[Olpc-open] The 40th Anniversary of the Dynabook event at Computer History Museum

[Edward Cherlin]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 1:45 AM, Yoshiki Ohshima <yoshiki at vpri.org> wrote:
> At Tue, 28 Oct 2008 14:24:09 -0400,
> Brian Jordan wrote:
>>
>> Cool! (bump)
>
>  Yes and thanks.  The third panelist has been announced and it is
> none other than Mary Lou Jepsen.
>
> http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1221864610

Are they going to get Doug Engelbart for the panel? It has also been
40 years since his "Mother of All Demos" (Dec. 9, 1968), showing the
first mouse with menus, windows, interactive text, video conferencing,
teleconferencing, email, and hypertext.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos

The first known usage of the phrase "Mother of All Demos" was in
journalist Steven Levy's 1994 book, Insanely Great: The Life and Times
of Macintosh, the Computer That Changed Everything ISBN
978-0140291773:

    "... a calming voice from Mission Control as the truly final
frontier whizzed before their eyes. It was the mother of all demos.
Engelbart's support staff was as elaborate as one would find at a
modern Grateful Dead concert. ..." - Insanely Great, page 42


I gave Doug his first look at an OLPC XO at the International
Symposium on Digital Earth 5, last year at UC Berkeley. He loves it.

> It looks like the registration is still open (didn't sound like so
> many seats are remaining though).
>
> -- Yoshiki
>
>> 2008/9/24 Yoshiki Ohshima <yoshiki at vpri.org>:
>> >  There will be an interesting event.  It is even sponsored by OLPC!
>> >
>> > http://www.computerhistory.org/events/index.php?id=1221864610
>> >
>> > -- Yoshiki
>> >
>> > ----------------------
>> >
>> > CHM Presents
>> > The 40th Anniversary of the Dynabook
>> >
>> >
>> > SPONSOR
>> > Sponsored by One Laptop Per Child
>> >
>> > Alan Kay, Charles Thacker, and moderated by Steve Hamm, BusinessWeek
>> >
>> >
>> > DATE & TIME
>> > Wednesday, November 05, 2008
>> >
>> > 6:00 p.m. Member's Reception - CHM Members only
>> > 7:00 p.m. Program
>> > Wine for the Member's Reception provided by the Mountain Winery
>> >
>> > LOCATION
>> > 1401 N. Shoreline Boulevard
>> > Mountain View, CA 94043
>> >
>> > Call 650-810-1005 for information.
>> >
>> > ABSTRACT OF TALK
>> > The roots of "personal computers" -- that is, machines that are not shared between users -- date back to at least the late 1950s. Within a decade, several more of these "one machine, one user" computers were developed; and the idea of a user having direct control over the computer was established, at least within academia.
>> >
>> > In 1968, young computer scientist Alan Kay gave a presentation on the FLEX Machine at a meeting of computer science graduate students and saw the first working versions of a new flat panel plasma display technology. This led to discussions about how nice it would be to (someday) place the FLEX computer itself on the back of such a display to make a notebook-sized computer.
>> >
>> > A visit a few months later to MIT computer scientist and educator Seymour Papert and to a school with children doing advanced math with Papert's LOGO programming language, produced an epiphany in Kay. He decided to make "A Personal Computer For Children Of All Ages." This was to be in the form of a compact notebook using both tablet and keyboard, a flat-screen display, GUI, and the wireless networking that defense funding agency ARPA was starting to experiment with.
>> >
>> > This idea eventually acquired the name "Dynabook" as an homage to what the printed book has meant to civilization and learning. It is also a gesture to a future in which not just the content of "books" will be dynamic, but the relationship of people to computers will itself also change.
>> >
>> > The founding of Xerox PARC a few years after the Dynabook concept provided support and a context for developing many of these ideas. In fact, the PARC "Alto" workstation was originally called "the interim Dynabook". Many of the results from this research influenced commercial computing, including the bit-mapped screen, high-quality text and graphics, overlapping windows and an icon-based GUI, desktop publishing, object-oriented programming, and many others.
>> >
>> > Join Steve Hamm of BusinessWeek as he moderates a panel discussion to celebrate this idea that provided metaphor, motivation and inventions for the personal computers of today.
>> >
>> > This event is generously sponsored by One Laptop Per Child.
>> >
>> > Panelists:
>> > - Alan Kay
>> > - Charles Thacker
>> > - TBD
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Olpc-open mailing list
>> > Olpc-open at lists.laptop.org
>> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-open
>> >
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