Author: DCE
Created: TBD Modified: Wed 23 Oct 2000 TIME TBD Bootstrap Institute 23-Oct-2000 (BI,2120,) Introduction 1Large-scale challenges are best served if there are appropriately scaled strategic principles to guide their pursuit. And special value results if the launch plan of a long-term and large-scale strategy produces significant payoff accrual early in the pursuit. 1A We are addressing the large-scale, pervasive challenge of improving the collective development and application of knowledge. Many years of focussed experience and conceptual development underly the strategic framework guiding this proposal. 1B Phase-1: OHS Launch Project: HyperScope enhancement of Legacy Systems 2Special Note: Implementation of the HyperScope and all of the later stages of the OHS are committed to being done as Open-Source development. There are clear and compelling reasons for this, stemming from the scale and rate of evolution which needs be accommodated, and from the number of collaborative communities which need to be involved, PRO-ACTIVELY. 2A The HyperScope will be a lightly modified web browser supported by an "Intermediary Processor" (IP) which operates between the browser and the files or data bases holding existing working knowledge of a collaborative community. The HyperScope is not an editor. 2B A Hyperscope user will be able to follow links into and between these "legacy" files in a manner similar to using a browser with web-based HTML files. And more, there will be numerous new capabilities and features which will give a HyperScope user considerable more flexibility and working power than users limited to standard browsers and "legacy" editors. 2B1 Brief Functional Description of Phase-1 HyperScope 2CNew capabilities provided to HyperScope users operating within legacy environments:
For any community seriously interested in applying HyperScope (and the follow-on, full OHS), it is assumed that appropriate "translator modules" will be developed for every file/db type of significance to their collaborative efforts. It is expected that an increasing list of customized translators will be developed as different application communities extend the range of legacy files to be brought into integrated HyperScope use. 2C1A E.g., here "http://xxx.xxx.xxx#aaa" targets a specific object, assumedly not labelled in the legacy file, but given the "aaa" label by the Translator any time that it translates that targeted file into the I-File format. 2C2A From past experience it is expected that users will invent many variations of the ways they would like to view portions of their files, under different circumstances, often shifting rapidly between views just as one might rotate a physical object, or shift its distance, to get a better understanding of what is there. 2C3A It is planned to enable the option of incorporating a "view specification" (viewspec) to a link so that a subsequent user will not only have execution of that link take him to the desired specific file location, but will also show the contents there with the specified view. 2C3B Considerable evolution is expected to take place here. In the "open-source" mode, many groups would be experimenting and tuning, contributing to the evolution. 2C3C Note: Here again, it is planned to facilitate Open-Source development so that many individuals and application communities can pursue specialty application needs and possibilities. (Facilitating this evolution is planned.) 2C4D NOTE: both 6a and 6b being very much more usefully explicit if exercised via HyperScope use. 2C6B1 NOTE: Link Typing has been advocated and discused for many years. With the above HyperScope-facilitated LDB, link-type utilization within appropriately developed community conventions and practices, would offer very important enhanced capability for collective knowledge development. 2C6D1 AND, in a larger sense, it would enable a practical way to improve on the established academic convention of only publishing AFTER appropriate peer review (with attendant time delays in the cycle of knowedge evolution). 2C6D2 HERE, a promising alternative is offered: Publish now, let Peer Review and "evolving attribution" take place after. I.e., much more than just counting citations can here provide effectively attributed peer evaluation: explicit back-link assessment of trails can operate in many complex knowledge-evolution environments to isolate the key contributions (and also the key misleading entries). 2C6D3 Later, when editing of the Intermediary File will be offered, any legal edit operation executed in one window is reflected accurately and immediately in all other of that file's portrayal windows. 2C8A This flexibility in utilizing multiple windows has surprising value when users learn to make effective use of it. 2C8B A click in a given paragraph, not on an embedded link, would hoist that paragraph to the top of the window. 2C9A Click-select a given paragraph, then Jump Next, Last, First, Origin, ... 2C9B First click indicates what jump is desired; second click can be in any other window, indicating where the jump-result view is to be portrayed. Whatever viewing spec already established in the target window will also prevail when the jumped-to file/location is portrayed there. 2C10A Also, in the interval between window clicks, icon or menu clicks, or character input, can indicate the new viewing spec if the user desires something different from what is currently set for the target window. 2C10B For instance: Window 1 could be relatively narrow, with view spec set for small font and only first line of each paragraph portrayed; Window 2 wider, with larger, more-readable font and full-paragraph portrayal. 2C10C We assume that the above capabilities would be useful to almost any collaborative community, essentially as soon as adequate HyperScope-application support services could be provided. (NOTE that a qualified SRI group is explicitly set now to establish and operate such servics. Optional whether arrangements for this are pre-established at outset of the "OHS-dev Project", or later when support of a particular community choose to become involved. In any event, suitable lead time needs be allowed.) 2C11 Phase-2: Maturing/Evolving the Hyperscope into full-feature OHS 3Evolution of the Intermediary File format will be given careful attention since it is destined to become the format for the full Open Hyperdocument System (which will continue its evolution). 3A An OHS "User Interface System" (UIS) will be developed to provide a basic range of functions for moving, viewing and editing. 3B Provision for archiving, version control, etc. will be developed so that it becomes possible to develop and maintain an evolving knowledge base soley within an OHS environment – with integrated flexibility and power accumulated from the best that was accomplished via HyperScope usage among the legacy files. 3C Now the VERY important feature of this approach to OHS development comes into play: task by task, or person by person, in almost any order and rate, users can start to keep their files entirely within the OHS environment. All the working material is still interlinkable, whether in OHS or legacy files. 3D And the critical community-development processes will become VERY important here – to start the active "co-evolution" of the "Human System" and the OHS "Tool System" (as discussed at length in the "Bootstrap Publications"). 3E For the scale of utilization that will be necessary, in number of inter-operating groups, in the diversity of inter-operable knowledge domains, and in the continuing changes in tools and skills, processes, etc. – it will be absolutely critical that 3F
It is sincerely hoped that organizations investing in the Stage-1 HyperScope development and use will do so with clear intent to be simultaneously readying their targeted application communities for becoming pro-active, "evolutionary participants." 3G Phase-3: Special Evolutionary Provision: Multi-class UIS Architecture and High-Performance Teams 4The OHS Interface Architecture will be set up explicitly to provide for multiple UIS options, with a common, full-feature Application Program Interface (API). To support extensive capability evolution, it will be necesary to provide for a range of UIS options, varying in complexity, potential competency level, difficulty to learn, types of interface devices and modalities, etc. 4A Being able effectively to support web-connected mobile phones is one example. 4A1 But a VERY IMPORTANT purpose here is to enable individuals, or special-role support teams, to experiment with interface equipment, functionality, and control options, together with optional special attributes of the standard Intermediary File, to pursue especially high performance at important parts of their knowledge processes. 4B Having this kind of exploration in any event will be necessary. Doing it with special extensions to the widely used OHS will be very important in enabling feasible migration of these tools and skills out into the rest of the communities. Moreover, doing this exploratory high-performance activity over the SAME WORKING domains amplifies that benefit immensely; motivated individuals can optionally acquire special interface equipment, take some special training, and move up to a "new class of user proficiency" (e.g. becoming a certified Class-4B Knowledge Integrator). 4C There are support roles anticipated in developing and maintaining a community's Dynamic Knowledge Repository (DKR) which could very well be taken on by specially trained High-Performance Support Teams. Such a team could for instance be fielded in a university (as a research project into High-Performance Collective Knowledge Work), and take on the "Knowledge Integrator" role for a professional society's DKR. And competetive exercises could be conducted among teams from different universities – or companies, or agencies, or countries – as part of an explicit processes to facilitate improvement in "Collective IQ." 4D |