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Engelbart Colloquium at Stanford
Lansdowne writes "Douglas Engelbart, the father of the mouse, has begun a 10-week free colloquium entitled 'An In-Depth Look at The Unfinished Revolution'. A course description is available, as are live and archived webcasts. Based on the first session, this looks like a great series for the thinking Slashdotter."
Both Realplayer and Quicktime run on more than one operating system and would have been a marginally better choices. I wonder what objection they had to plain-old MPEG 2 video?
From the biographical sketch of Douglas C. Engelbart:
Pioneering Firsts
I hate the "mouse" but in light of everything he's done, how can I complain? ;-)
Take slashdot as an example. Somone submits a story about software licenses. A bunch of us beat our heads together in public about the merits of the GPL, the BSD, and so on. Moderators work it over and make it easy to find the better written arguments. And then a day later, the information is effectively all dead, and we all get to go through the same scramble the next time software licenses come up.
Wouldn't it be better if we were working *toward* something here? Say if we were all trying to develop a document that summarizes the basic arguments, so we don't have to go through the same old stuff every time?
The trouble is that whenever anyone tries to perfect something like this, they run into some kind of difficulties. I tend to think of this as "The Curse of Xanadu" (now open sourced, but still apparently dead: www.udanax.com).
(And it doesn't bode well that he's using terms like "CoDIAK". Screwed up capitialization is is one of the marks of a doomed project.)
Anyway, I second the recommendation to check out The Bootstrap Alliance. It looks like they're going for it: http://www.bootstrap.org/alliance/dkr/.
Good point, with regard to the military sponsers.
And you're dead on, with regard to the fact that consultspeak words are always capatilized or enclosed in quotation marks. I didn't notice that the first time I read it.
However, I still have to disagree about your assertion regarding "precise words from a large vocabulary." The problem with the course description is not that the words too sophisticated or aimed at too high a level or any such thing. The problem, in my opinion, is precisely that they are imprecise or, at the very least, unneccesary. Regardless of how many Harvard or Stanford degrees one has, reading this sort of stuff is a chore. One dire symptom of consultantspeak is the overuse of these "sophisticated" (for lack of a better word) words; in my opinion this is usually an attempt to trade clarity for "impressiveness." It seems to me that in this respect, the session descriptions are about as guilty as you can get.
I far prefer your descriptions - sure, they'd need to be touched up a bit before replacing those on the web page - but they say what they mean, in what I would consider clear and precise English.
Comments?I can see broadly what they're saying on a general level, but, to use a technical term from mathematics... there seems to be a lot of arm waving going on. Can someone help me out here?
:)
:)
Unfortunatly, most of the web page is in consultant speak too, but it appears that they are talking about (1) making it easy for people to search for information and (2) figure out what the hell it is saing. I assume that there are some indexing ideas for (1) and some ideas based on linking for (2). I did not see any specific mention of Artificial Intelegence to assist in the process of indexing or paraphrasing (Wow! That is a cool though a world full of humans who can not understand each others execpt through there computer paraphrtasors.. that would make a good short story). There dose not appear to be any math here. They may also be talking about orginisational stuff, but I donno.
I think it is clear that what they are tring to do is a good idea and Englebart may have some deep insights into the ``ergonomics of information'' (i think that keeps it from sounding like consultant speak). It is woth mentioning that there have been a lot of snake-oil salesmen who did not realize they were snake-oil salesmen (Freud, early medicin, all religious leaders, etc.), but some of them have actually inspired people to create soemthing great (Feurd bullshit and bleading people did sorta pave the way for modern medicin and psychology). I am not really qualified to judge this one, but whenever you strik out for the frengis of science and the applicable experemental method you run the risk of fathering a field of blabering idots. Example: Psychology has turned into a science which actually gets results while Scosiology has turned into who knows what.
My opinion is that Engelbert dose know what he is talking about, but that he may have made a mistake in tring to apply the computer interface ergonomics we know him for to the social world. I personally REALLY want to see information ergonomics developed (paraphrasing and autolinking via AI's and user interfaces which make these things easy), but it may be unrealistic to develop it in the context of creating social changes.. who knows.. I hope it works. We could use a little more intelegence in our public decission making processes.. and maybe a little understanding is all that is required.
Information ergonomics (I keep saing this I know what it means.. and I am not confident that I know exactly what bootstrapping is) should be very useful to science, but I do not know that it would be as useful as just creating more brilliant people via good psychological research into education and critical thinking skills. Translation: Englebart says the data buss is too slow, but I'm point out that just adding more processors might help as much in the short term.
Regardless, the talk should be inspiring if you
want to make the world a better place..
Jeff
BTW> I also have a sneeking suspission that information ergonomics is part of the door into real intelegent AI, but that is just wild speculation.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Is this stuff for real? Even if I tried, I couldn't write a better parady of the kind of corporate-consultantspeak nonsense that
passes for wisdom in the valley these days. Or does Engelbart have to phrase it this way to get the attention of the people who
need to hear it most? Or if I had gone to business school, would I find this sort of prose as easy to parse as I do my own area of the scientific literature?
Having seen Englebart speak before (his Turing award speech at CHI 98), I can tell you that he's anything but a practitioner of the dark and evil consultant-speak.
At this point, I'd say he's a guy with ideas that are huge, so huge that he'll never see them come to fruition in his lifetime (he's pretty old already). He generally talks over people's heads, often going off on vectors, but motivated, perceptive people usually gain a few insights when they hear him.
Anyway, he is probably sincere when he uses terms like 'paradigm shift.' If anyone can envision a true shift, in the Kuhn meaning of the term, it's Engelbart -- He truly believes he can change the world. I think he's always been ahead of his time, so think of this as a sneak preview...
When they say Englebart invented "bootstrapping" I got the drift that they weren't talking about loading a kernel into RAM.
:). Yup, this will happen by boosting our collective IQ... but what exactly does that mean?
One of the sites I jumped to says bootstrapping is "finding what you need to know to innovate, learning it, then innovating." OK. Makes sense. But I think it goes deeper than that. Another site talks about how the idea of bootstrapping may fundamentally change our social institutions and allow greater social progress (that's when I clicked they weren't talking about booting a computer
I can see broadly what they're saying on a general level, but, to use a technical term from mathematics... there seems to be a lot of arm waving going on. Can someone help me out here?
I'm quite surprised that no-one, not even an Anonymous Coward made a crack about the physical and biological incompatibilities of fathering a mouse...
Check out the Bootstrap Institute as well as a Biography of him and his accomplishments.
He's aiming at a wide section of people.
Personally I'm looking forward to catching this online.
a poor little AC who finally choose a nick.....
Well, this is probably a surefire target for flames as well as for "flamebait, -1", but I can afford the Karma hit, so what the hell. I'd really like a decent answer here.
Engelbart has done a lot of great stuff, there is no doubt about that. But unless I'm missing something, the course description should be enough to turn off a thinking slashdotter, or thinking human being of any persuasion whatsoever. I mean, consider session 1:
The Next Frontier - How Big is Big?The first session will set the context for the overall colloquium by describing the conundrum of increasing urgency and complexity of problems facing society's organizations and institutions, and the concomitant requirement for a strategic approach to augmenting organizational capabilities. This will include the necessity to shift paradigms, a particularly difficult activity for large organizations, and introduce the elements of Bootstrapping strategy and the ways in which the material will be covered throughout the colloquium.
Or session 2:
Augmenting Organizational Capabilities.
The second session will present ways in which organizations can augment their capabilities by being pro-active in the evolution of techniques and approaches within the "human systems'" perspective, keeping in mind, and in advance of improvements in "tool systems." This pro-active approach is meant to reduce the time for large scale improvements that require simultaneous changes in human system elements and tools.
Is this stuff for real? Even if I tried, I couldn't write a better parady of the kind of corporate-consultantspeak nonsense that passes for wisdom in the valley these days. Or does Engelbart have to phrase it this way to get the attention of the people who need to hear it most? Or if I had gone to business school, would I find this sort of prose as easy to parse as I do my own area of the scientific literature?
Someone help me out here! What is going on? Has the emperor lost his clothes yet again? Or is there just something wrong with my eyes?