Augment, Bootstrap Communities, the Web: What Next? 0

ABSTRACT 2

NLS/Augment beginning in the middle 1960s introduced many hardware and software firsts echoed in today's windowed computing and hypermedia systems such as the World Wide Web (WWW). We demonstrate key features via historic videos and a currently running implementation, discuss its philosophical underpinnings as a tool for supporting collaborative communities of knowledge workers, and point out essentials that we feel have yet to be sufficiently realized in widely available commercial systems. 2A

Keywords 3

Collaborative work, collaborative learning, hypermedia, virtual community, knowledge management 3A

INTRODUCTION 4

In 1962, I published a "Conceptual Model for Augmenting Human Intellect" [1] that served as a guide for work at SRI International's Augmentation Research Center which continues today at the Bootstrap Institute. Software and hardware artifacts and tools from that work have appeared sporadically and haphazardly in the succeeding thirty-five years in diverse and widely available commercial systems. 4A

HISTORIC FIRSTS 5

Following the conceptual framework cited above, we began to develop technology required to augment the knowledge work of first individuals, then groups of collaborators, first in a single location, and then in communities distributed over wide area networks such as the ARPANET. Our collaborative hypermedia oNLine System, NLS (later known as Augment), evolved now-common features that were conceived of, fully integrated, and in everyday use by the early 1970s. 5A

An early version of our system was demonstrated at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco. (See Figure 1.) Here are some of those features that first appeared in NLS: 5B

• The mouse 5B1
• 2-dimensional display editing and windows 5B2
• Hypermedia with integrated e-mail 5B3
• Document version control 5B4
• In-file object addressing and linking 5B5
• Outline processing 5B6
• Shared screen teleconferencing 5B7
• Context sensitive help 5B8
• Distributed client-server architecture 5B9
• Extensible, user-programmable tools 5B10



Figure 1. Doug Engelbart demonstrating NLS
at the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference. 5C

BASIC ASSUMPTIONS 6

Driving our development of NLS were a number of basic assumptions about augmented knowledge workshops [4]: 6A

• Coordinated set of user interface principles. Over the many application areas within a knowledge workshop, these principles shape user interface features such as the language, control conventions, and methods for obtaining online help and training. 6A1

• Grades of user proficiency. Novices can use the system with minimal training, and knowledge of the conventions of one application can be applied to the use of other, less familiar applications. As user skills improve and evolve, advanced vocabularies can be accessed. 6A2

• Ease of communication among workshop domains. Tools work together, can communicate with each other, and can be extended. 6A3

• User programming capability. Users can add or interface new tools, with various levels of ease, to extend the workshop through a variety of programming languages including simple scripting. 6A4

• People support services. Highly specialized support by expert users supplement and complement the computer based tools in the workshop. 6A5

• Cost decreasing, capabilities increasing. The system architecture can take advantage of evolution in basic infrastructure over time as improvements and cost reductions become available. 6A6

• Range of workstations and symbol representations. Basic capabilities need to map onto a variety of devices that also will evolve over time. 6A7

• Careful development of methodology. As much care and attention must be paid to the development, analysis, and evaluation of procedures and methodologies for use of computer and people support services as to the development of the basic technologies. 6A8

• Co-evolution of roles, organizations, and technology. Widespread availability of knowledge workshop tools will create the need for new organizational structures and roles. 6A9

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? 7

I view the computer technology embodied in NLS/Augment merely as support for the larger goal of augmenting communities of collaborating knowledge workers. Now that the WWW has opened people's eyes to the potential, we should expect accelerated penetration into the hypermedia frontier toward an Open Hyperdocument System (OHS). I have more fully discussed my vision of an OHS in [10]. Here is a summary of some of those design thoughts for continued WWW evolution which were implemented in NLS/Augment. 7A

• Everything in the work environment is part of a live hyperdocument. 7A1

• Integrated object oriented applications. 7A2

• Explicitly structured documents. 7A3

• All objects intrinsically addressable, linkable, and manipulable. 7A4

• View control of form, sequence, and content. 7A5

• Hyperdocument library system. 7A6

I continue to propose that tool evolution is be carried forth as part of a larger Bootstrapping Initiative that fosters a cooperative community of organizations interested in strategically improving their collective improvement capabilities, and thereby augmenting each organization's-and indeed, society's-potential to excel in our rapidly changing world. 7B

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 8

Christina Engelbart of the Bootstrap Institute, Harvey Lehtman of the Institute for the Future, and Jeff Rulifson of Sun Microsystems helped make this presentation possible. 8A

REFERENCES 9

Many background papers on the NLS/Augment system and bootstrap communities may be found at the Bootstrap Institute web site at http://www.bootstrap.org/library.htm. Of particular interest are the following documents. 9A
1. Engelbart, Douglas C. Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, Summary Report, Stanford Research Institute, on Contract AF 49(638)-1024, October 1962, 134 pages. Reprinted in an abridged form as: A Conceptual Framework for the Augmentation of Man's Intellect, in Greif, Irene (ed.), Computer Supported Cooperative Work: A Book of Reading. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., San Mateo, CA, 1988, 35-65, and in T. Nishigaki [ed.], Organization and Groupware, NTT Publishing, 1992. 9A1

2. Engelbart, Douglas C., and English, William K. A Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect, in AFIPS Conference Proceedings of the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference 33 (San Francisco CA, December 1968), 395-410. 9A2

3. Engelbart, Douglas C. Coordinated Information Services for a Discipline- or Mission-Oriented Community, in Proceedings of the Second Annual Computer Communications Conference (San Jose CA, January 24, 1973). Also published in Grimsdale, R. L., and Kuo, F.F. (eds.) Computer Communication Networks, (1975) Noordhoff-Leyden. 9A3

4. Engelbart, Douglas C., Watson, Richard W., and Norton, James C. The Augmented Knowledge Workshop, in AFIPS Conference Proceedings, Vol. 42, National Computer Conference (June 1973), 9-21. 9A4

5. Watson, Richard W. User Interface Design Issues for a Large Interactive System, in AFIPS Conference Proceedings, Vol. 45, National Computer Conference, (June 1976), 357-364. 9A5

6. Engelbart, Douglas C. Collaboration Support Provisions in AUGMENT, in OAC '84 Digest: Proceedings of the AFIPS Office Automation Conference, (Los Angeles CA, 1984), 51-58. 9A6

7. Engelbart, Douglas C. Authorship Provisions in AUGMENT, in COMPCON '84 Digest: Proceedings of the COMPCON Conference, (San Francisco CA, 1984), 465-472. 9A7

8. Engelbart, Douglas C. The Augmented Knowledge Workshop, in Goldberg, Adele (ed.), A History of Personal Workstations (New York, 1988), ACM Press,. 185-236. 9A8

9. Engelbart, Douglas C. Toward High-Performance Organizations: A Strategic Role for Groupware, in Proceedings of the Groupware '92 Conference (San Jose CA, August 1992) Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. 9A9

10. Engelbart, Douglas C. Toward Augmenting the Human Intellect and Boosting our Collective IQ. Commun. ACM. 38,. 8, August 1995, 30-33. 9A10