[edit] Doug Engelbart's bio
[edit] The Augmentation Research Centre
- founded by Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute to develop and experiment with new tools and techniques for collaboration and information processing.
- main product - the oN-Line System, better known by its odd abbreviation, NLS.
- the invention of the "mouse" pointing device
- the graphic user interface - GUI
- the world's first electronic computer network(ARPANET) was established between a lab at UCLA and Engelbart's lab at SRI on October 29, 1969. UCSB and the University of Utah were connected later that year.
- Engelbart ran the organization until the late 1970s
- currently he's leading the Bootstrap Institute which he created together with his daughter Christina. The institute is hosted at SRI.
[edit] Doug Engelbart's ideas
- Engelbart reasoned that the state of our current technology controls our ability to manipulate information, and that fact in turn will control our ability to develop new, improved technologies.
- Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework (his "bible")
- augmenting the human intellect - increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problem
- the total system of a human plus augmentation devices and techniques - a proper field of search for practical possibilities
- a framework to provide orientation regarding: the important factors of the system, the relationships among these factors, the types of changes among the system factors that could offer improvements in performance, and the kind of research goal and methodology that seem promising.
Our culture has evolved means for us to organize the little things we can do with our basic capabilities so that we can derive comprehension from truly complex situations, and accomplish the processes of deriving and implementing problem solutions. The ways in which human capabilities are thus extended are here called augmentation means, and we define four basic classes of them:
1. Artifacts--physical objects designed to provide for human comfort, for the
manipulation of things or materials, and for the manipulation of symbols.
2. Language--the way in which the individual parcels out the picture of his world into
the concepts that his mind uses to model that world, and the symbols that he attaches to those
concepts and uses in consciously manipulating the concepts ("thinking").
3. Methodology--the methods, procedures, strategies, etc., with which an individual organizes his
goal-centered (problem-solving) activity.
4. Training--the conditioning needed by the human being to bring his skills in using Means
1, 2, and 3 to the point where they are operationally effective.
The system we want to improve can thus be visualized as a trained human being together with his artifacts, language, and methodology. The explicit new system we contemplate will involve as artifacts computers, and computer-controlled information-storage, information-handling, and information-display devices. The aspects of the conceptual framework that are discussed here are primarily those relating to the human being's ability to make significant use of such equipment in an integrated system.
- the concept of the H-LAM/T system(Human using Language, Artifacts, and Methodology in which he is Trained)
- Engelbart was strongly influenced by the principle of linguistic relativity developed by Benjamin Lee Whorf.Whorf claimed that the sophistication of a language controls the sophistication of the thoughts that can be expressed by a speaker of that language.
- Engelbart added that the state of our current technology controls our ability to manipulate information, and that fact in turn will control our ability to develop new, improved technologies.
[edit] The Mother of all Demos
- the demo on Google Video
- What it showed:
- hyperlinks
- video conferencing
- the mouse
- networked collaboration
- digital text editing
- We weren't interested in "automation" but in "augmentation." We were not just building a tool, we were designing an entire system for working with knowledge. Automation means if you're milking a cow, you get a tool that will milk it for you. But to augment the milking of a cow, you invent the telephone. The telephone not only changes how you milk, but the rest of the way you work as well. It touches the entire process. It was a paradigm shift.
[edit] Resources
[edit] Questions
- Name one of the technologies originating in Engelbart's lab at Stanford which is in use today. Describe the initial idea and its first incarnation, and then show what is different today.
- What does H-LAM/T stand for? Can you elaborate a bit on the punctuation?
- What was the name of the 1962 paper summarising Engelbart's idea and known as " his bible"?
- Connect the four basic classes of augmentation means defined in the paper to a contemporary example, e.g. playing music, designing a web site.