As the mouse is replaced by the touch-pad in the contemporary world of computing, let’s look back to San Francisco in 1968 when the first mouse was given a demo by its inventor, Douglas Engelbart. “I don’t know why we call it a mouse,” he said. “It started that way, and we never did change it.” From Engelbart’s ibiblio entry:

“Douglas Engelbart has always been ahead of his time, having ideas that seemed far-fetched at the time but later were taken for granted. For instance, as far back as the 1960s he was touting the use of computers for online conferencing and collaboration. Engelbart’s most famous invention is the computer mouse, also developed in the 1960s, but not used commercially until the 1980s. Like Vannevar Bush and J.C.R. Licklider, Engelbart wanted to use technology to augment human intellect. He saw technology, especially computers, as the answers to the problem of dealing with the ever more complex modern world and has dedicated his life to the pursuit of developing technology to augment human intellect.”