Internet History and Interaction Futures

Over these two weeks, I enjoyed learning about how rapidly the internet has developed, over just a few decades, and speculating about how it may look like in the next few decades, based on how exponentially the rate of technological development has increased in that short amount of time. I also enjoyed seeing how the internet has grown from government and military projects to a tool which is used everyday by an extremely large majority of people worldwide.

I particularly enjoyed watching Douglas Engelbart’s “Mother of All Demos”, as it was fascinating that even as long ago as the 1960s, aspects of the technology showcased in the demo are still used significantly today, for example the mouse tracking and online video calling.

I was also quite astonished by Vannevar Bush’s predictions of the future of technological interactions, and how precisely his statement meets what the internet is now, despite the very concept of the internet not even being ideated yet.

From this week’s lecture I was highly interested by the concept of designing for the future, and that only a few years ago, some of the technology we use now was considered as future technology, but has been developed in such a short time, such as voice and gesture controlled interfaces.