8.2.1 Well, if you think of the problem as 20,000 feet high, we are now at 6,000 feet. It's a problem of the human system vs. the tool system; wešll never get there if we just concentrate on the tools. The human side has to adapt and change, engage in really concentrated co-evolution. (Englebart, May 10, 1999)

8.2.2 The emphasis of our culture on the individual has produced a complex network that is at once interconnected and disconnected. The computer revolution turned its back on those tools that led to empowering of both co-located and distributed groups collaborating on common knowledge work. In light of this, some early work of Douglas Englebart's research group at the Augmented Research Centre (ARC) at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) should be reconsidered. In the early 1960's they were developing systems that promoted collaboration among people doing their work in an asynchronous, geographically-distributed manner. At the time the project started, display technologies were extremely primitive-most people were still using punched cards and paper tape. (Englebart, Lehtman, 1988, pg. 247) This was probably the biggest deterrent to successful experiments in online collaborative work. In order to address this problem, Englebart and his team developed the first Online System, or NLS terminals. The display consoles were equipped with typewriter-like keyboards, a five-finger key set (a five-finger equivalent of a keyboard) and a mouse which he invented. Englebart explains that "The mouse was just a demonstration of "augmenting knowledge workers." The rest of the world was focused on "office automation" feeling that the "real user" of computers was a secretary who needed tasks automated." (Hunt. 1999, pg. 84) The system Englebart developed, and is indeed still working on, was very closely linked to Ted Nelson's visionary ideas of hypertextual non-linear information access.

8.2.3 It seems to that we are making a full circle from the time that computers were initially designed to talk to each other, to when they were taken over by people using them to talk to each other, to a time now when we have the opportunity to have computers talk to each other for us. In other words, our presence is no longer required. It is time to have computers talk to each other again-with our agents doing the work. Clearly this is the answer that most have arrived at, and there is much effort in industry and academia to develop online agents. But designing agency is a task riddled with philosophical and ethical implications with many issues of identity and privacy at the centre. [top]