Excellent points. I watched The Mother of All Demo's at Reboot in Copenhagen in 2005, and it blew my mind. It also helped that Mr Engelbart himself was "present" live via videolink from the US.

Reading Vannevar Bush's "As We May Think" a few years earlier while at university, equally blew my mind.

I remember sharing Bush's article with my dad, to show him that smartphones weren't a new invention, but rather reality finally catching up with a postwar vision of how technology could be of help to us.