History of The Graphical User Interface (GUI): A Wonderful Curse

Today's GUIs have a dirty little secret.
As AI, Virtual Reality, and ubiquitous computing are reshaping the realms of design and engineering, it's crucial to delve into the origins of the graphical user interface (GUI) and uncover its deeper layers. It's time to step away from design tools, methods, windows and buttons and dive a bit into where all this came from, what we have today, and what we've lost along the way.
This video is a personal exploration into the GUI's history, focusing on its complexities, marvels, and contradictions. We'll go beyond the surface to reveal the GUI's dirty little secret and understand its significant role in our digital evolution.
Chapters
03:26 Part 01: Can't escape history
03:29 Early computers
06:43 The CRT technology
09:09 Vannevar Bush and the memex machine
10:52 Cold war and SAGE computer
13:14 Part 02: What's a computer for?
13:23 Joseph Licklider and man-computer symbiosis
19:55 Ivan Sutherland and the Sketchpad System
21:36 Douglas Engelbart and augmenting human intellect
27:31 Part 03: The mother of all demos
32:15 The invention of the mouse
35:44 Verb-noun commands and other peripherals
38:26 Video collaboration and screen sharing
39:19 Introduction of ARPANet
40:39 Ted Nelson and hypertext
43:44 Rand Tablet and GRAIL
47:12 Part 04: "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us"
47:22 Alan Kay
49:57 Alan Kay's encounter with Seymour Papert
50:51 Influence of media & educational psychology on software design
58:29 The Alto computer, Smalltalk and the birth of modern GUI
01:02:51 Overlapping windows
01:04:29 Pop-up (context) menus
01:05:49 Larry Tesler
01:08:25 The use of icons for programming with Pygmalion by David Smith
01:11:27 GYPSY and Bravo text editors and their user interface
01:16:46 The design of file browsers
01:18:05 The birth of the desktop metaphor
01:19:48 Steve Job's visit to PARC, Xerox failures, and the GUI on personal computers (Lisa, Macintosh, IBM, Windows, Amiga)
01:34:25 Part 05: It's a wonderful curse
01:34:28 What we lost with the desktop metaphor
01:39:40 Jeff Raskin & the Canon Cat computer interface
01:43:11 The lost world of ZUIs (Zoomable User Interfaces) on an operating system
01:46:05 MIT's Spatial Dataland
01:47:40 Ted Nelson, Xanadu and the curse of imitating paper on a screen
01:53:43 what the web was about, and what it ended up with
01:59:17 mobile computing inherited the curse
02:02:02 Outro: A very short conclusion
Intro Music:
X-Files
2B Studio
Music from #InAudio: inaudio.org/
Tracks:
Dreamwave Lofi Ambient (No Copyright Music) by MokkaMusic / Reflections of Infinity
Deep Dreamwave Ambient (No Copyright Music) by MokkaMusic / Foggy City
Dreamscape Ambient For Reflective Evening (No Copyright Music) by MokkaMusic / Snowy Silence
Calm Deep and Peaceful (No Copyright Music) by MokkaMusic / Calmness
Music from: Audio Library - Free Music
Track Name: Retro Dreamscape - Twin Musicom

[@interfacestudies]

19:53 Apologies for the error in my recording where I incorrectly referred to Ivan Sutherland as Kevin Sutherland. Thank you for your understanding.

[@TheTiko300]

Was super long but I think you did your best to summarize this huge topic. Thanks for that :)

[@sandrodellisanti1139]

Ciao and thank you for your wonderful Video, which i like to share at Telegram and at Tribel, i was an Amiga User from late 1989-96, great Times back then ❤️ many greetings from brunswick in germany and please stay safe 🙃

[@rldp]

This was one of he most eye opening videos that made me see things in a whole new angle. Extremely good

[@snoopyninja4952]

awesome i was hoping to find a recent video on this, i knew someone would post it to youtube

[@RochusKeller]

Great documentary, thanks! Well researched and presented.

[@TheBelafleck]

This is so awesome ❤👍👍

[@shikharraje]

The video is incredible and extremely valuable for the history of HCI. I would go as far as claiming that this is a fantastic 101 textbook for ANYONE wanting to get into HCI research.
Just two nitpicks
1. Please remove the droning background music throughout the video. After hearing this video for 2 hours on my headphones, my ears are ringing now.
2. Better machine reader of the quoted texts. At 01:48:44 , it's pronouncing "lump" with a weird intonation.

[@lucien5112]

He did the thing czcams.com/video/S0WWbpBxLCI/video.html 😭

[@bodhi8346]

"Promosm" ✔️