Motherboard

When you really think about it, 1963 only spawned two things that contributed to the greater good of humanity: the Kinks and the computer mouse. But the first mouse wasn’t exactly mighty, nor was it designed to be a cute match for your monitor; in fact, it was basically a fat clunky block of wood with a big red button on top. DIY, indeed.

The guy behind the invention, Dr. Douglas Engelbart, was one of the less nutty John Nash types working at Stanford Research Institute at the time. The good doctor’s research agenda — a humble little undertaking called “Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework” — eventually got funding from ARPA (ring a bell?). Clearly this was no blow-off side project.

Unfortunately, Dr. Englebart didn’t receive any royalties for his ergonomically-challenged-yet-wildly-innovative creation, which he lovingly named “X-Y position indicator for a display system.” Not only that, but SRI licensed it to another software company for a mere $40,000 — a seriously cheap price tag for an invention that would become about as popular as the spoon.

We can’t help but smile over DIY projects and the incredible new beasts they spawn. We’ve seen it in sports like Bike Polo and with bands that create synths out of Speak N’ Spells. The concept of green architecture may seem awkward in its beginning stages, but hey — this is only the beginning, right?

Who knows what our crazy ideas will look like in the future. For now, we just have to work with what we’ve got.