About An Open Hyperdocument System (OHS) 0

Overview 1

Click to enlarge Source: see Engelbart's Bootstrap Paradigm Map for whole OHS series of slides unfolding.

Doug Engelbart's concept of an open hyperdocument system (OHS) is an open source framework identifying the key features and functionality largely missing from today's technology that are necessary for facilitating people working together in extraordinary new ways – i.e. OHS addresses the basic requirements for boosting our Collective IQ. As such, an OHS platform is envisioned to facilitate our collaborative processes, as well as the real-time emergence, integration, management, and utilization of dynamic knowledge repositories (DKRs) within a foundational dynamic knowledge ecosystem. Applications would be modified to support OHS provisions. 1a

The OHS's baseline requirements are a result of 50 years of innovation and experimentation by Doug Engelbart and his team of researchers among a variety of user communities, including aerospace, software development, and non-profits. These requirements include fine-grained addressability of all media types and support for multiple ways of viewing, traversing, manipulating and sharing them. Some of these features have found their way into existing tools on a limited basis, while others are currently being explored. The purpose of the OHS is to serve as a common framework or standard for these features, in a manner that optimizes connectivity of people, knowledge, processes, and tools, while enabling interoperability among and across them. 1b

As an intermediate step toward OHS, we developed a research prototype demo system called HyperScope to demonstrate many of the precision browsing and addressability requirements in OHS. See also About Open Hyper Tools which highlights opportunities for open source extensions to existing tools that OHS calls for, and Purple MediaWiki as a case in point. See also About Augment/NLS for the first prototype demonstrating these concepts. 1c

Further Inquiry 2

• Augmenting Society's Collective IQs - vision highlights, connecting the dots, makes the case for OHS and a serious strategic approach for accelerating the evolution of our Collective IQ to its highest potential.
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• Boosting Our Collective IQ: A Knowledge-Centric Approach - a newly published selection of Doug’s writings detailing what’s needed in the technology, what’s still missing, and what we can do about it. Preface and Conclusions by Christina Engelbart.
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• OHS Framework: Technology Template Project, Doug Engelbart with Harvey Lehtman, 1998 (ALLIANCE,980,). An updated version of the basic elements of OHS.
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• Doug Engelbart's Design for Knowledge-Based Organizations, Patricia Seybold, Paradigm Shift - A Guide to the Information Revolution, Vol. 3, No. 8, Feb 12, 1992. Makes the case for OHS as a point of leverage in the larger strategic context for organizational transformation.
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• Knowledge-Domain Interoperability and an Open Hyperdocument System, Douglas C. Engelbart, 1990 (AUGMENT,132082,). Makes the case for OHS and describes the basic elements of OHS.
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• Toward High-Performance Organizations: A Strategic Role for Groupware, Douglas C. Engelbart, 1992 (AUGMENT,132811,), especially Section 6 Open Hyperdocument System (OHS): For Generic CoDIAK Support.
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• Draft OHS Project Plan, Doug Engelbart, 2000 (BI,2120,). White Paper laying out an approach for implementing OHS; a bit outdated (predates HyperScope prototype development) but still rich with background information.
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• See also About Open Hyper Tools for an implementation approach, About HyperScope for a demonstration prototype in the works, and About NLS/Augment for a description of the first comprehensive prototype, still the best proof of concept for OHS in existence.
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