As part of 'The Mother of All Demos' in 1968, Douglas Engelbart also demonstrated a computer monitor with a graphical user interface, hypertext, and collaborative editing. This was a radical departure from the text-only interfaces of the time and showed a future where computers could be used for creative and collaborative writing. The demonstration took place at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco.

This demo foreshadowed the personal computer and the graphical interfaces that would become essential for writers. The ability to see text on a screen, edit it, and work with others in real-time was a glimpse into the future of digital writing. For poets, this vision of computing promised a new kind of creative freedom, where the visual arrangement of text on screen could be as important as the words themselves, a promise that would be fully realized decades later.