The Mother of All Demos : From Engelbart to the Present

Visit superface.ai for more information about the demos and the Superface project

This talk brings together the groundbreaking work of Douglas Engelbart of the Stanford Research Institute, Grace Hopper who helped create the COBOL programming language, and Will Crowther, creator of the online game — "The Collosal Cave Adventure". All three played a major role in shaping the next stage of computing and each has lessons to offer those working the "Age of the API."

Along the way, we’ll be showing working live demos of API services and clients that work together to automatically adjust, heal, and re-route requests to maintain 100% uptime even when services go missing. This example of a "super-interface" or "superface" for APIs takes it’s cue from the work of Engelbart, Hopper, Cowther, and others to help show what the future of API can look like.

An internationally known author and speaker, Mike Amundsen travels the world consulting and talking about network architecture, Web development, and intersection of technology and society. He works with companies large and small to help them capitalize on the opportunities APIs and Microservices present for both consumers and the enterprise.

Amundsen has authored numerous books and papers. He contributed to the O’Reilly Media book, "Continuous API Management" (2018). His "RESTful Web Clients", was published by O’Reilly in February 2017 and he co-authored "Microservice Architecture" (June 2016). Amundsen’s 2013 collaboration with Leonard Richardson "RESTful Web APIs" and his 2011 book, “Building Hypermedia APIs with HTML5 and Node”, are common references for building adaptable Web applications. His latest book "Design and Build Great APIs" for Pragmatic Publishing is scheduled for release in early 2020.

As a former Director of DSL development at Apiary, Zdenek is the author of the API Blueprint description language, which is now used by over 200,000 developers and architects to describe well over 300,000 APIs worldwide. He is a co-author of the data modeling language MSON. Zdenek defined and evangelized API design and the agile API workflow. He advises several Fortune 500 companies with their API design and implementation processes, and has experience in growing and mentoring start-up companies.