Date: December, 10, 1968

It's the day after the demonstration of the oNLine System or NLS at the “MOTHER OF ALL DEMOS”. NLS is a full-fledged  intelligence augmentation system. It utilizes many advances in computer technology such as the mouse, on-screen graphics, multiple windows on a screen, digital publishing, journals, collaborations, document sharing, email, instant messaging, hypertext linking, videoconferencing, and the formatting of documents. The ninety minute demonstration of NLS was held in a standing-room-only crowd of close to a thousand at a computer industry conference in San Francisco. The computer terminal was projected onto a twenty-foot screen behind me. At that demo I told the crowd that if you 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 have, how much value could you derive from that? And so I told them the following would all go very interesting, or at least thats what I thought.

       A camera was mounted on the terminal to provide a video stream of my face while another camera overhead show my hands controlling the mouse and keyboard. Meanwhile Bill English sat in the back selecting which images were projected onto the screen. Thirty miles from the conference at my lab near Stanford, generating computer images and working cameras was Stewart Brand. We had two leased microwave lines and a telephone hookup transmitted to the lab. The audience watched as I collaborated with distant colleagues to create a document, different people made edits, added graphics, changed the layout, built a map, and embedded in audio the visual elements in real time. We were even able to create hypertext links together. Next door was a different conference that was being held  showing a video that was about a robot which acted like it was able to hear and see things. Today the San Francisco Chronicle’s headline was “Fantastic World of Tomorrow’s Computer. ” It was about the NLS and not the robot. That definitely means NLS was a success.