Early Visions Engelbart

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Early Visions - Engelbart

• James Landay Jason Hong
• Spring 2001
• Feb 01, 2001

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Outline

• Context - Computing in 1960s
• A little about Doug Engelbart
• Augmenting Intellect
• For Next Week

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Context - Computing in 1960s

• Transistor (1948)
• ARPA (1958)
• Timesharing (1950s)
• Terminals and keyboards
• Computers still primarily
  for scientists and engineers

Vacuum Tube
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About Doug Engelbart

• Graduate of Berkeley (EE'55)
• "bi-stable gaseous plasma digital devices"
• Stanford Research Institute (SRI)
• Augmentation Research Center
• 1962 Paper "Conceptual Model for
  Augmenting Human Intellect"
• Complexity of problems increasing
• Need better ways of solving problems

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Augmenting Human Intellect

• 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference (SF)
• Video of NLS (oNLine System)
• All this took place before
• Unix and C (1970s)
• ARPAnet (1969) and later Internet

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Augmenting Human Intellect

• Advantages of chorded keyboards?
• Disadvantages?

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Augmenting Human Intellect
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Augmenting Human Intellect

• At SRI in the 1960s we did some experimenting
  with a foot mouse. I found that it was workable,
  but my control wasn't very fine and my leg tended
  to cramp from the unusual posture and task.

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Augmenting Human Intellect
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Tangent Noun-Verb vs Verb-Noun

• Alan Kay said that Noun-Verb is empirically
  better
• Example of Noun-Verb
• Select text with mouse and then bold
• Example of Verb-Noun
• Select bold and then select text
• Ideas as to why Noun-Verb is better?

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Tangent Noun-Verb vs Verb-Noun

• Verb-Noun sets up modes
• Example of mode is drive / reverse in cars
• Requires an escape from mode if you change your
  mind
• Easy to make an error if you forget mode
• Gives time to make sure you're right and make
  corrections

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Augmenting Human Intellect

• So what did we just see?
• In terms of devices, interactions, and apps

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Augmenting Human Intellect

• First mouse
• First hypertext
• First word processing
• First 2D editing and windows
• First document version control

• First groupware (shared screen teleconferencing)
• First context-sensitive help
• First distributed client-server
• Many, many more!

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Augmentation not Automation

• "I tell people look, you can spend all you want
  on building smart agents and smart tools"
• "I'd bet that if you then give those to twenty
  people with no special training, and if you let
  me take twenty people and really condition and
  train them especially to learn how to harness the
  tools"
• "The people with the training will always outdo
  the people for whom the computers were supposed
  to do the work."

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Augmenting Human Intellect

• Engelbart's categories for boosting human
  intellect

• Artifacts
• Language
• Methodology
• Training

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Augmenting Human Intellect

• Example Roman Numerals vs Arabic
• What is XCI III?
• Now what is XCI x III?
• What is 91 3?
• New kinds of artifacts, languages, methodologies,
  and training can enable us to do things we
  couldn't before or simplify what we already do

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Augmenting Human Intellect

• But has any of this really improved our ability
  to solve complex problems?
• My Examples
• International campaign to ban land mines
• Open source software
• Find information faster on web
• My counterexamples
• Futzing
• Faster to disseminate bogus information

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Specialized Tools for Knowledge Workers
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Tricycles and Bicycles

• Tricycles Versus Bicycles

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Where is he now?

• Bootstrap.org
• Office in a Logitech building
• "Boosting any organization's ability to
  successfully address problems that are complex
  and urgent"
• "Improving society's collective IQ"
• Bootstrapping society to improve how we improve

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Summary

• Anyone who wants to can be in the class
• Mail sent out about Yahoo club
• Next lecture on early GUIs
• Read "Tools for Thought" Ch11
• Write up 1 paragraph review post to Yahoo club
• Next week is reading
• Will also show videos of early GUIs (and learn
  how to play tennis in just 30 minutes!)