Englebart’s video presentation from the 1960s both surprised and disappointed. It was difficult to get myself to focus at first, with the television on silent and colors all around me. The black and white video with incredibly fuzzy screens of text took surprising energy to watch. At first, showing lists of groceries and stops on the way home seemed a simple task possibly more easily handled by old-fashioned pen and paper. However, Englebart made a good point when he reached some editing of organization. The way in which we think really is much better served through computing. We can edit in seconds with the click of a mouse. Overall, I was amazed at how we’ve progressed since this video. Editing techniques from the video and beyond are found today in basic versions of Word. But think of how many people know about ways to view and edit things simultaneously? True, there is sending copies via email, but what Englebart had, it seems to me, was a basic version of GoogleDocs or the like. That part of his technology hasn’t become as widespread as Microsoft Word, obviously. The more I study the topic, it seems like technology grows unevenly, with ideas developing at faster or slower rates depending on how far the current technological abilities can take us and what we need the most.
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February 7th, 2008 at 1:14 am
I agree that Englebart seemed to envision a basic version of GoogleDocs. I learned how to use GoogleDocs my first semester at UMW, working on a group project for Linguistics. Each person logged in and made their changes, and it saved a lot of time when we met to just review the changes and make sure we all agreed. When I first started working, people faxed documents back and forth with edits on them. It is hard to even remember how work was done back then. But I remember re-typing a lot of documents and also comparing several documents to make sure all of the edits were captured. I haven’t worked in an office for a few years now, but I imagine that GoogleDocs has made things so much more efficient, and also cut down immensely on editing errors when a group of people have to collaborate on a document.