples, using our "Masking codecs"
Douglas: ...the file you're hearing now is one of my own compositions...
Music in the background.
Voice: I heard there was a secret chord
Douglas: ...and you can superimpose text on the picture of the cat, like so...this cat is saying "YOLO", which stands for "You Only Live Once"...
Douglas: ...just a little acronym we thought up...

Trivia

  • The full original video of the demo from December 9, 1968 is available at the Stanford website. The "Chord Key Set" can be found at Clip 13.


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Discussion

The song he claims to have written is, of course, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". But why? /Skagedal (talk) 08:22, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I guess for the same reason he claims to have thought up YOLO and cat picture memes - he's claiming credit for many many future developments - that's the joke. Either that or the comic's claiming Douglas was a time traveller and was single handedly responsible for every invention ever! Let's face it though, much of our modern day tech wouldn't have happened without his work. I can't believe I never heard of this guy before. Hippyjim (talk) 09:00, 5 July 2013 (UTC)
As has since been added, it's a reference to the obscure-but-not-secret chord keyboard. Someone should really go through each clause and either give a link to that part of the demo, or the real history. 173.14.129.9 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)
I'd guess it's because the mournful tone of the song makes it appropriate for a memorial to someone passing away.
Wwoods (talk) 18:06, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Looks like the Stanford site has been given the xkcd hug. Does anybody have a mirror? Spontaneous (talk) 15:33, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Stanford is overloaded, not only because this comic. The link is also at his wiki page.--Dgbrt (talk) 19:44, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Is it just me or is there a certain amount of deliberate irony here. Englebart was working at " A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect" and where do we end up? Lolcats....--NHSavage (talk) 19:12, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

The "inventions in detail" section is badly written... Also, it feels weird to use Engelbart's first name to refer to him. Excessively familiar, perhaps. --24.186.79.218 01:13, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

So do it better, you are welcome here to help. And at the Stanford site he is just called "Doug", in America people are mostly using the first name.--Dgbrt (talk) 11:30, 7 July 2013 (UTC)
I took a stab at cleaning up the grammar a bit, and I agree that in this context, refering to him by his last name is more appropriate. --67.71.137.146 12:29, 10 July 2013 (UTC)
Thanks for your help on grammar, I'm not native English. My main source was the Stanford site mentioned at the trivia, and he is just called "Doug" there. I think even this nickname should be appropriate.--Dgbrt (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi, is there any truth to the "masking codecs" claim in the comic and in the explanation of the inventions here? I watched the whole presentation on Youtube, but I can't remember that anything about audio was mentioned. Has this been presented some other time? Or is this again a joke, like the YOLO-cat claim? --84.164.96.3 12:43, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

The alt-text, talking about Englebart looking forward to computers tracking what you're doing and who you are, is clearly a jab at the NSA and advertising tracking on the web, and probably at social networking like Facebook and Twitter. 'Direct messages', of course, is exactly the term Twitter uses. I'm unsure if this is the term Engelbart used, though: does anyone have a transcript? 141.101.99.166 17:30, 7 July 2014 (UTC)

Passage of Time: There appears to be a considerable passage of time between panels one and three: note the appearance of a wireless headset. This raises the possibility that the demo presented so much new technology and took decades, during which the equipment was upgraded and the inventions demonstrated became less technologically meaningful. 162.158.38.190 09:00, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

Think you are on to something with this Drkaii (talk)
This is consistent with the fact that the first panel is dated 1968, and the Leonard Cohen song in the 2nd panel came out in 1984. JohnHawkinson (talk) 14:13, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Nobody seems to notice this is comic 1-2-3-4. ;_;

not using ctrl+c ctrl+v for copypasting just seems weird to me An user who has no account yet (talk) 09:32, 9 September 2023 (UTC)