I am sure that everyone on the planet is blogging this right now, but I was blown away. This 1968 video demonstrates mouse control, hyperlinking, word processing (including cut & paste), collaborative working on documents with version control, and remote collaboration with a videoconferencing window open in a corner of the screen containing the live document being worked on. Only yesterday my counterpart in our delivery organisation rang me from Sheffield to discuss the exact wording of the note we were sending; we agreed lines orally and I typed them in; but that conversation would have been vastly better if we'd both had the live document on screen, being updated in real time, with videoconference windows. A mere 34 years after the technology demonstration.
The introduction: "If, in your office, you as an intellectual worker were supplied with a computer display, backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and was instantly responsive to every action you had, how much value could you derive from that?" Bet he didn't think we'd spend all our time doing internet quizzes and emailing gossip about David Beckham.
Via BoingBoing, who also mentioned 15 dangerous toys the world needs back. Some at least (Swingball and the children's tool set) are still available, but the toy I most regret losing will never return. It was a Loncraine and Broxton mercury maze, where the mercury travelled round a pattern of silver snakes encased in clear plastic. You broke the mercury blob on the forked tongues of the snakes into four roughly equal pieces, and then directed one to each hole. Not terribly difficult, but elegant and satisfying; and no safe substitute will ever be anything like as good.
10:43:55 PM 
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