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Here's the argument. When the sperm of your father merged with the ova of your mother to create the zygote - the single cell which unfolded into you - you received the conception-day gift of all the wisdom our species has accumulated over millions of years of survival in a harsh arena. Part of this gift is a means of storing information (memory) and a means of transmitting information (Speech). Memory and speech could thus be considered as a first generation of media. However, it can get you only to a hunter-gatherer society. Over historical time, we have dealt with the shifts to an agricultural society, an industrial society and now an information society by extending our nervous systems to store information (print and film - second generation), to transmit information (telephone and television - third generation), and to both store and transmit information (multimedia and internet - fourth generation) outside our bodies.
Origins of Personal Computing is the stage on which this action takes place. Engelbart loomed large over the origins of personal computing, since much of it was due to his innovations and - just as important - to reactions against them. He arrived on this stage with the mouse in one hand, which he successfully launched on a career that would make Disney dizzy, and a chord keyset in the other hand, for which, to his frustration, he could not even arrange an audition. The part was taken by the qwerty keyboard and there was no role for a one-handed keyboard.
Engelbart recognized that typing, unlike clapping, didn't necessarily require two hands. He introduced the sound of one hand typing but no one was listening. Doug could have saved us from the now constant complaint If God meant us to use a mouse, he would have given us three hands. His focus in person-machine coevolution remained firmly on the person and he observed that each of us has been allocated two hands. To paraphrase Gregory Bateson (Page 52), take them home and count them.
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