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Home , Alan Kay, As We May Think, Douglas Engelbart, Memex, Ted Nelson

Rosemary Simpson Information Programming Allen Renear, Elli Mylonas, and 50 Years After “As We May Think”: The Brown/MIT Symposium

This paper gives a thematic view of the Vannevar Bush Symposium held at MIT on October 12-13, 1995 to honor the 50th anniversary of Bush’s seminal paper, “As We May Think”. It is not intended to be an exhaustive review of the speeches and panels, but rather to convey the intense intellectual and emotional quality of what was a most extraordinary event, one that was self-referential in ways unanticipated by the planners. To capture this event further, we are planning a Web site that will contain extensive hypertextual written, audio, and video records.

interactions...march 1996 47 Introduction author of From to two days it became very clear , presented an ani- how deep and ambitious — In honor of the 50th anniver- mated simulation of the socially and culturally — Bush’s sary of Vannevar Bush’s semi- memex created for the sym- most central ideas were. At nal paper, “As We May Think”, posium that provided a valu- every turn we were reminded Brown University and MIT able context for the speeches that Bush was writing about cosponsored The Vannevar that followed. how fundamentally new intel- Bush Symposium on October The symposium was lectual practices could change 12-13, 1995, at MIT. The fea- designed as a “posthumous the entire landscape of human tured speakers — Douglas Festschrift” — a research sym- social life. Bush’s vision was Engelbart, , Robert posium in honor of Bush’s not just about hypertext, or Kahn, Tim Berners-Lee, vision. Andy van Dam, the data management, or informa- Michael Lesk, Nicholas Negro- symposium organizer and tion retrieval, let alone about ponte, , Lee Sproull, moderator, charged the speak- microfilm or calculating and — are all pio- ers to ground their talks in the machines; rather, it was about neers who have shaped the intersection between their extending the power of human legacy of Bush we are work and Bush’s vision and beings by giving them radically immersed in today. They also then to look at the still new ways of working together. represent the major topics of unsolved problems — to, in The goal of fundamentally “As We May Think”: augmen- effect, set the research agenda changing how we work in tation of human sensory and for the next 50 years, as the order to address pressing mental capabilities; informa- prescient Bush had for the human problems continued to tion structuring, retrieval, and previous 50. But these two be central throughout the transmission; and the syner- days became — perhaps development of Bush’s legacy gistic interplay of technology inevitably, given the speakers, in the ‘60s and ‘70s, most and human enterprise. The the audience, and the occasion obviously in the work of invited audience included peo- — rather more than either a Engelbart, Nelson, and Kay. ple from many diverse areas, Festschrift or a repositioning Its continued evidence literary computing to sociolo- of a research agenda. The throughout the symposium — gy to engineering; talks, plenary discussions, and even (perhaps most notably) many of them were as well coffee-break conversations in the presentation of Tim known or influential as the taken together turned into a Berners-Lee, the youngest speakers themselves. Togeth- celebration of Bush’s vision speaker — and the warm er the speakers and partici- and its powerful influence in response of the audience pants represented the creating the world in which made it clear that this opti- multidisciplinary community we now live and an extension mistic social agenda still res- that reflects the many lines of of that vision into today’s onates. It seems that we are research and thought emanat- physical, social, and cyber- not too jaded, skeptical, or ing from Bush’s paper. space realities. post-modern to believe, 50 In addition, Andy van Dam The event was in fact an years later, that technology and Paul Kahn presented exhibition of Bush’s legacy, a can bring us “a new relation- background and supporting self-referential, interweaving ship between thinking man information about Vannevar (intertwingling, Ted Nelson and the sum of our knowl- Bush’s life and the history of would say) of all the themes — edge”, one that will promote attempts to transcend the lin- social, technological, and psy- “the application of science to earity enforced by a paper chological — from Bush’s the needs and desires of medium. Paul Kahn, co- paper. In the course of the man” (“As We May Think”).

48 interactions...march 1996 As We May Think

“As We May Think” items are not fully permanent, memory is tran- In 1945 Vannevar Bush (1894-1974) published “As We sitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of May Think” in Monthly. A condensed, illus- trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe- trated version was published in Life later the same year. In inspiring beyond all else in nature. these articles Bush reflected on how technology could help solve the problems of post-war society. He was particularly At the center of his vision is an imagined device he calls a concerned about the explosion of scientific information and “memex”, what we see now as a , based on a describes, among other things, a device, or rather system of variety of analog technologies such as microfilm storage devices, that could be used to help researchers search, and readers. record, analyze, and communicate information. These descriptions, and Bush’s accompanying account of how new The owner of the memex, let us tools could radically change the nature of intellectual work, say, is interested in the origin Sections of text were rich and compelling. Today almost every litany of the and properties of the bow and highlighted in pioneers of hypertext, computer-supported-cooperative arrow… He has dozens of possi- blue, are linked to work or interface theory begins with Bush and his extraor- bly pertinent books and articles “As We May dinarily influential “As We May Think”. in his memex. First he runs Think” which pre- Bush was well situated to reflect on the course and through an encyclopedia, finds cedes this article promise of technology, the explosion of knowledge, and the an interesting but sketchy article, emergence of large-scale collaboration in scientific endeav- leaves it projected. Next, in a ors. An accomplished engineer and research manager (see history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the sidebar), he had served as the Director of the Office of Sci- two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many entific Research and Development, coordinating the war items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, efforts of 6,000 scientists against the dramatic backdrop of either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a the end of a great war and the beginning of the atomic age. side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evi- The opening paragraph of “As We May Think” captures this dent that the elastic properties of available materials context, as well as the pragmatism and optimism about the had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off usefulness of technology that was characteristic of both on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on Bush and the symposium. elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis on his own. Thus he This has not been a scientist’s war; it has been a war builds a trail of his interest through the maze of mate- in which all have had a part. The scientists, burying rials available to him. their old professional competition in the demand of a common cause, have shared greatly and learned much. [Later the owner finds a friend who is interested in this topic.] It has been exhilarating to work in effective partner- ship. Now, for many, this appears to be approaching A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys an end. What are the scientists to do next? projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at intersecting items, going off on Bush goes on to describe a system that would allow scien- side excursions…. he sets a reproducer in action, pho- tists and others (he also mentions lawyers, physicians, busi- tographs the whole trail out, and passes it to a friend nessmen, and historians) not only to cope with the massive for insertion into his own memex, there to be linked increase in scientific production and the need for managing into the more general trail. large amounts of data in all walks of life, but to do so in ways more suited to human thought. Imagining a world in which such technology was deployed, Bush sees new products: The human mind does not work that way [i.e. linear- ly]. It operates by association. With one item in its Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear ready- grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested made with a mesh of associative trails running by the association of throughts, in accordance with through them, ready to be dropped into the memex some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the and there amplified, brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, and new professionals:

interactions...march 1996 49 …there is a new profession of trail blazers, those who whom he collaborated on the hypertext system HES (Hyper- find delight establishing useful trails through the text Editing System) in 1967 and 1968. Van Dam and his enormous mass of the common record. students then went on to build FRESS, the first hypertext system on commercial hardware, in 1969. They founded This is an surprisingly accurate description of the sort of Brown’s Institute for Research in Information and Scholar- information environment we are today on the verge of real- ship (which developed Intermedia) in 1983 and in 1990 izing. Bush’s achievement here is, of course, his functional helped found Electronic Book Technologies (a maker of soft- description of such an environment. That his environment ware for developing and viewing SGML-based hypermedia was analog and based on microfilm, telephony, and books and document management environments). He has mechanical technologies, where ours is digital and relies on assigned “As We May Think” to generations of students now teaching, researching, and working in industry. Van Dam described each of the speakers’ Symposium Program backgrounds and roles in helping create the technological state of the art in collaboration Thursday, October 12 technologies, networks, hypertext, graphics, Opening Remarks and personal computing, emphasizing the tan- Andries van Dam, Program Chair gled web of influence and interaction (of his Paul Penfield, Jr., MIT Host own: “I had the privilege of spending nearly a Paul Kahn, “Memex Historian” week in Engelbart’s lab, and stole many great — The Strategic Pursuit of Collective IQ NLS ideas for FRESS”) that always seemed to Theodor Holm Nelson—Where the Trail Leads lead back to Bush. Robert Kahn—Augmenting Bush’s Vision with Digital Technology Van Dam pointed out that Bush’s memex was Tim Berners-Lee—Hypertext and Our Collective Destiny not the first imagined device for assisting intel- Michael Lesk—The Seven Ages of lectual work; speculations about various , Banquet Speaker mechanical devices and techniques for extend- ing reading and writing technologies can be Friday, October 13 found in history back at least to the Middle —Being Digital Ages. Language itself is a technology for orga- Raj Reddy—Bush’s Intelligent Systems Revisited nizing and transmitting information, as are Lee Sproull—Information Is Not Enough: Computer Support for symbolic systems for writing, numeration, and Productive Work calculation, organizational devices such as Alan Kay—Simex: the Neglected Part of Bush’s Vision alphabetization, tables, and catalogues, and con- Closing Remarks ventions for page layout and numbering, and annotation. The intricate systems of commen- tary and cross-referencing used in the Talmud electronics, doesn’t matter. Even when Paul Kahn’s 53 and the Bible, for instance, make it clear that hypertextual memex simulation made vivid the now quaint analog tech- complexity comes naturally to the human mind. nology that Bush’s version was based on, it was still clear Van Dam also noted that recent researchers such as that functionally the memex was almost exactly what we are Michael Buckland and W. Boyd Raymond have been recov- still trying to perfect. ering for our attention neglected 19th- and 20th-century The prescience of Bush’s vision is astonishing. He thinkers in the history of information systems, such as Paul defined a goal, a strategy, and a research agenda that are Otlet and Emmanuel Goldberg. Otlet, for instance, imple- still alive today. But, as Andy van Dam 53 made clear in mented hypertext-like systems with analog means and also his opening remarks and the subsequent symposium imagined document management systems that would work speakers confirmed in their testimony, Bush turned out to with linked microfilm and telecommunications. Goldberg, be not so much predicting the future as creating it through the first Managing Director of Zeiss Ikon AG, demonstrat- the influence, both direct and indirect, of his compelling ed and later patented a prototype of a microfilm selector vision on major figures like Engelbart, Nelson, and the using a photoelectric cell, the first functioning electronic other symposium speakers. document retrieval system in 1932 — his patent blocked Van Dam introduced the symposium by describing his Bush’s attempt to patent his “rapid selector”. own “trail to Bush”, which ran first through Nelson, with Van Dam commended these investigations, but noted

50 interactions...march 1996 As We May Think that in the time available this symposium could not address posium, three stand out, each reflecting the master the definitive history of information systems and hyperme- theme of technology and society: dia in general, or the genesis or priority of Bush’s vision, but would limit itself in particular to first-hand accounts by • That technology has enormous potential to augment pioneers of the influence of “As We May Think” — and its human power, increasing our ability to achieve our significance for the future. goals or shape new ones. • That by far the most significant augmentation is Bush’s Legacy in 1995 achieved via technology’s ability profoundly to reshape While many components of Bush’s vision were addressed the structures and dynamics of human collaboration. by the speakers and many new themes were apparent, one • That the co-evolution of technology and human prac- overarching theme was evident in both “As We May tice is producing fundamentally new ways of Think” and almost every talk in the symposium: the human/machine interaction. potential of intellectual technology to alter the very foun- dations of the society in which we live and to provide solu- These are easily recognized as reflecting Bush’s funda- tions for the problems that may threaten our well-being, if mental vision of new powers, new tools for collaboration, not our very existence. and new relationships to our tools, and they are each close- Bush’s paper begins with a reference to the historic and ly connected to his dominant concern with the societal unprecedented team contributions of scientists to winning impact of technology. These themes, which seem to have World War II and ends with a somber yet optimistic call to guided so much of recent development since Bush and are science to save the human race: now being taken to new levels of insight and refinement by contemporary researchers such as our symposium speakers, The applications of science have built man a well-sup- are a convenient matrix for conveying some of the thoughts plied house, and are teaching him to live healthily and ideas of those two intense days at MIT. therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of Douglas Engelbart 52, who was the keynote speaker and people against another with cruel weapons. They may the numinous soul of the symposium, has interwoven these yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and themes throughout his life’s work from the very beginning to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may when, shortly after WWII, he decided to devote his life to a perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record vision of using to help individuals and groups aug- for his true good. ment their capabilities to deal with ‘complexity and urgency’. He has had one of the most significant records of tech- Nearly every speaker echoed Bush’s focus on the social nical contributions to computing in the period since Bush, effects of technology and exhibited the same combination so it was entirely appropriate that he was the most com- of pragmatism and optimism. Tim Berners-Lee 52, the manding presence for the entire community at the sympo- speaker whose work, the , is most in evi- sium. The extent of his influence over several generations dence at the moment, ended his talk with a quote from that could be gauged by comments ranging from those by Alan paragraph: “They may yet allow him truly to encompass the Kay 52 and Ted Nelson 52 to those of the student volun- great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience.” teers. Kay commented that Most references to Vannevar Bush in recent literature call him the inventor of the modern concept of hypertext and This was the visit that changed my life. What Doug Engel- stop there. What was intriguing and important at this sym- bart offered was not just a vision of interacting with the posium is that hypertext was not much in evidence. Other system, but also a philosophical underpinning that is even themes just as prominent in “As We May Think” were at the more important today than it was then. forefront, and it was clear from the speakers who had been directly influenced by the Atlantic article that hypertext was while Nelson variously referred to him as “my wonderful not the most important legacy, but rather a byproduct or a and very great stepfather Douglas Engelbart” and as “one of means to achieve other goals such as human augmentation the two men I admire most in the world” (the other is Tim and collaboration. However, the WWW and the ubiquity Berners-Lee). The graduate student volunteers, in a discus- of the both in academic life and, increasingly, in sion after the symposium, agreed that the opportunity to commercial and personal spheres highlight the Web as the hear and meet with him was the most important part of the most widespread instantiation of Bush’s vision. symposium to them, something they would remember for Of the many specific themes that wove through the sym- the rest of their lives.

interactions...march 1996 51 Paul Penfield is of and Tim Berners-Lee is the creator of the World Wide Web. He Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Com- currently is with the Laboratory for (LCS) at puter Science at MIT, and is affiliated with the Microsystems the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and directs Technology Laboratories. the W3 Consortium that coordinates WWW development.

Alan Kay is best known for the Dr.Raj Reddy is Dean of the Douglas Carl Engelbart is the idea of personal computing and the School of Computer Science at inventor or the mouse, interactive intimate computer, and the Carnegie Mellon University and the real-time telecollaboration, outline invention of the now ubiquitous Herbert A. Simon University Profes- processing, and hypertext creation overlapping- interface and sor of Computer Science and Robot- and navigation tools. Throughout modern object-oriented program- ics. His research interests include the `60s and `70s his lab pioneered ming. He is a Fellow at Apple Com- the study of human-computer inter- an elaborate hypermedia-group- puter and a Fellow of the American action and . His ware system called NLS (for oNLine Academy of Arts and Sciences, the current research projects include System), most of whose now-com- Royal Society of Arts, and The speech recognition and understand- mon features were conceived of, World Economic Forum. ing systems; collaborative writing, fully integrated, and in everyday design and planning; JIT Learning operational use by the early 1970’s. Technologies; and the Automated In 1989 Engelbart founded the Machine Shop project. Bootstrap Institute, feeling the time was ripe to pursue in earnest his comprehensive strategy for boot- strapping organizations into the 21st century.

Ted Nelson was always media-intensive. In 1960 he took a computer course and saw a chance to create a new world of interactive media — a new fusion of literature and movies, based on arbitrary constructs, interconnection and corre- spondence. Since then he has worked on designs outside the prevailing paradigms.

52 interactions...march 1996 Andries van Dam is Professor of Computer Science at Nicholas Negroponte is a founder and the director of the Brown University. Since 1965, his research has concerned Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s uniquely innovative , text processing and hypermedia systems, Media Laboratory. He founded MIT’s pioneering Architec- and . He has been working for 30 years on sys- ture Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank tems for creating and reading “electronic books” with inter- responsible for many radically new approaches to the active illustrations, based on high-resolution graphcs for use human-computer interface. in teaching and research.

Lee Sproull is Professor of Man- Robert E. Kahn is President of Michael Lesk manages the com- agement at Boston University. Prior the Corporation for National puter science research group at Bell- to joining Boston University, she Research Initiatives (CNRI), which he core. He is best known for work in was Professor of Social Sciences at founded in 1986 after a 13-year electronic libraries, including the Carnegie Mellon University for 13 term at the Advanced Research Pro- CORE project for chemical informa- years. Professor Sproull’s research jects Agency (ARPA). He was tion, and for writing some Unix sys- centers on the social, managerial, responsible for the design and tem utilities including those for and organizational implications of development of the Arpanet, the table printing (tbl), lexical analyzers computer-based technologies that first packet-switched network, and (lex), and inter-system mail (uucp). augment human communication for originating the Internet Pro- such as electronic mail, computer gram, and is a co-inventor of the conferences, and interactive video. TCP/IP protocols .

Not photographed Douglas N. Adams Paul Kahn Elli Mylonas Allen Renear Rosemary Simpson was educated at has training in litera- provides consulting directs the activities is an information Brentwood School, ture and typography and project manage- of the Scholarly Tech- structures artist, the Essex and St. John’s and has worked with ment at the Scholarly nology Group at designer of Gateway, College, Cambridge, a variety of electron- Technology Group at Brown University, as an interactive object- where he read Eng- ic publishing systems Brown University. Her well as participating oriented hypermedia lish. He originally cre- since 1977. He areas of specialty are in STG consulting. system developed at ated “The Hitch- worked at Brown hypertext, SGML and His current research LMI (Lisp Machines, Hiker’s Guide to the University’s Institute structured text prob- interests are in theo- Inc.) in 1985, and Galaxy” as a radio for Research in Infor- lems and electronic retical issues in text President of Informa- series for the BBC, mation and Scholar- publishing. Before encoding and docu- tion Programming and then wrote it ship (IRIS) from coming to STG she ment abstractions, (formerly Indexing again as a novel. 1985-1994 where he was Managing Editor epistemology and Unlimited). Adams has also writ- served as project of the Perseus Project technology, large sys- ten two Dirk Gently manager and direc- at , tems for collaborative books, and with John tor, developing edu- a multimedia data- work and publishing, Lloyd he co-wrote cational hypertext base on classical and the use of inter- “The Meaning of Liff” applications in Inter- Greek civilization. active networked and “The Deeper media. In 1990 he hypermedia to sup- Meaning of Liff”, and formed the informa- port with zoologist Mark tion design firm of reform. Carwardine he has Dynamic Diagrams, written the wildlife Inc. with Krzysztof travelogue “Last Lenk. Chance to See.”

interactions...march 1996 53 The Two Days at MIT

he two days of the Bush computers and discounted the digitally alive paper and clothing. symposium were full societal contribution. Another The final panel was extraordi- Tand fully engaging, both vivid image that has stayed with nary in that Douglas Englebart, because of the busy program and all who heard the speech was of Tim Berners-Lee, and Alan Kay because of the many informal two Amazon tributaries, one gave mini-presentations that opportunities to meet with speak- white and the other black, that elaborated and extended the ers and other participants and dis- join but do not merge. Each themes addressed in their cuss the issues that had been stream travels in parallel for speeches, and the entire panel raised in paper session, at coffee many miles before finally blend- participated vigorously in breaks and meals. ing into one. The lesson for those debates that centered around Another such moment was pro- attempting to introduce new two questions: 1) what would vided by the highly entertaining ideas was clear and the analogy our world be like if Microsoft and compelling banquet speech provided yet another metaphor had never existed? and 2) how by, Douglas Adams. This speech, from nature in a symposium dom- can we improve our educational by a writer who has invented one inated by biological images. system? In response to the final of the best known computer aug- Finally, the closing panels on question asking the panelists to mentation systems in fiction, the both days provided moments of comment on what they had in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, synthesis that brought together common, Berners-Lee gave a gave a different perspective on many ideas expressed during the striking analysis: the influence of “As We May individual presentations. The …one thing everybody had in Think” that was nevertheless con- questions for the panel on the common was persistence, having gruent with those presented by first day ranged from the ethics of ideas and, then though people the other speakers. One of malleable content, which sparked told you not to do it, hanging on Adams’ main points was the con- an interesting debate between to it, being really stubborn and trast of the historical develop- Ted Nelson and Tim Berners-Lee doing it, even though nobody’s ment and deployment of about the best methods of pro- giving you money to do it. That computers with the views of the tecting author rights, and con- seems to be something which future held by computer cerns about McCarthy-style witch everybody has in common. I “experts” and science fiction writ- hunts, through queries on han- don’t know if it’s something ers. His conclusion was that they dling ‘spaghetti-web’ information that’s intrinsic to us or whether were both wrong, because they structure problems, to projections it’s the ideas – once they’ve got overvalued the importance of the about all-electronic libraries and you, they don’t let go.

Augmentation human being, as well as tools that would reflect and sup- ■ Bush’s Vision plement the nature of the human mind—both the cogni- Human and social augmentation was the keynote theme tive and associative aspects. of “As We May Think”. It permeates the entire article, from the opening paragraph with its description of the ■ View from the Symposium extraordinary team efforts engendered by WWII, through Human augmentation by means of technology appeared in the descriptions of technological advances needed to aid macro- and micro-contexts at the symposium. The WWW investigators overwhelmed by an information glut and iso- provides the first glimmer of the global network within lated by specialization, to the final call to use technology which people will work, which will become an extension of in the service of society. Augmentation, in Bush’s view, their own information banks, and within which they will involves both sensory enhancement and mental enhance- need increasingly sophisticated help to function creatively. ment. He proposed tools that would supplement and As several speakers pointed out, personal augmentation extend the visual, vocal, and memory capabilities of the through symbiosis with specialized hardware that is part of

54 interactions...march 1996 As We May Think our clothing and other mundane objects, as well as inte- Engelbart describes it as a method grated physical and virtual reality studios, used to be the stuff of science fiction but is now rapidly becoming feasible. …to externalize your thoughts in the concept The first speaker, Doug Engelbart, told how he first structures that are meaningful outside; moving around encountered Bush’s article in a hut in the South Pacific and flexibly, manipulating them and viewing them. It’s a new after the war decided to develop methods and tools to help way to operate on a new kind of externalized medium. humans augment their intelligence, both individually and collectively. Like Engelbart, Ted Nelson had a vision from a very During the first part of his career Engelbart created tools early age that has molded his life and world, a vision of a for augmenting human intelligence, such as the mouse, ‘docuverse’ shaped by the tripartite concept structure of interactive real-time telecollaboration, outline processing, , transparallelism, and transcopyright. To him and hypertext creation and navigation they are so fundamental to any viable tools, as well as engineering approach to electronic information methods that enhanced the productivi- that he declared in response to a ques- ty and effectiveness of the tool-builders. tion from the audience: “Transclusion One of the highlights of the symposium and transparallelism are the answer. It was a set of clips from the “mother of all doesn’t matter what the question is.” demos” (as van Dam described it) that In the film in which he demonstrat- he gave at the 1968 FJCC (Fall Joint ed a prototype of his work in Japan, Computer Conference), a demo of NLS Nelson described transparallelism and (oNLine System)—a multiuser hyper- transclusion: media system that included the advances described above. …putting it into today’s terms, we’re At the same time, he was developing talking about transparallel media, concepts and methods to help organi- meaning things which are side-by- zations deal with complexity and side and explicitly connected. So, for change management—what he calls example, transparallel media group IQ augmentation. These strate- includes captions for a picture which gies for guiding organizations through point directly to the picture, paradigm shifts (which are at the heart transparallel media includes any- of the Bootstrap Institute, his current effort to disseminate thing where you have explicit connections. Parallel media his theories on group augmentation) include concepts of is where you just see things side by side, like an article , scaling, hypertext, and the co-evolution of and an illustration. So, what I’m showing you here is tools and humans in a systematic and effective way. transparallel media with transclusion only. We’re leaving In Engelbart’s view, augmentation of human powers out links because I want to stress the notion of transclu- makes possible better handling of complexity, greater abili- sion as the counterpart of links – transclusion and link ty to shift paradigms, and enhanced capacity to see farther are like left and right hand. Links are connections and deeper into any issue. Engelbart’s theories on the nature between things which are different. are sys- of the human mind are a logical extension and expansion of tem-maintained connections between instances which are Bush’s dual vision of cognitive and associative processing. the same in different contexts. So, to me transclusion has Kay describes one aspect of Engelbartian thought: always been the heart of electronic media, and I think eventually people will understand this. One of the phrases that he [Engelbart] used that I particular- ly liked was “thought vectors in concept space”. I’m not sure I Raj Reddy 52, the Dean of the School of Computer Sci- understand what he meant, but what I think is that you are ence at CMU and a pioneer in speech processing and AI, creating an extension of the kinds of spaces that you think in presented essentially the same augmentation as Engel- terms of inside of your head. So, you are creating an aug- bart, i.e. augmentation of human powers makes possible mentation of the ways of thinking, the ways of representing, better handling of complexity and change. the ways of associating that was now going to be extended in Reddy spoke about current work under way at CMU in a way somewhat analogous to the way writing has extended intelligent multimedia database retrieval systems, mixed virtu- us but somewhat more like the way we actually think. al and physical reality research, and speaker-independent

interactions...march 1996 55 Bush wrote AWMT within an interwoven context consisting History of his own career as scientist an and manager, the end of um World War II, and the experi- H ence of human history and civilization. The problems delineated in nd the Post War his paper reflect his focus on ar II a the nature of information over- rld W load and the dangers that Wo information loss resulting from that overload presents to both the individual and to society. The solutions he proposed for information management comprised four activities: 1) more effective capture of infor- p r o b l e m s

WWII Teamwork Ð How to Harness INFORMATION the Experience OVERLOAD

Lack of Specialization Communication Isolation

Danger Information Loss

Individual Society

56 interactions...march 1996 mation through augmentation and Civ of the mind and the senses, iliza 2) better organization of that tion information both through tech- nical advances such as logic machines (what we call AI) and through new information Period including structures that he called asso- Digital ciative trails (what we call Elect hypertext), 3) new methods of ron retrieval to be implemented ics through the memex, and 4) sharing that information with colleagues. The first and last paragraphs of AWMT only allude to the related issues of collaboration and what Doug Engelbart calls co-evolution. s o l u t i o n s

Associative Trails (Hypertext) Information Structures Implemented By Augmentation Information Structures Memex of Mind Technology Implemented By Implemented By Logic Organization Machines Implemented By Implemented By Activities

Capture Activities INFORMATION Activities Retrieval MANAGEMENT Implemented By Activities Augmentation of Senses Sharing Strategy Collaboration Technology Technology Technology Eye Voice Communication

interactions...march 1996 57 55 Speaker-Activated Input 55 (RR) Multimedia Database (RR) 52 55 62 Virtual Reality Studio TECHNOLOGIES (AK) Open Architecture (RR) (RK)

55 58 55 Mouse Information Retrieval NLS (DE) (ML) (DE) 60 WWW (TB-L) INDIVIDUAL SOCIETY 61 Protocols (TB-L) 61 55 Personal Computing CoDIAK (DE, AK) (DE)

60 61 62 55 Transclusion and Transparallelism Fractal Scaling (TN) STRATEGIES (DE, TB-L)

Augmentation Themes The two axes of Individual- Society and Technologies- Strategies form a quadrant within which the augmenta- tion approaches of the various unlimited vocabulary dic- with a rapidly changing environment. He spoke of the speakers can be placed. These tation. He showed three importance of obtaining relevant information on demand theme range from technologi- demos illustrating this and of the need for information structures that both work the cal aids for the individual, such work. The first showed the way the mind works and effectively locate what is needed. as speaker-activated input, to email application of the Reddy was a pioneer of the early days of AI in the 1960s, strategies for transforming speaker-independent so it was interesting to hear his current characterization of society, such as the CoDIAK unlimited vocabulary dic- AI as a practical common-sense effort to amplify human proposals of Doug Engelbart. tation system, an applica- intelligence: tion of more than casual interest to those who suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome. The Almost all the areas we are looking at, that Vannevar Bush second demo showed Infomedia, the intelligent multimedia wanted – speech, image, language, information retrieval – database retrieval system that combines research in natural all kinds of things, these are what I call imprecise tech- language processing with image processing and retrieval. The nologies. They are never going to be perfect. Nevertheless, third demo showed Takeo Kanade’s mixed virtual and physi- we are at a stage where useful systems doing useful things cal reality research studio at CMU’s Robotics Lab. for average people are possible. He said that the motivation for this work comes from the desire to enhance human productivity by orders of magni- Reddy’s view was that it is the nature of humans to create tude over what is possible now. This goal, in turn, is moti- and think — and to take advantage of all the augmentation vated by the desire to help humans handle ever-increasing tools that the research labs can imagine and develop. amounts of information and thereby more effectively deal Michael Lesk 53 of Bellcore also focused on the aug-

58 interactions...march 1996 As We May Think mentation of human capabilities in the area of information memex might actually do. The shared and collabora- retrieval. He took a historical approach, however, beginning tive aspects of the WWW are not highlighted in the by evaluating Bush’s predictions and comparing them with description of the memex, but embody scholarly what has already been achieved. His own prediction is that practice that Bush would have taken for granted and might the capabilities described in “As We May Think” will have have included had he been familiar with technology that been achieved by 2010, that is within one lifespan from the allowed it. Robert Kahn 53, President of the Corporation writing of the article. As he traced the development of infor- for National Research Initiatives and a creator of the mation retrieval and, by necessity, of online information ARPANET (forerunner of the Internet), for example, locat- from the 1940s into the third millennium, Lesk described ed human augmentation in the network itself, specifically in the alternating cycles of machine and human categorization the intersection of the evolving communications infrastruc- as a solution to the information retrieval problem. He con- ture with new technology and new uses of information. cludes that we will arrive at a mixed solution, driven by In this light, Tim Berners-Lee, director of the WWW manual data entry and linking, as in the WWW, which he Consortium and creator of the WWW, seemed the most considers a kind of embodiment of the memex but aug- likely heir of Bush’s mented by algorithmic retrieval methods. The new area of vision. His description of Collaboration/Co-Evolution research that Lesk pinpointed as most interesting is the the beginnings of the Interaction introduction of nontextual media into online databases, WWW, however, and of The two axes collaboration- which should trigger much of the whole cycle of informa- its subsequent develop- co-evolution and technology- tion retrieval research all over again. ment highlights the prob- politics/economics provided a Many of the speakers discussed the WWW and the grow- lems that can occur when framework around which the ing use of the Internet; the consensus was that it is a sugges- commercialization of a symposium discussions of the tive example, despite its limitations, of what a working design creates a de-facto human/technical interaction interwove. Concerns and pro- posals ranged from the purely technological (protocols) to the purely political (legal 62 restrictions). TECHNOLOGY Open Architecture (RK) 60 Multiple Group Support 61 (LS) 61 Protocols WWW (TB-L) (TB-L)

60 CoDIAK COLLABORATION (DE) CO-EVOLUTION

62 63 Copyright (RK, ML, TN) 62 Economic Changes (TB-L)

62 POLITICS/ 63 ECONOMICS Civil Rights Issues Information Plumbing (NN) (TB-L)

62 63 Legal Restrictions (TB-L, ML, NN)

interactions...march 1996 59 standard that may be difficult to update or replace: the sciences as it is actually practiced and of the process of dis- WWW was originally designed as an interactive means for covery as it is thought to occur by the scientists themselves. collaboration and augmentation, but has instead become a In her opinion, Bush, like Kay and Licklider among others static medium for hypertextual publication. These issues saw the process of discovery as a fairly solitary one. Infor- were further discussed in the panel on the second day when mation sharing, in this view, is not part of a collaborative Alan Kay told how the PARC windows interface, which process, but rather something that takes place after the fact, was intended to be a naive set of training wheels for chil- as a record or for validation. She went on to describe dren, a stepping stone to be replaced by more powerful research suggesting that science is a social enterprise and to interfaces, became frozen into an inflexible, difficult-to- pinpoint the areas and relationships in which collaboration change form. occurs and information is transmitted among members of a Berners-Lee’s original vision of the WWW was of a sea team. Computers and networks, ever since the early of interactive shared knowledge, in which our computers are Arpanet, have supported collaborative work among scien- memexes whose exists in cyberspace rather tists. In her view, technology has to improve in order to fos- than microfilm. He presented a vision of the “great brain”, as ter better communication among scientists and other he calls it, as a living organism, a vision that conveyed an researchers. It can do this by modeling the multiple social oscillating analog/digital sense of the dynamic, interactive contexts in which collaboration works effectively and by information continuum that is the Net and its users. customizing the information environment to the type of At the same time as the WWW provides a form of aug- social interaction that is occurring. As her title, “Informa- mentation on the global level, the incorporation of com- tion is Not Enough: Computer Support for Productive puters into everyday objects is a form of augmentation on Work,” shows, information alone, however well structured the personal level. Nicholas Negroponte 53 of the Media and linked, is not enough to engender productive work. Lab described the blending of the digital and analog into The single early researcher Sproull cited as realizing the ordinary objects such as paper, clothing, and doorknobs. importance of collaborative work was Doug Engelbart. This vision is a striking enough enhancement of the per- From the beginning, Engelbart’s work focused on col- sonal information space that several other speakers, includ- laboration through both software tools that support cooper- ing Raj Reddy and Robert Kahn, also alluded to it. ative work and strategies for helping organizations deal effectively with the issues surrounding complexity manage- Collaboration ment and paradigm shifts. At the symposium Engelbart ■ Bush’s Vision reported on his current thinking, which centers around a It has sometimes been suggested that Bush neglected the comprehensive strategy he calls CoDIAK—Concurrent importance of collaboration and work groups, since he did Development, Integration and Application of Knowledge. not make these issues as explicit as later writers have. It is The key insight behind CoDIAK is the need to apply effec- true that this theme is only latent in Bush. Nevertheless, sup- tive tools to an organization’s process for improving produc- porting collaboration and managing teams is an essential tivity, not just to the elements of the organization or to aspect of Bush’s vision. “As We May Think” actually opens specific problems it faces. In this he is using the same prin- with a comment on the teamwork of scientists during the ciples of good that he applied to the war, and one of its most compelling scenarios incorporates development of his own inventions. In effect, he is propos- the sharing of trails among investigators using the memex. ing meta-management change tools, where previously he Bush clearly imagined researchers working together and had designed and used meta-assemblers and meta-compilers: using the shared results of trail building as part of a strategy for managing information overload. That the theme of col- I mentioned the other day that you’ve got to have a strategy laboration is understated in Bush isn’t surprising. At the time to lift organizations – you can’t just lift them all at once. of “As We May Think” and throughout much of his life, The strategy I finally worked out is that in the improve- Bush was an organizer and administrator of large research ment infrastructure there are roles in the improvement and development projects in the university, the military, and process for high-performance teams. They would really be in industr; he would take for granted the importance of the helping the improvement process come about since there world of collaborative scientific interaction. would be ways for them to be plugged into an organization in a very supportive function… they are an elite team. ■ View from the Symposium Lee Sproull 53 of Boston University gave a thorough his- As in the past, he is still creating tools to improve the cre- torical and theoretical summary of collaborative work in the ation of tools, thereby leveraging many-fold the efforts of

60 interactions...march 1996 As We May Think everyone involved in the process. mechanical ones, which the human mechanism Ted Nelson described his approach to collaboration (or promptly transforms back to the electrical form”. its absence) and its relationship to Doug Englebart’s But the critical partnership is not about physical approach in this way: connections but about the co-evolution of practices and capabilities. This is a deep theme that has continued to The fundamental difference between my wonderful and develop and was prominent and explicit at the conference. very great stepfather Douglas Engelbart and myself is that he wanted to empower working groups and I just wanted ■ View from the Symposium to be left alone and given the equipment and basically to The co-evolution of humans and their technology threaded empower smart individuals and keep them from being through most of the talks in a variety of different ways. dragged down by group stupidity. The amazing thing is Engelbart introduced the term itself when he described the that our designs have converged to some degree, showing, collaboration processes involved in the CoDIAK strategy. I think, the fundamental validity of this whole approach. He feels that a mix of humans and tools is crucial to suc- cessfully effecting a paradigm shift. In fact, that perspective Tim Berners-Lee talked about how the WWW was creat- provides the criterion by which we should evaluate new ed as a collaborative tool for underfunded, geographically tools—we should look at not how they fit today but what dispersed teams. The original implementation, although changes would occur as the system evolves with the use of not as visual as some of today’s browsers, actually had inter- that tool. Thus, just as in biology, the evolution of mam- active editing capabilities, so that creating a link was as easy mals is constrained by their environment, “nanotechnology as following one. For Berners-Lee, another important part is exactly right” as a correctly scaled successor to current sil- of the collaborative scenario inherent in the WWW is its icon technology. distributed, decentralized form. However, in order that Vannevar Bush’s memex was a tool that was never built, there be apparent decentralization, a less visible, underlying couched in terms of technology that did not develop in the shared set of rules and a centralized, common protocol typ- ways Bush thought it would. However, it provided the seed ically exist. The development of the collaborative universe for describing a revolutionary way of thinking and working that is now in its infancy will be affected by the evolution of that would take place because of, and by means of, emerg- these shared rules and protocols. The collaborative and ing technology. The memex illustrated a way for a decentralized aspects of the WWW are in the hands of the researcher to collect and navigate information, leaving his bodies who are evolving the protocols, on the technical or her own personal narrative marks on it. As already level, and the rules of behavior, on the social level. remarked, the best-known example of this revolutionary Sounding a less optimistic note, Nicholas Negroponte way of working and thinking can be found in the Internet, detailed exactly how legal developments and social tenden- specifically on the WWW. Bush may never have imagined cies towards centralization and control are working against the shared, network component of the WWW, but other- the open and collaborative nature of the Internet. He cited wise, the vast database of information that is organized by several examples of censorship that were possible because of authored, narrativized collections of links is very close to the ambiguous legal nature of the Internet. These are sig- the memex and the style of work it was intended to sup- nificant because the Internet and the information available port. As users of the WWW become more sophisticated over the WWW have no fixed legal status—they are too and begin to evolve new methods of working, their inno- new. Negroponte’s cautionary message is that the collabora- vations are influenced by what is happening in the tech- tive nature of the Net depends on social, legal and constitu- nology they are using, while at the same time the tional events that still happen outside of it. technology evolves to their needs. At the symposium, the theme of co-evolution of human and technology was Co-Evolution prominent, encompassing the parallel development of the ■ Bush’s Vision network and the societies that use it. Bush viewed technology as a partner in the evolution of Co-evolution, on the technological side, takes the form society towards a future in which human beings use tech- of advances that reflect, amplify and support the social nology to solve their political and social problems. Human structures that are unfolding on the Net. There was a great practices and technological tools develop in concert. At deal of discussion at the symposium of what some of these one point he even imagines a bionic melding of humans developments might be. It was the proposed and predicted and electronics that would avoid “the present cumber- evolution in the human realm, however, that was the most someness of first transforming electrical vibrations into interesting. Most of the speakers alluded to the paradigm

interactions...march 1996 61 shift that our minds must accomplish in order to be able to What I am trying to do is build a new literature in function productively in this new, global collaborative which you have automatic copyright handling by space. However, they also discussed the changes likely to electronic means. Here anyone is free to quote anybody happen in many of the social institutions that influence our else but they’re only referencing the original object lives. These changes, for which there are no real models, are which is taken out and the royalty is paid on a the most intriguing, and perhaps the most formidable. prorated basis to the copyright holder on each frame, Robert Kahn, in describing the open architecture audio sample, or piece of text. requirements of the National Information Infrastructure (aka Information Superhighway), talked about the need to and elaborated on its use in response to questions from the give our increasingly complex networks the ability to tell us audience. Tim Berners-Lee discussed how the technology about their state. He foresees the certainty that humans will in the form of the link and human economic behavior as not be able to understand the behavior of these systems and represented by the dollar have become intertwined in the must therefore build in adaptive and intelligent reporting evolution of the Web. capabilities. Ultimately, the systems and humans will co- Berners-Lee suggested that the acute political and social evolve in partnership. issues currently swirling around the debates about the Inter- Kahn also described the difficulties in communicating net can best be handled through the creation of protocols new concepts and helping people to make the cognitive shifts that allow people to behave reasonably. People need to have that new technologies mandate. Solving this problem links at many levels, and when a society provides these links becomes increasingly urgent as we move into a world in it becomes stable and able to successfully walk the path which the virtual reality of cyberspace is the only locus for between the “mountain of despotic dictatorship and the certain experiences; when an event is experienced only in swamps of terrorism”. He described these protocols as frac- cyberspace, as distinct from being experienced in physical tal topologies that can occur both in network and social space and reported in cyberspace, there will be no “objective” structures. Fractal topologies are those that scale so as to be external referent to which participants can point. There will present at all levels. In the Web, these result from creating be only the sum of each individual experience, which Kahn effective protocols. In society, they result from setting up compared to Kurosawa’s movie Rashomon taken to the ulti- interpersonal linkage structures, which he calls “informa- mate degree of subjectivity. In such a world, the need for tion plumbing”. When the right information plumbing effective structures to help people be flexible and adaptive is exists for a team, it can work together effectively and feel more than just important, it is essential. Ted Nelson, in comfortable. Like Bush, Berners-Lee feels that our goal as a describing his motivations for creating his hypertext theories, community and a society must be to learn to work togeth- also referred to Rashomon. He, however, used it as a er lest we perish as a species. His essentially optimistic view metaphor for the many paths that can be made through any of this partnership was revealed again when, in response to given set of information. He described linear writing as a a question from Michael Lesk about the political dangers destructive process in its selection of one path among many threatening to destroy the Internet, he reiterated his confi- and affirmed his desire to make all the information accessible. dence that protocol changes can stave off that threat. Kahn’s solution to these issues is to emphasize creating In the final presentation of the symposium, Alan Kay open architectures, allowing the network to evolve within gave a retrospective of a period that he felt embodied a great that open architecture. This gives everyone a chance to paradigm shift in the way people thought about and want- make a contribution. He also points out that the challenge ed to use computers. He described the figures who influ- in development is not in technology itself but in the appli- enced him in the ’60s and helped shape his own vision of a cations to which it is put. The interesting developments are computing society and its technology. Prominent among at the intersection of technology and the people using it. these influential figures and events were Reddy, in reporting on the work his labs are doing in with , Doug Engelbart and the FJCC demo, the blending virtual and physical reality, echoed Kahn’s con- language, and the Grail system at Rand. The people cerns. He feels that part of the answer lies in giving people and systems populating Kay’s talk were all examples of suc- tools that enormously enhance their ability to deal with cessful efforts to do something completely new. His expla- change and information overload. nation for their success was that at this point in the Kahn, Lesk, and Nelson commented on the need for re- evolution of research in computer science, the players were evaluation of copyright law, the whole paradigm of financial all people whose main interests and training came from out- transactions on the network. Nelson described his side the field. They didn’t know what the technology could- transcopyright concept: n’t do, and so weren’t bound by such restrictions.

62 interactions…march 1996 As We May Think

T echnology at the Conference

echnology itself was a audio window simply showed In this process, content and form participant in the sym- volume controls, while the video were intimately interconnected Tposium in the form of a displayed the video feed that in what were not only cutting combined Mbone, video/cable, was simultaneously being broad- edge technologies but also cut- and audio real-time transmission cast over cable to the MIT com- ting edge collaboration methods of the proceedings. The control munity. The transparencies were of handling the interaction of center that guided the multiple made available through a facility the different teams. This forms of recording and interac- created by Paul Penfield and Ed involved linking together differ- tive transmission across the Inter- Moriarity called the Companion. ent forms of communication – net was next to the stage and the The whiteboard was an interac- local audience, video (cable – MIT activities of the crew were appar- tive text window that enabled community) and Web, and differ- ent as they interacted with the participants from all over the ent production dynamics, blend- speakers. Their presence rein- world to communicate with each ing the technologies and the forced and underscored the mean- other by typing messages into disparate processes involved ing of the entire celebration. the window. with producing those processes. The Mbone production for the Producing the varied transmis- As Ed Moriarity, who coordinated symposium involved three com- sions was another self-referential the different teams, said, “This ponents – real-time audio, video, example of the themes the gath- was a proof-of-concept experi- and a whiteboard, plus a fourth ering was addressing. In this ence involving the coming application that displayed the case, it involved getting people together of cutting-edge technol- speakers’ transparencies. Each from very different disciplines, ogy, content, and collaboration component of the multicast was with very different working methods. The process is not pol- in a separate window so partici- needs and processes, to work ished yet, but it worked. In a pants could arrange their screens together in real time to create a sense it was like the Wright to suit their preferences. The coherent and useful production. brothers’ flight.”

Kay’s talk, which looked back at a period of great inno- formation, no matter how many times hunters may shoot vation and co-evolution, was a fitting conclusion to the the previous leader. Nelson addressed the issues of intel- paper sessions, which had begun with a look at an innova- lectual property rights and their erosion through copyright tive vision of 50 years ago, hoping to be able to understand problems with networked media, reiterating his confi- how innovation, creativity, and technology will continue to dence that the correct solution lay in the implementation work together. of the transcopyright concept. Both Lesk and Reddy addressed the future of informa- The Future tion retrieval. Lesk sees the completion of an all-electron- What future vision and research agenda emerged from this ic information system, including video and audio as well symposium? Clearly there was great concern as well as as images and text, by 2010. Reddy further elaborated this great optimism for the impact on society and the Internet vision by describing the need for information on demand, of the increasing involvement of the political process in information that is in “decision-ready form.” In describing the Internet’s management and direction. Negroponte what would be required to implement this vision—really sounded the alarm most emphatically when he described intelligent image processing, semantically-based informa- the civil rights violations involved in the Michigan student tion retrieval, and natural language processing—he pornography arrest and the extradition of a California res- described the components of a research agenda for the ident for trial under Tennessee laws. But, he also reflected next 50 years. an optimism that the Internet would survive intact when Engelbart, Berners-Lee, and Sproull all outlined ways he described the persistence of a migrating flock of birds in which the coevolution of technology and society could in which there is always a new leader at the point of the facilitate the process of collaboration among groups ranging

interactions...march 1996 63 in size from small project groups to nations. Engelbart, in addressing the urgent need to help groups to flexibly and Future of rapidly handle complex issues and accelerating change, has developed a comprehensive strategy to boost the capabilities Hypertext of those portions of organizations whose mission is improved productivity. Berners-Lee spoke of the need to evolve the Web into an interactive environment for people hat of the future of hypertext, the to work together and described the social tools, information information structure represented plumbing, that can facilitate collaboration and paradigm Wby the memex, beyond the Web? change. Sproull described some of the technical develop- This issue was not addressed by the speakers, ments needed to support more effectively the kind of col- but we can speculate based on current devel- laborative work that is rapidly evolving within a highly opments in the field. interlinked society. One direction can be seen in the work being Kahn and Kay pointed towards the types of environ- done by groups such as Brown’s graphics labo- ments that would be needed to support the social and tech- ratory in the intersection of virtual reality nical innovation necessary to handle a rapidly changing research and the Web. Waxweb, which the world. Kahn spoke about the urgent need for open archi- New York Times calls “sophisticated work… tectures to allow new components to be created and inte- deeply surreal” (“Art in Cyberspace: Can It Live grated within existing frameworks. Kay, by stressing the Without a Body?” Sunday, January 21, 1996), reasons why so very much was accomplished during the provides an interesting illustration of some of ’60s, helped set the requirements for a research environ- the potentials of this medium. ment that would facilitate that kind of creative ferment in Another direction of active research is in the the future. He described a world in which the funding use of more expressive markup and knowledge agencies funded people, not projects; a world in which the representation, facilitating richer retrieval, people came from different backgrounds and had diverse inference, and link discovery. Tim Berners-Lee sets of knowledge and experience on which to draw when alluded to some of the work related to this thinking about problems and their solutions; a world in when he talked about typed links. which optimism and confidence in one’s own ability were A third possibility lies in spatial hypertext the norm. He warned about the dangers of engineering and information farming. Information farming suboptimization as an inhibitor of genuinely new thinking. provides an extremely large plane, called a In the panel that ended the second day, Engelbart, farm, on which units of information may be Berners-Lee, Nelson, and Kay engaged in a spirited dis- laid out in groups that reflect their meaning cussion of the role and deficiencies of education in shaping and use. When combined with computational the future. Engelbart closed the discussion with a powerful agents that can link together pieces of infor- plea that we cannot wait for future generations to reshape mation located in different areas of the plane, our world: the result is a fluid medium in which informa- tion is internally associated spatially and logi- We can’t wait for the 20 years or so until those children are cally as well as being linked into the Web and out and integrated into society with the roles with which other Internet applications. they could start making changes. The change-driving Most current commercial hypertext and things in both world events and the technology are moving hypermedia systems are based on work initial- too fast, so we are faced with the fact that we must learn a ly reported in the ACM Hypertext conferences, better way to shift organizations with the people that are the first of which was held in Chapel Hill, NC in in them now. That’s really why you need a strategy for it. 1987. The proceedings of these annual confer- It’s exciting to think of what children can become and ences are available from the ACM and are an how they can flourish, but the daunting problem I think excellent resource for tracking the future of we really have to face is how you deal with the change of this information structure and its domain. the adult world. Hypertext ‘96 will be held in Washington, DC on March 16-20. In the end, a group of extraordinary visionary thinkers interacting amongst themselves and with a stimulating

64 interactions...march 1996 As We May Think audience still did not come up with as gripping a research Institute of Technology (MIT), Apple Corporation, agenda as the solitary visionary, Bush. What we do have is a Microsoft Corporation, Silicon Graphics, Sun collection of ideas and points of view that can lead to the Microsystems; Program Chair: Andy van Dam of formulation of a new agenda. To facilitate this, the authors Brown University; Local Host: Paul Penfield of MIT; plan to create a Web site that will function as a core resource Symposium Coordinator: Lisa Manekofsky of Brown for the development of this agenda. Initial plans include University; Planning and Support: Chris Nuzum, Greg converting the videotapes into a digitized data- base at Carnegie Mellon and making that search- Future Visions able database available at the site. In addition, While no single vision emerged from the symposium, the set that did clus- the lead author has abstracted the videotapes and tered along the axis form by the augmentation technologies at one pole will, subject to author permission, create a hyper- and the impact of the environment at the other pole. text from these abstracts in conjunction with the The technological visions ranged from clear extensions, such as intelli- text of this paper and extensive links into the gent image processing, of what we are currently developing to radically Web and make it available on the Web. From new approaches incorporating new approaches such as nanotechnology these and other resources we hope that a clear and virtual reality. vision will emerge that will carry our legacy from When speaking of the dangers presented by the current environ- Bush well into the next century. ment, speakers described economic and political realities that impact the human/technical internet organism. When speaking of the hopes Acknowledgements presented by the current environment, speakers described both social Sponsors: The National Science Foundation and technological structures that can influence the future. (NSF), NSF/ARPA Graphics and Visualization Thus we see both an extension of Bush’s information management Center, Brown University, Massachusetts vision and a flowering of the social implications to which he only alluded.

63 58 Virtual Reality 63 Semantically-Based Human/Computer Studio Intelligent Image Processing Information Retrieval (RR) (RR) (RR) 55 60 63 55 59 Complete Embedded Computers Natural Language Processing Electronic Docuverse (NN) (RR) (TN, ML) 61 Nanotechnology (DE) 64 62 Open Architecture TECHNOLOGY Fractal Topologies (RK) (TB-L)

64 60 Multiple Group Support Human/Internet Organism (LS) (TB-L)

ENVIRONMENT 64 Dangers HopesHopes 64 Economic/ Funding Strategies Education (AK, RK) (AK, TN, TB-L)

61 62 63 60 Political Repression CoDIAK (ML, NN) (DE)

interactions...march 1996 65 WWW Pointers

Bush Symposium Web Site: The web site that was set up in anticipation of the symposium: http://www.cs.brown.edu/research/graphics/html/info/vannevar_bush.html

Bush Symposium Information Farm: The concept maps in this article, with additional information and pointers into related Web resources, are available as an information farm named ‘Bush Symposium’. It may be accessed through Eastgate Systems’ Web SquirrelTM web site: http://www.eastgate.com/squirrel

Electronic Labyrinth — Hypertext History and Technology: “The Electronic Labyrinth is a study of hypertext technology, providing a guide to this rapidly growing field. We are most concerned with the implications of this medium for creative writers looking to move beyond traditional notions of linearity and univocity.” This site provides an excellent timeline and series of articles on major hypertext pro- jects, concepts, and people: http://www.ualberta.ca/~ckeep/hfl0276.html

Hypertext ‘96 Conference Site (Seventh ACM Conference on Hypertext, March 16-20, 1996, in Washington, DC.): “Docuverse Takes Form…” In the ’70s Ted Nelson coined the term “docuverse’’ to describe a global network of interlinked and personalizable information. Now, two decades later, the docuverse is taking form. Graphics and computing technology now brings inexpensive hypermedia technology to everyone, and the World Wide Web is linking all those everyones together.“ The web site is: http://www.acm.org/siglink/ht96/

SGML Markup and Hypermedia: The Brown University Scholarly Technology Group (STG) supports the development and use of advanced in academic research, teaching, and scholarly communication. STG pursues this mission by exploring new technologies and practices, developing spe- cialized tools and techniques, and providing consulting and services to academic projects. STG focuses on three related areas:

• hypertext and hypermedia • SGML textbase development • networked electronic publishing and scholarly communication

Taken together these three areas of focus constitute the enabling technology for the electronic book or, more accurately, what the electronic book is evolving into: a networked, interactive, high-function hyper- media vehicle for the development and communication of knowledge. While the technologies of the elec- tronic book provide its material focus, STG also has a particular approach to the development of these technologies. All STG consulting and projects are governed by this principle: The effective creation and deployment of academic information technology requires a thorough-going critical engagement with the theory and practice of the disciplines that the technology is serving. Only with this sort of substantive involvement in disciplinary practice can technology and methodolo- gy evolve in concert and genuine methodological innovation be achieved. This approach to the devel- opment of new technology we call scholarly . The web site is: http://www.stg.brown.edu/stg/brochure.html

WAXweb: WAXweb is the hypermedia version of David Blair’s feature-length independent film, “WAX or the discovery of television among the bees” (85:00, 1991). Developed by David Blair and Tom Meyer, it combines one of the largest hypermedia narrative databases on the Internet with an authoring inter- face that lets users collaboratively add to the story. The web site is: http://bug.village.virginia.edu/guest/viewer=tav/lang=EN/html=1675

66 interactions...march 1996 As We May Think

Lloyd, and Steve De Rose of EBT who first had the idea of Selected Bibliography holding a commemorative event and helped in its Bush (AM) Atlantic Monthy, July 1945 production; Allen Renear of Brown University; Marilyn Nyce, James M., and Kahn, Paul. (1991). From Jaye and Maria Clara Valenzuela of MIT’s Industrial Memex to Hypertext: Vannevar Bush and the Mind’s Machine, Liason Program: Audio/Visual Staff; Jim Rose and Robert Academic Press, Boston. McDermott of the ; Ed Moriarity, Scott Goldberg, Adele, editor. (1988). A History of Personal Dynes, and Larry Gallagher of MIT; Dave Klaphaak and Workstations, ACM Press, New York. Andy Forsberg of Brown University; student volunteers Grief, Irene, editor. (1988), Computer-Supported Coopera- from Brown and MIT; Paper Support and Reviewers: tive Work: A Book of Readings, Morgan Kaufman Publishers, Thanks to Steve De Rose, Dave Klaphaak, and Peter Inc., San Mateo, CA Wegner for review comments on the paper as a whole, Mark

Bernstein for help with the Future of Hypertext section, PERMISSION TO COPY WITHOUT FEE, ALL OR PART OF THIS MATERIAL IS GRANTED PROVIDED THAT THE

Trina Avery for world-class copyediting, Dave Klaphaak for COPIES ARE NOT MADE OR DISTRIBUTED FOR DIRECT COMMERCIAL ADVANTAGE, THE ACM COPYRIGHT heroic efforts in obtaining necessary resources, and the NOTICE AND THE TITLE OF THE PUBLICATION AND ITS DATE APPEAR, AND NOTICE IS GIVEN THAT

Scholarly Technology Group (STG) and the graphics lab at COPYING IS BY PERMISSION OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY. TO COPY OTHERWISE,

Brown for resources and moral support. OR PUBLISH, REQUIRES A FEE/AND OR SPECIFIC PERMISSION © ACM - ⁄⁄  .

interactions...march 1996 67