Back to the Future – The Way to a Personal Dynamic Medium for Creative Thought

Talk at reboot7, 10-11 June 2005 in Copenhagen, Denmark

Abstract. Looking into the long history of hypertext and graphical user interfaces reveals fascinating insights that might help build a computer environment that really propels us into the future.

Slides

Back to the Future 45 slides, 14.6 MB

Back to the Future  The Way to a Personal Dynamic Medium for Creative Thought from Matthias Mueller-Prove

References to the movie clips

  1. Sketchpad (4' 03"), ca. 1962. Broy, Denert (eds.): Software Pioneers (DVD Extras)
  2. Interview with Jeff Rulifson (2' 08"), 2000. Invisible Revolution
  3. Alto Playroom (1' 02"), ca. 1974. Broy, Denert (eds.): Software Pioneers (DVD Extras)
  4. Put-That-There (1' 25"), ca. 1979. The NewMedia Reader (CD Extras)

Notes from the Audience

interconnected.org/notes/2005/06/reboot7/Back to the future.txt

Further Reading

Der Computer als Werkzeug und Medium – Die geistigen und technischen Wurzeln des Personal Computers (497 pages, German)

The PhD thesis of Dr. Michael Friedewald

Two sections of the appendix are online:

Software Pioneers – Contributions to Software Engineering (728 pages, 4 DVDs)

Reader of the conference Software Pioneers, Bonn 2001. The entire 2 day conference is available on DVD; and on the conference homepage

The NewMedia Reader (823 pages, 1 CD)

A wonderful reader with otherwise hard to find early and influential articles.

Bootstrapping – Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing (284 pages)
NERDS 2.0.1– A Brief History of the Internet
Dealers of Lightning – Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age (448 pages)

better than “Fumbling the Future”

how the web was born (372 pages)

coauthored by one of the inventors: Robert Cailliau

A History of Modern Computing (398 pages)

more technical than NERDS 2.0.1 – less focussed on the user interface than Der Computer als Werkzeug und Medium

Copenhagen Reboot Trilogy

à propos

reboot 7.0 conference(by Michael Heilemann)

(by Michael Heilemann)