On the recovery of an archive video on an alternative way to use computers. This was around the same time as the “Mother of All Demos” presented by Doug Engelbart in 1968.
You may already be aware of the “Mother of All Demos” presented by Doug Engelbart and the members of his Stanford Research Institute center at the close of 1968. This presentation, with Engelbart on stage at a major computing conference in San Francisco, displayed the features and capabilities of his group’s “oN-Line System,” known as NLS. The system included many elements that were extraordinarily novel, even for the assembled computing professionals: networked computers, video conferencing, graphical interfaces, hypertext, collaborative word processing, and even a new input device, the computer mouse.
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Wholly unknown to the history of computing—until now—is another video recording of another fascinating demonstration of another advanced computing system that also took place in 1968: the recording from Robert Dunlop’s video tape.
This second demonstration took place on the East Coast, at IBM’s headquarters in Armonk, New York, and was motivated by a far different, perhaps one could go so far as to say an opposite vision for the future of computing. This vision centered not on alliance, but rather on the concept of rank. The system was known as the IBM Corporate Headquarters Information Center, and was the culmination of Dunlop’s experiment with executive-computer interaction at the company.
This is really interesting, especially, if we compare this to Engelbart’s approach, as the article does. Here, we have the vision of a centralized and moderated information access, there, we have a decentralized and collaborative vision.
Analogies to “Catholic” and “Protestant” approaches in computing have been made before, but this really does beg for it: On the one hand, there is a specialist team, who manages, guards and moderates the knowledge access by centralizing the required skill set and technology and provides a low-threshold face-to-face interface. On the other hand, there’s Engelbart’s bootstrapping vision, where knowledge is accessed and built collaboratively, providing for comparative individual freedom of initiative, but also requiring a high degree of literacy. (Notably, the bootstrapping approach includes the machine, which is to become part of a man-machine-knowledge cyborg, while the IBM vision, seen here, separates machine, archive, and the human domain – again, a somewhat familiar motive.)
Wow, a video tape from 1968 - that in itself is remarkable!
In my work with the collection in that New Hampshire garage, one item absolutely fascinated me. This was an early video recording, made in 1968, that clearly had great meaning for Robert Dunlop. It was a 1” format tape on an open reel, carefully packaged, and with an explanatory note by Dunlop taped to the outside and a longer letter from him tucked inside. Both notes told of an inventive computer system at IBM headquarters that I’d never heard anything about. A demo of the system was captured on the long obsolete video.
It’s paper on a table under a camera - you can see it sliding in and out of position as the helpful technician follows orders.
I’m reminded that back in say the early 80s there were Management Information Systems departments, or Corporate Services, which existed to crunch data and produce reports for executives. No computers on desks - no typewriters either. Typing was another central service.
