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2.6. The Internet and its impact on social , political and economic development of the society

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POINTING AND CLICKING ALL OVER THE WORLD

"People laughed at me," says computer pioneer Dr. Engelbart, recalling the initial reaction to his development of the first computer mouse in the early 1960s. Yet where would we be without that computer pointing device?

In those days, Dr. Engelbart says, the computer interface consisted of typing commands one line at a time into a mainframe. Working on a research project, he was studying ways of improving computer interfaces. During the project he became convinced that all knowledge workers would some day have their own computer and needed a simpler way to interact with complex software. "Remember, this was in the days when computers were very expensive, but I knew that the technology would become less expensive over time," he says.

Dr. Engelbart's work led him to develop the concept of a graphical user interface with windows, graphics icons and text organised into hyperlinks, where highlighted words are linked to other computer documents. These are all concepts that form the bedrock of computer systems and internet software.

He quickly realized a graphical user interface required a simple pointing device, leading to the development of the computer mouse. The mouse was far from an instant success, simply because there was no graphical user interface software, outside a handful of US research labs. Dr. Engelbart faced laughter "and much worse" in his efforts to promote the mouse as a serious device. The first main commercial system to feature a mouse was Apple Computer's ground-breaking Lisa computer, introduced in 1983, the forerunner of the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows systems. Those first Apple computers were based on research carried out at a Research Center, where scientists who had worked with Dr. Engelbart were based.

"I'm not surprised the mouse is the success it became, but I am a little surprised that nothing better has come along since," he says. The first prototype mouse looked very similar to today's devices, although over the past few years there has been a move away from a mechanical mechanism towards optical based mechanisms. For example, US-based Logitech, the largest maker of computer mouse devices, offers a large range, with its high-end models using a tiny laser to read dots on marble, converting the information into data the computer understands. The global product manager for mouse products at Logitech says: "With an optical mechanism, the mouse is more accurate and you don't have to periodically clean the rollers as you would with a mechanical mouse. The computer mouse has become more useful than the keyboard. This is especially true when you consider that millions of people are using the Internet, which means they are mostly pointing and clicking on web page links".