Simon Butcher

The media are abuzz about a new gallery at the National Media Museum in the UK which is opening today. The new exhibit is called Life Online, although they're also referring to it as LOL, probably to keep the kiddies happy.

I'm curious as to how accurate the exhibit is, because museums tend to embellish facts to keep things interesting. If they mention that the Internet was created for nuclear preparedness, I'd walk away. Since the focus is more “web” orientated, I'd probably be a bit disappointed if they didn't mention Gopher as an early iteration of the web.

I'd be really disappointed if they didn't at least mention Doug Engelbart's extraordinary demonstration from 1968, which showed groundbreaking stuff created by him and his team at SRI that we take for granted today (watch it if you haven't)..