THE MOUSE AS FACILITATOR OF

ARCHITECTURAL COMPUTATIONHistories of Digital Theory Final Paper

Brooke HelgersonWashington University Fall 2012

Professor: Andrew Colopy

INTRODUCTION

The computer as we know it today has undergone a lifetime’s worth of changes and

advancements, most of which have occurred within our recent history. It was once a monstrous

behemoth that took up entire rooms and was, for the layperson, shrouded in mystery. For those

outside its developmental circles, its black and green screens controlled by scrambled lines of text

did not play a large role in everyday life. The computer’s foreign programming language was a barrier

to its ease use, and many wondered what it would ever be needed for.

Several input devices were eventually developed to address this problem, such as the chord-

key, light pen, and touchscreen.1 The one that rose above all of these in terms of ease of use and

popularity was the mouse. It provided users with direct manipulation and immediate response of

their movements on the computer screen. This development had effects on every professional field

that utilizes computers. For many years it was not questioned as the best method of input. However,

today it is much criticized in the world of architecture for being too Cartesian, and not representative

enough of the way architects used to draw.2

Though computer drawing is different from analog sketching and drafting, it is this difference

that gives the mouse some of its most important qualities. By using a simple combination of user-

controlled motion and point-clicking, the mouse provided a simplified entry into the workings of the

computer that has acted as a necessary transition into more gestural methods of working digitally.

It is hard to imagine successful acceptance of a fully-formed digital drawing method as early as the

1960s; indeed, theorists like Paul Cantor and Steven Johnson have recognized that any new media

needs time to acclimate to society before it can be exploited to its fullest potential.3 The simplified

process of the mouse can also be seen to fulfill the requirements of moving use of the computer

beyond computerization, which Sean Ahlquist and Achim Menges discuss as the conversion of analog

processes into digital replicates, and into computation, or a recursive process of exploring ideas with

the computer.4

Taking these ideas together, the mouse can be seen as more than a pointing device or a lesser

substitute for the pencil. The distinctive spatial interactions it sets provide a way of working that is

an agent for computation and necessary step in the evolution of computer-based media. In order to

understand the mouse’s position and future in the field of architecture, this paper will first look at its

history of development, and how this relates to the interface. With this background, spatial analyses

of the mouse’s capabilities will consider its place within the current trajectory of computation in

architecture.

HISTORY

Text Entry: Or Your Life without the Mouse

In order to truly appreciate the mouse, it is necessary

to imagine life before this evolution. Because it is so ingrained

in the way we use computers today, this requires a leap of the

imagination. It helps to look at an image of an early computer

prototype, such as Tandy Radio Shack’s TRS 80 from 1977. [Figure

1] The lack of mouse, or even space for it on the desk the machine

is sitting on, is evident. Imagine sitting here and performing

the simplest of functions of your daily computer tasks. For

example, how would you open a program? Or, in the context of an

architectural office, how would you draw a line? Copy an object?

Change a layer or color? On this machine, there is no visual way

to understand these simple commands. Instead, users would have

needed knowledge of a whole new programming language. Users

had to know the desired outcome of each computer operation

before it was entered into the machine. Additionally, in order to

get the process to work correctly, each stream of text had to be

entered 100% correctly; there was no margin for error, and no

possibility to come across unexpected surprises.5

This transposition—from idea, to the elements needed to

realize it, to the programming language required to create the

element, to the typing of the actual ‘sentence’—was a hindrance

to users’ ability to use the computer with clarity [Figure 2] What

may have started out as a seed of an idea that needed iteration

to grow would get lost in translation, with the end result being

less than what was imagined. For the most computer developers,

this early disadvantage was not a large issue; after all, there were

many other practical requirements being worked out. And because

the computer’s earliest uses were in the military and engineering

fields, not in design, this drawback did not get in the way too

Figure 1: The TRS 80http://www.franklarosa.com/trs80/

Figure 2: Diagram of an idea lost in translation, from conception to realization on an early computer. image by author

much.6 However, some innovators were already investigating how

computer technology could address these issues.

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Key Development on the Coasts: MIT Media Lab and Sanford Augmented

Human Intellect Research Center

The two statements above represent the work of Doug Engelbart and Ivan Sutherland,

respectively, towards developing a system of direct manipulation with the computer that would

lead to the ‘mouse.’ Though the processes described seem standard to how computers work today,

in the 1960s these abilities were brand new and just beginning to be figured out. Since then both

the mouse, introduced in Engelbart’s 1968 demonstration, and the light pen, developed as part of

Sutherland’s Sketchpad program, have had great effect on everyday use of computers. They have

also greatly impacted how we design with computers—a topic that will be discussed further below,

after further explanation of what these early systems were.

1968: “If in your office, you as an intellectual worker, were supplied with a

computer display, backed up by a computer that was alive for you all day and

was instantly [sic.] responsive to every action you had, how much value could

you derive from that?”7

1963: “We’re going to show you a man actually talking to computer, in a way

far different than it’s ever been possible to do before…. He’s going to be

talking graphically, with drawing, and the computer is going to understand his

drawings.”8

The Mouse and the Hyperlink

Douglas Engelbart, a researcher at the Stanford Research

Institute and eventual head of the Augmented Human Intellect

Research Center, is known for being the ‘father of the interface.’9

The 1968 demonstration to engineers referenced above is where

he introduced his NLS, or oN-Line System. This included the

developments of the mouse, chord key, hyperlinks, and bitmapping

that were some of the first steps towards creating a graphic

(instead of text-based) interface for the computer. [Figure 3]

The idea of bitmapping, or assigning memory to each piece

(pixel) of the computer screen, is key to understanding how the

mouse and hyperlink were able to allow for direct manipulation.10

[Figure 4] With this, each pixel could be accessed and expanded

to reveal more stored information. The hyperlink associated with

the pixel was the on-screen door to this information; the mouse

was the input device that controlled which hyperlink was being

accessed.

Though Engelbart himself preferred the chord-key input

device to the mouse, its combination of keystrokes made it harder

to learn. Several other factors, including cost and ease of use,

led to the mouse winning out over other input devices being

developed.11 The scale of motion of mouse operations (moving it

around the worksurface as well as pointing and clicking) is also

similar to human muscular capability, allowing users to manipulate

it with efficiency.12

Sketchpad: Graphics into Architecture

Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad program, developed first

by him and subsequently by other researchers at the MIT Media

Lab, was the precursor to the CAD softwares we use today. Its

main innovation, beyond the creation of a light pen (similar to

Figure 3: Engelbart in the 1968 dem-onstration. You can see him using the mouse, below, to manipulate the cursor, above.http://sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/1968Demo.html#complete

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Figure 4: Diagram conceptualizing the idea of bitmappingimage by author

Figure 5: The Sketchpad light pen and interfacehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USyoT_Ha_bA&feature=relmfu

the pen styluses we use on tablets today, though heavier and

more expensive13), was the ability to draw and manipulate shapes

directly on the computer screen. [Figure 5] This was done by

using the computer to connect points on the screen into lines,

which could be joined to form shapes. The computer would

translate the real path of the light pen and estimate the smoothest

path, thus anticipating the ‘correct’ form that the user intended.

These shapes could be dragged across the screen, scaled, and

its components edited; this enabled the ‘graphic communication’

discussed above by Stephen Coons in the Sketchpad Demo

Video.14

Input Device Development and Distribution

Further advances in input technology maintained the

important developments started by Engelbart’s mouse and

Sutherland’s Sketchpad: 1, that the mouse could work with

hyperlinks to provide a graphical way to access the computer

interface and 2, that line drawings could be made by connecting

points determined by users through input devices. The details of

how the hand interacted with the mouse to achieve these things

are what changed the most.

Even in the early 1960s and 70s, there was a great

variety in the types of input being developed. [Figures 6-9] As

the mouse became the device that was included with personal

computers,15 it became the most prominent among these. With

the rise of personal computers, the form of the mouse developed

significantly. This included a switch from wheels set at 90° to a

360° ball; the change in number of buttons, from two to three, to

one, and then back to three with the addition of the scroll wheel;

and an advancement from being attached by a cord to being

wireless.16 [Figures 10-13] Today there is still a great variety of mice,

Figure 6: Trackball 1952http://www.billbuxton.com/inputTime-line.html (for figures 6-13)

Figure 7: Light pen, 1957

Figure 8: Engelbart’s original mouse, 1964

Figure 9: Touchscreen, 1965

the differences of which have been adapted to various uses across

several fields.

INTERFACE AND REPRESENTATION

Development of the Graphic User Interface

The computer interface developed significantly with the

introduction of the mouse. Instead of being based on text and

programming language, the combination of mouse and hyperlink

allowed pieces of the computer screen to be identified as objects.

This concept was developed at XEROX’s Palo Alto Research

Center (XEROX PARC) and resulted in what we now call the

Graphical User Interface, or GUI.17 [Figure 14] This was imagined

as a virtual replica of a typical work desk, and organized the vast

information of the computer into familiar things like ‘files’ and

‘folders,’ accessed through different ‘windows’ on the ‘desktop.’

[Figure 15] These were represented on the screen by icons that

mimicked the look of actual files and folders, making it easy for

users to navigate their stored data.18

The system of the GUI relies on the idea of skeumorphism,

or the practice of creating “an object or feature [that copies]

the design of a similar artifact in another material.”19 The original

inspirations for the on-screen icons impart their semiotic meaning

and function to their counterparts on the computer. By shifting

away from a textual language to an object-oriented one, a layer

of translation is absorbed by the interface. [Figure 16] Though

this technically separates the user from the interface, the semiotic

connection of working with the object provided a ‘tactile

immediacy’20 that brought the user closer to understanding how to

manipulate the items on the screen. Within a few clicks, they could

access and manipulate any piece of information they had stored in

the vast folders of their personal computer. [Figure 17]

Figure 10: Single button mouse, 1989

Figure 11: Multi-button mouse, 1985

Figure 12: Wireless mouse, 1991

Figure 13: 2-direction scrolling mouse, 1997

Figure 15: Diagram of the GUI and its real-life inspiration.diagrammatic elements added by author

Figure 14: The XEROX Star, one of the first PC’s with the GUIhttp://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/lesson16.html

This type of interface worked so well because of the

mechanisms of the mouse: its ability to click makes it most

suitable for distinct objects rather than streams of text. While it

is true that information must be condensed for the computer to

make the translation from text to a graphic icon, this reduction

in complexity comes with the great benefit of making the mouse

and computer usable by people with all types of backgrounds

and levels of experience with computers. The computer term

WYSIWYG, or ‘what you see is what you get,’ is derived from this

one-for-one experience of the interface.21 Without this, computers

would never have been so widespread today; instead they could

still be limited to technology labs at large universities.

http://aliciabdesigns.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.htmlhttp://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/operating-system-

interface-design-between-1981-2009/

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Figure 16: Diagram of the easier communication between user and computer with the GUIimage by author

Figure 17: Diagram of the ability to locate information within the structure of the GUIimage by author

The Mouse and Communication: User Connection to the On-Screen

World

With the mouse and direct manipulation came the idea of immediate feedback. When the user

moves the mouse, that motion is mirrored onscreen by the cursor. In this way, the user can project

themself onto the screen and become and active part in the visual interface in front of them. Though

every software assigns different functions to clicking, right clicking, etc., the principle of moving the

mouse and reading that motion visually remains the same. Because of this, the cursor is a constant

experience of using the computer. Whether or not we are actively using the mouse, the cursor

reminds us of our position and allows us to adjust it with the mouse when necessary.

The mouse is how we communicate with the computer, and the cursor is how it speaks back

to us. This is the role of any input device: “to engage in dialogue with the machine.”22 The dialogue

created through this process is quite different from how we usually communicate, by speaking.

Conversation through the mouse is more deliberate and one-sided than it is with people (after all,

the computer in its current form can’t speak back to us or move the cursor in the same way we can).

Though the technology for speech communication with computers has not been fully resolved,23

the preferencing of the hand-controlled mouse is something that occurred early on in input device

development. This has set up a vantage point between the user and the screen that affects how we

interact with the computer spatially, which has had great influence on how we design.

The Mouse and Drawing: Relationship to the Development of Perspective

This creation of vantage point, from ourselves to the computer, was a development enabled

by the mouse: “For the first time, a machine was imagined not as an attachment to our bodies, but as

an environment, a space to be explored… [a] space worth living in.”24 The development of perspective

technique offers a parallel to this phenomenon, albeit one outside of the digital world. The drawing

tools this required, such as the straightedge or the triangle, perform similar roles to the mouse in this

regard.

Both the constructed drawing and the constructed persona in the digital world are

intermediate tools that allow us to experience and understand spatial, or now, informational, data.

[Figure 18] It is precisely the mouse’s abstraction from actual drawing gestures that allow for this new

interpretation of space in the digital realm. Perspective drawings, by abstracting a three-dimensional

space onto a two-dimensional surface, achieve a similar separation from the environment they

represent. In so doing allow us to realize things we may not notice in the actual environment.

The connection of the mouse to perspective drawing can begin to form a counterargument

to the lamentation of computer drawing expressed by Michael Graves in his recent New York

Times opinion article.25 The mouse and cursor, through their relationships with the hand and eye,

fulfill the “…interaction of our minds, eyes, and hands” that Graves requires of drawing.26 Like the

perspective drawing (which must be an acceptable form to Graves, at least when hand-drawn), the

mouse engages the creative process by constructing a spatial relationship with a representational

environment. It can perform the functions of the ‘referential’ and ‘preparatory’27 sketches by giving

users access to different programs and toolbars, layers of options which must be sorted through and

understood by the user in a similar way to understanding the options for building in a hand-drawn

sketch.

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Figure 18: Diagram of relationship between perspective drawing technique and the mouse’s spatial structureimage by author

SPATIAL ANALYSIS

Mechanisms of the Mouse

Through their innovative systems, Johnson and Sutherland “…endowed the digital computer

with space;”28 the mouse itself opened up a world of spatial relationships between the user and their

virtual world. But what now? What, exactly, does the mouse inscribe on the architectural process?

First, the mouse a touch-based input (as opposed to speech or other communications)

that operates in two dimensions. It is single-touch (as opposed to multi-touch, which would read

information from more than one finger at a time).29 It translates pointing and clicking, double clicking,

or scrolling into sequential operations on the computer screen.

Because of these preconditions, the mouse is better able to draw vectors than curves. For

example, it is no problem to draw the points of a complex polygon with a mouse, but signing your

name accurately may pose a problem.30 This deficiency has not posed huge barriers to the use of the

mouse, even in design. Several programs that work in complex curvatures still create them using a

system of weighted points, or NURBS (Non-uniform Rational B-Splines).i However, it is important to

recognize that the mouse does some things better than others.

How the Mouse Operates in Common Design SoftwaresAutoCAD and Illustrator

The mouse works quite well with AutoCAD, which is a vector program that connects lines

between points drawn by the user. The application’s addition of things like orthogonal locking

and object snaps to the cursor make the mouse a quite accurate tool for drawing construction

documents. The mouse’s ability to manipulate objects is also expanded by a combination of hot

keys, or short typed key combinations that allow the cursor to immediately take on different types of

manipulations of the drawing, such as scale or rotate. Even with this though, the mouse is the primary

tool for drawing the actual points. One drawback comes when clicking and hot key combinations are

required. For example, when the user needs to zoom, they must use the scroll wheel and a key such

as control or command, thus taking up both hands and reducing the ability to move on to the next

command. Here, the single-touch and linear input of the mouse become limitations.

The mouse works quite similarly in Adobe Illustrator: lines are manipulated by points, and are

suited to the linear structure of the mouse. There is also a very useful set of quick keys codes that

greatly expand the mouse’s efficiency when changing from tool to tool via the cursor. However, this

program’s ability to draw continuous lines (the application applies the points automatically) would

benefit from a more natural range of motion. Because of how the mouse is positioned in the hand, it

is actually quite difficult to replicate the form we are used to when holding an analog drawing utensil;

thus, smooth lines come out rather choppily.

In order to draw these arguments to the unique qualities the mouse allows for, 3D modeling

programs and Photoshop will only be referred to here briefly. 3D programs like Revit and Rhino

work similarly to CAD, but have the added requirement of orbiting, which sometimes becomes

cumbersome, similar to zooming. Photoshop is even more stroke and brush based than Illustrator,

and so relies even more on a way to replicate drawing. Additionally, it should be said that all of these

specifics are chosen at the discretion of the author; there are countless many more benefits and

drawbacks to the use of the mouse as an input device that depend on the way of working of the user,

which is a consideration beyond the use of the mouse alone.

The World of the Toolbar

While the above is an assessment of how well the mouse can draw in terms of the options

provided by software, one of its most important benefits comes from its ability to allow the user to

change identity, both between applications and within them. This capability is accessed from each

program’s toolbar and is manifested in the cursor, the user’s virtual representative.

The tools (another skeumorphic analogy of the GUI) provided in each program allow the

mouse to perform completely different functions, simply depending on which one is selected. It

can be a brush, a scissor, a scaling tool, or a color-changing tool, all with one click. The succession

of what the mouse can be, depending on the program, is endless, and has no equivalent in analog

drawing. This allows the mouse to perform operations not possible by drawing or painting alone,

enabling it to question image properties and discover new relationships between them. With things

like filter galleries, modify or build toolbars, or brush types, the mouse can turn the computer into

a speculative, not just a representational, tool. In this way, it can start to grasp the “…new potentials

in unexpected mixtures of the digital and analog, the real and the virtual, or the everyday and

the fantastic” that Stan Allen advocates for in “The Digital Complex.”31 The mouse allows for this

connection not in spite of, but because of its one-step removal from the literal methods of drawing.

Criticisms

For most computer users, who either use it recreationally for the internet or deal in

documentation and spreadsheets, the mouse is a perfectly capable tool. But Nicholas Negroponte,

through an analogy made by Neil Gershenfeld at the MIT Media Lab, points out that the mouse is no

cello bow.32 In other words, it does not have the sensitivity that may be required for an experienced

user to truly draw out the capabilities of the instrument—in this case, the computer.

This criticism adds to that of Michael Graves, discussed above. He argues that computer-

based design, specifically parametric design, is not enough to match the spontaneous creativity

of a hand sketch.33 Eugenia Ellis brings up further concern for the computers ability to provide

an experience of the real world in an article for the Journal of Architectural Education. Here, she

argues that the use of the computer filters our experience through technology rather than actual

experiences, and makes the point that space can only be understood from being in it, rather than

perceiving it through the lens of a computer program.34 In this understanding of the computer in

design, the mouse and its manipulations would only provide a paltry estimation of the space or

graphic being developed. This is an extreme view, however, and is countered by the study of mirror

neurons conducted by David Freedberg and Vittorio Gallese.35 Their study shows that a physical

response actually can be stimulated by viewing a work of art, even if it has no overt gestures of

movement.36 This suggests that our interactions with space via the mouse and computers are not so

empty as Ellis claims. While this doesn’t erase the need for an input device that is more sensitive to

our capabilities as designers, it does provide support for the contention that the mouse allows us to

expand on drawing practices and enter into the realm of computation.

The mouse has also provided another important function, of acting as a stepping-stone

in technology to prepare us for new forms of media computers and the input device can bring.

Similarly to the familiar icons of the GUI, the simplified motions of the mouse would have seemed

unthreatening to the general public. This seems a silly thing to say, but the phenomenon of the public

doubting emerging technologies is widespread. Developments as diverse as electricity and cinema

have been considered with suspicion.37 Walter Benjamin’s fear of the loss of ‘aura,’ or unique qualities

of an object that are rooted in their time and place of production, in the face of industrialization, is

another example of this concern.38 Paul Cantor, a literary and media critic, makes sense of this fear by

discussing how all new media undergoes a process of simplified novelty before it is able to realize or

express its true power (he points out that even Shakespeare’s plays and Dickens’ serial novels were

once considered unconventional).39

The fact that our current computer input methods are being criticized may indicate that the

input device as a type of media is ready to take on new form. This does not mean that the mouse

in its current form has been elementary, however. The methods it offers still have widespread use

and functionality, in addition to it serving as an important component of the evolution of digital

technology.

Speculation

The fact that the mouse preferences the vector may be attributable simply to technology’s

ability to imagine what it could do at the time it was developed. In the 1960s, the main focus of

computer technicians was to translate input data into output. Our computer capabilities are no

longer so binary, and involve the interpretation of things like images, algorithms, and complex search

systems. Perhaps these advances have prepared input technology to expand beyond the mouse.

Several prominent authors and researchers in the digital field have discussed ways of

creating a symbiotic relationship between man and computer.40 This process may involve things

like developing speech recognition software, so that the computer can understand our nuanced

commands while allowing us to work hands-free.41 It could even become something where the

computer recognizes us visually, by recognizing where our eyes

are directed.42

This new development may also still relate to our sense of

touch. However, the one or two click system of the mouse may

be changed into one that reads multiple nodes of touch.43 This is

already beginning to happen, most readily in the trackpad found

on Apple laptops. These sensors can read the difference between

one and four finger swipes, and also allow for the legibility of

pinching and pulling motions to scale and rotate windows and

objects. There are also a few newer solutions such as Sixth Sense,

which does away with the ‘input device’ altogether and places the

sensors directly on the users own fingertips.44 [Figure 19] With this

technology, we may be getting closer to a real life push-pull ability

that emulates technology fictionalized in our pop culture. [Figure

20]

CONCLUSION

When speculating about the mouse’s future possibilities, it

is easy to adopt the mindset that its current form is a dumb tool

with a low degree of precision. However, its mechanisms can be

read as an important product of the era in which it was developed.

The developments of Engelbart’s NLS and Sutherland’s Sketchpad

were both instrumental to the specific trajectory of the mouse.

The GUI that resulted from the hyperlink and bitmap directed the

mouse’s future development to be object and image-oriented.

This has had great effect on the way we use the mouse in

architectural design. Though its methods don’t emulate analog

drawing, they are set up to provide a system of computation that

allows users to visualize themselves in the virtual world. Through

the mouse and cursor, they can take on new identities from the

various toolbars programmed into applications. This relationship

Figure 19: Pranav Mistry demonstrating his Sixth Sense technology, being developed at MIThttp://latd.com/2009/11/29/sixthsense-in-the-everyday-fewer-devices-better-connection/

Figure 20: The haptic manipulations seen in pop-culture films such as Iron Man may actually suggest where input devices could be headedhttp://www.apartmenttherapy.com/movie-technology-wed-like-in-our-home-office-172356

may not have developed if the methods of input had not been abstracted from the complexity of

gesture to the linearity of the mouse. Even if input devices trend towards gesture in the future, the

presence of the mouse has been significant to the way we think about our interactions with the

computer, and will no doubt continue to exert influence as input device technology proliferates.

                                                                                                                                       1  Bill  Buxton,  “Some  Milestones  in  Computer  Input  Devices:  An  Informal  Timeline,”  Microsoft  Research  Center,  entry  posted  April  4,  2012,  http://www.billbuxton.com/inputTimeline.html  Accessed  October  24,  2012.  2  Michael  Graves,  “Architecture  and  the  Lost  Art  of  Drawing,”  New  York  Times  Sept.  1,  2012.  3  Paul  Cantor,  “Commerce  and  Culture  Lecture  10:  Culture  as  Pop  Culture,”  Presented  by  the  Ludwig  von  Mises  Institute,  July  24-­‐29,  2006.  Accessed  at  <http://www.mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=91>  17  December  2012;  Steven  Johnson,  Everything  Bad  is  Good  for  You,  (New  York:  Riverhead  Books,  2005)  and  Interface  Culture:  How  New  Technology  Transforms  the  Way  We  Create  &  Communicate,  (New  York:  Basic  Books  1997).  4  Sean  Ahlquist  and  Achim  Menges,  “Introduction:  Computational  Design  Thinking,”  Computational  Design  Thinking  (2011),  10-­‐11.  5  Ivan  Sutherland,  “Part  3:  Historical  Perspective:  “Computer  Sketchpad,””  Sketchpad  demo  video,  MIT  Media  Lab  1963,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USyoT_Ha_bA&feature=relmfu  Accessed  October  24,  2012.  6  Kiel  Moe,  “Automation  Takes  Command:  The  Nonstandard,  Unautomatic  History  of  Standardization  and  Automation  in  Architecture,”  Fabricating  Architecture,  (New  York:  Princeton  Architectural  Press,  2010),  159-­‐165.  7  Doug  Engelbart,  Demonstration  of  NLS,  given  by  the  Stanford  Augmented  Human  Intellect  Research  Center  to  the  Fall  Joint  Computer  Conference  in  San  Francisco,  December  9,  1968,  http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html  Accessed  October  24,  2012.  8  Stephen  Coons  in  Sutherland.  9  Steven  Johnson,  Interface  Culture:  How  New  Technology  Transforms  the  Way  We  Create  &  Communicate,  (New  York:  Basic  Books  1997),  14.  10  ibid.,  20.  11  “Revolution:  The  First  2,000  Years  of  Computing:  Input  &  Output,”  Exhibition,  Computer  History  Museum,  http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/topics#exhibition  Accessed  October  24,  2012.    12  Stuart  K.  Card,  Jock  D.  Macinlay,  and  George  G.  Robertson,  “A  Morphological  Analysis  of  the  Design  Space  of  Input  Devices,”  ACM  Transactions  on  Information  Systems  9  no  2  (April  1991):  100.  13  Negroponte,  Nicholas.  Being  Digital.  New  York:  Knopf  Publishers  1995,  131.  14  Sutherland.  15  Revolution  Exhibit.  16  Buxton,  “Some  Milestones”.  17  “The  GUI  and  the  Personal  Computer,”  in  A  Critical  History  of  Computer  Graphics  and  Animation,  The  Ohio  State  University  online  resource,  http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/lessons.html  Accessed  October  24,  2012.  18  ibid.    19  “Skeumorph,”  Oxford  English  Dictionary  Online.  Accessed  17  December  2012.  20  Johnson,  21.  21  “The  GUI  and  the  Personal  Computer.”  22  Card  et.  al.,  101.  23  Negroponte  and  J.C.R.  Licklider,    “Man-­‐Computer  Symbiosis.”  IRE  Transactions  on  Human  Factors  in  Electronics  v.  HFE-­‐1,  1960.  24  Johnson,  24-­‐25.  2525  Michael  Graves,  “Architecture  and  the  Lost  Art  of  Drawing,”  New  York  Times,  Sept.  1,  2012.  26  ibid.  27  ibid.    28  Johnson,  47.    29  Wayne,  Westerman,  Hand  Tracking,  Finger  Identificaion,  and  Chordic  Manipulation  on  a  Multi-­‐Touch  Surface,  Dissertation  for  University  of  Delaware,  1999,  xxvi.  30  Bill  Buxton,    “Chapter  1:  An  Introduction  to  Human  Input  to  Computers,”  Human  Input  to  Computer  Systems:  Theories,  Techniques,  and  Technology,  2011,  Unpublished  personal  work  accessed  online:  http://www.billbuxton.com/inputManuscript.html,  7.  31  Stan  Allen,  “The  Digital  Complex,”  Log  5:  Observations  on  Architecture  and  the  Contemporary  City  (Spring/Summer  2005):  94.  32  Nicholas  Negroponte,  Being  Digital,  (New  York:  Knopf  Publishers  1995),  130.  33  Graves.  34  Eugenia  Victoria  Ellis,  “Ceci  Tuera  Cela:  Education  of  the  Architect  in  Hyperspace,”  Journal  of  Architectural  Education  v.  51  (Sept.  1997):  41-­‐42.  35  David  Freedberg  and  Vittorio  Gallese,  “Motion,  Emotion,  and  Empathy  in  Esthetic  Experience,”  in  Aesthetic  Theory,  ed.  by  Mark  Foster  Gage,  (New  York:  W.W.  Norton  and  Company,  2011).  36  ibid.,  315.  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 37  Linda  Simon,  Dark  Light:  Electricity  and  Anxiety  from  the  Telegraph  to  the  X-­‐Ray,  (New  York:  Harcourt  Inc.,  2004);  and  Dave  Kenney,  Twin  Cities  Picture  Show:  A  Century  of  Moviegoing,  (St.  Paul:  Minnesota  Historical  Society  Press,  2007).  38  Walter  Benjamin,  “The  Work  of  Art  in  the  Age  of  Its  Technological  Reproducibility,”  in  The  Work  of  Art  in  the  Age  of  Its  Technological  Reproducibility  and  Other  Writings  on  Media,  (Cambridge,  MA:  Harvard  University  Press  2008),  21.  39  Cantor,  Paul.  “Commerce  and  Culture  Lecture  10:  Culture  as  Pop  Culture,”  Presented  by  the  Ludwig  von  Mises  Institute,  July  24-­‐29,  2006.  Accessed  at  <http://www.mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=91>  17  December  2012.  40  Negroponte  and  J.C.R.  Licklider,  “Man-­‐Computer  Symbiosis,”  IRE  Transactions  on  Human  Factors  in  Electronics  v.  HFE-­‐1:4-­‐11,  1960.  41  ibid.,  137-­‐148.  42  ibid.,  135.  43  Westerman.  44  Pranav  Mistry,  “Sixth  Sense,”  MIT  Media  Lab  online  resource,  http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense/  Accessed  October  24,  2012.    

                                                                                                                                       1  Bill  Buxton,  “Some  Milestones  in  Computer  Input  Devices:  An  Informal  Timeline,”  Microsoft  Research  Center,  entry  posted  April  4,  2012,  http://www.billbuxton.com/inputTimeline.html  Accessed  October  24,  2012.  2  Michael  Graves,  “Architecture  and  the  Lost  Art  of  Drawing,”  New  York  Times  Sept.  1,  2012.  3  Paul  Cantor,  “Commerce  and  Culture  Lecture  10:  Culture  as  Pop  Culture,”  Presented  by  the  Ludwig  von  Mises  Institute,  July  24-­‐29,  2006.  Accessed  at  <http://www.mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=91>  17  December  2012;  Steven  Johnson,  Everything  Bad  is  Good  for  You,  (New  York:  Riverhead  Books,  2005)  and  Interface  Culture:  How  New  Technology  Transforms  the  Way  We  Create  &  Communicate,  (New  York:  Basic  Books  1997).  4  Sean  Ahlquist  and  Achim  Menges,  “Introduction:  Computational  Design  Thinking,”  Computational  Design  Thinking  (2011),  10-­‐11.  5  Ivan  Sutherland,  “Part  3:  Historical  Perspective:  “Computer  Sketchpad,””  Sketchpad  demo  video,  MIT  Media  Lab  1963,  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USyoT_Ha_bA&feature=relmfu  Accessed  October  24,  2012.  6  Kiel  Moe,  “Automation  Takes  Command:  The  Nonstandard,  Unautomatic  History  of  Standardization  and  Automation  in  Architecture,”  Fabricating  Architecture,  (New  York:  Princeton  Architectural  Press,  2010),  159-­‐165.  7  Doug  Engelbart,  Demonstration  of  NLS,  given  by  the  Stanford  Augmented  Human  Intellect  Research  Center  to  the  Fall  Joint  Computer  Conference  in  San  Francisco,  December  9,  1968,  http://sloan.stanford.edu/mousesite/1968Demo.html  Accessed  October  24,  2012.  8  Stephen  Coons  in  Sutherland.  9  Steven  Johnson,  Interface  Culture:  How  New  Technology  Transforms  the  Way  We  Create  &  Communicate,  (New  York:  Basic  Books  1997),  14.  10  ibid.,  20.  11  “Revolution:  The  First  2,000  Years  of  Computing:  Input  &  Output,”  Exhibition,  Computer  History  Museum,  http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/topics#exhibition  Accessed  October  24,  2012.    12  Stuart  K.  Card,  Jock  D.  Macinlay,  and  George  G.  Robertson,  “A  Morphological  Analysis  of  the  Design  Space  of  Input  Devices,”  ACM  Transactions  on  Information  Systems  9  no  2  (April  1991):  100.  13  Negroponte,  Nicholas.  Being  Digital.  New  York:  Knopf  Publishers  1995,  131.  14  Sutherland.  15  Revolution  Exhibit.  16  Buxton,  “Some  Milestones”.  17  “The  GUI  and  the  Personal  Computer,”  in  A  Critical  History  of  Computer  Graphics  and  Animation,  The  Ohio  State  University  online  resource,  http://design.osu.edu/carlson/history/lessons.html  Accessed  October  24,  2012.  18  ibid.    19  “Skeumorph,”  Oxford  English  Dictionary  Online.  Accessed  17  December  2012.  20  Johnson,  21.  21  “The  GUI  and  the  Personal  Computer.”  22  Card  et.  al.,  101.  23  Negroponte  and  J.C.R.  Licklider,    “Man-­‐Computer  Symbiosis.”  IRE  Transactions  on  Human  Factors  in  Electronics  v.  HFE-­‐1,  1960.  24  Johnson,  24-­‐25.  2525  Michael  Graves,  “Architecture  and  the  Lost  Art  of  Drawing,”  New  York  Times,  Sept.  1,  2012.  26  ibid.  27  ibid.    28  Johnson,  47.    29  Wayne,  Westerman,  Hand  Tracking,  Finger  Identificaion,  and  Chordic  Manipulation  on  a  Multi-­‐Touch  Surface,  Dissertation  for  University  of  Delaware,  1999,  xxvi.  30  Bill  Buxton,    “Chapter  1:  An  Introduction  to  Human  Input  to  Computers,”  Human  Input  to  Computer  Systems:  Theories,  Techniques,  and  Technology,  2011,  Unpublished  personal  work  accessed  online:  http://www.billbuxton.com/inputManuscript.html,  7.  31  Stan  Allen,  “The  Digital  Complex,”  Log  5:  Observations  on  Architecture  and  the  Contemporary  City  (Spring/Summer  2005):  94.  32  Nicholas  Negroponte,  Being  Digital,  (New  York:  Knopf  Publishers  1995),  130.  33  Graves.  34  Eugenia  Victoria  Ellis,  “Ceci  Tuera  Cela:  Education  of  the  Architect  in  Hyperspace,”  Journal  of  Architectural  Education  v.  51  (Sept.  1997):  41-­‐42.  35  David  Freedberg  and  Vittorio  Gallese,  “Motion,  Emotion,  and  Empathy  in  Esthetic  Experience,”  in  Aesthetic  Theory,  ed.  by  Mark  Foster  Gage,  (New  York:  W.W.  Norton  and  Company,  2011).  36  ibid.,  315.  

i Authors note:Though this is true, there may be a discussion raised here about whether the NURBS method of creating curves remains based on points precisely because of the mouse’s preference for them. This is a consideration that would require further research.

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