An In-Depth Look at "The Unfinished Revolution"
Session 7
February 17, 2000
Tape 1
Engelbart: Welcome to session seven of the "unfinished revolution".
That is mankind's unfinished revolution. It is not Doug Engelbart's Revolution.
This session we have labeled it Scaleable Improvement Infrastructures.
This session we will talk about a number of ways of scalability and what scale itself means
Slide: Scaleable Improvement Infrastructures
Engelbart: We have four speakers that are going to populate some of
the domains about the scaling issue. We'll have a good discussion at the
end of
that.
You may remember that during our first session we had a presentation
about the millennium project, the thing about the United Nations University
that
they sponsor.
Slide: Orienting for huge " solution scale"
Engelbart: There they pointed out after three or four years of work
with collective people around the world, they evolved fifteen grand challenges
that
mankind is facing at the beginning of the millennium. Any one of those
you can plainly see that it will talk a huge collection of people to be
involved in
finding a solution. That was done on purpose to put that out there.
We know that none of us is equipped right now to take care of that. If
there is going
to be a meaningful strategy that will get mankind ready, you have to
have a strategy that can climb towards handling that kind of scale. So,
I want to
review the aspects of scaling that we talk about. We will go through
a number of talks that have some relevance to it. I'll try and tie in the
relevance, or
maybe I will leave it up to the speaker. This "Unfinished Revolution",
the only assumption that I can make is that it cannot succeed unless there
is a
strategic approach that is appropriate for handling the scale.
Slide: same
Engelbart: We want to talk about these different issues of scale. Multi-dimensional
challenges means that they don't involve a large this, but a large
this and this, all coordinated in their complexity and size. It is
a very large-scale issue when you combine a lot of large-scale things in
an interactive
process. We will talk about the different dimensions that you will
address the scalability with.
Slide: Scaling here will involve ranging along several "dimensions"
Engelbart: One dimensions is detail. From detailed attention to more
effective symbolic representation of our concepts. To keep things, I found
some
really interesting communities out there that have been dealing since
the turn of the century and beyond about the ways, which our conceptual
machine better folds, its self around the symbols and arguments that
are there. We have options with the technology, to really interface much
more
effectively what the very bare bones capabilities that we humans have.
Another dimension is organizational size. That is the one that people
usually look at. The detail goes from very detailed that's how the human
is
working. That is cognitive and sensory, perceptual, and emotional.
That is the bigger part of your brain works as things that you are unconscious
with.
That all factors into the things. Then the dimensional organizational
size. All the way from key individuals all the way to the biggest collection
of parties
that have to deal with carefully complex problems in an international
setting. So, the scale of the number of people involved has to pass and
operate at
every scale level in-between. As well as every level of the detail
in the human process on the way up to the group process.
Slide: Scaling the dimensions of time
Engelbart: There is another one, scaling the dimensions of time. Some
things are slow and complex to deal with. Other things are complex and
there isn't
much time. So, the time scale is another factor. It's all those kinds
of scales that if humans are going to be able to develop their collective
capabilities
much more effectively to deal with their complex urgent problems. It
has to handle the type of scaling that we are talking about here. So, the
strategy
about that is that you have to start some place. The framework that
we have evolved is that you start with something that you can get a hold
of and
you have to have an evolutionary strategy about it that can gradually
handle more and more of the scope that you are dealing with. This is what
perplexes some people when you talk about the changes in the software,
the tool system. Some changes are important to inaugurate early because
they
will make a big difference in how you can do the co-evolution of other
things that have to be evolved. At the same time, we have found a small
group of
people in technology who want to do something. That's great. Build
that up. They have to be balanced by people who are starting to grow that
are
dealing with other factors like the human system. The methods, conventions,
and the roles that go on inside the organizations that has to get involved
by people that are interested in evolving better ways in those factors.
So they are already co-evolving. So that getting an environment for co-evolution
is a very key thing that might be done earliest with not very many
communities learning how to do it. But picking those communities is a very
strategic.
The question of scaling. I had a marvelous experience in the fifties
of being in a project. I wanted to a study on the dimensional scaling and
electronic
components. I didn't know much about it, but I knew that there were
get smaller and smaller so what would happen. I uncovered things in the
world of
physics and biology that were really interesting. One of the things
that just did me in good status was the surprise that are they're when
you witness
changes in scale and the things that you are familiar with.
Slide: Let us go through a "Times-10 Example"
Engelbart: Here's a little test. Suppose this room and anything in it
and everyone in it suddenly scaled up and was magically increased in size
by a
factor of 10 in each of the three dimensions. So, you ask these questions.
Would you notice? How many people think that they would notice? What
would you notice? He's ten times farther away, but he is ten times taller
so
that is the same angle visually. What would you notice? The other question
is would you be surprised at all the things that would happen? Here's what
would happen, you are ten times wider, thicker, taller, that means
that you are a thousand times the volume. That means that you would weigh
a
thousand times as much. How much stronger are you? That would depend
on the cross sectional area between your muscles and bones. So, you are
only hundred times stronger, for weighing a thousand times as much.
This is a disadvantage, which is you suddenly weigh ten times as much as
you do
now. So, that would be a little trouble. Your chair would break too,
because it is not built for that. So, you would want someone to come and
help you.
But who? Then you would have trouble breathing. How much more metabolism
would you have, a thousand times. I thousand times the amount of
oxygen you would need. How much would the surface area of your lungs
increase, a hundred times? Ten to one deficiency there. Would your heart
be
able to handle the blood flow? So, the thing is that you are designed
for the human scale. Many people when they go through the example, they
are
jolted.
There are other exercises. What is the tallest tree in the world? Why aren't their taller ones? That is scaling too.
You look at little creatures, and that is very interesting. A squirrel
can go running over a tree trunk then out to a limb and then jump twenty
feet. If I ran
up something that fast I would be out of breathe. The smaller that
you are, the less the gravity affects you. That is why a mosquito can operate
on such
small legs. Also, it needs little effort against the air to fly. How
does dust fly through the sky? Gravity doesn't mean much to them compared
to being
buffed by air molecules that are floating around.
So, if we are used to organizations that are given size and given intensity of activity then the scale begins to change.
So there are many factors inside the relations that go on and the dynamics
of it. That has to be reconsidered. The scales that are coming about they
just
wont be the same.
The sooner we can get smart about perceiving what is likely to happen
with those scaling factors, the sooner we have the chance of adapting.
If we do
our adapting to the technology in these interesting ways about it.
Assume things that things are always going to be the same, you know E-commerce.
We are beginning to find a few little things that are popping up. That
the governors are saying, how do we tax these E businesses that are scattered
around the world? There are changes there, the first little ripples.
Slide: General lesson about changing scales
Engelbart: For lesser changes of scale, unsurprising quantitative effects are experienced in related characteristics.
For larger scale changes, qualitative effects will be experienced. For further scale changes, you should expect to be surprised.
Slide: And about simultaneous scale changes in component dimensions
Engelbart: We should expect multidimensional surprises because we are
changing in compound component dimensions. Compounded increases in
complexity, in more than a few cases of serious problems, should be
handled collectively, often by new collations. So, we have challenges.
So, we will
come back to one of my favorite diagrams of all.
Slide: Scaling: From Individual to Largest Multi-national
Engelbart: This represents the human organization and it's infrastructure
capabilities. What those capabilities depend upon in the way of technology
and artifacts. In the way of individuals perceptions and motor capabilities.
All of these things that are paradigms, augment the people. It has been
that way since we first started operating as families and tribes. It is
growing
more and more so the eruption on the right hand side is going to cause
a lot of changes. It just there is no way that is going to automate the
things that
you used to do inside this capability infrastructure. When lower order
capabilities get something enhanced that means that you can redesign the
way
that you do a high order one. It can be redesigned anyways because
it can use the technology correctly. Change is over here. It is the co-evolution
of a
lot of what is in the capability infrastructure that depends on changes
in the technology map and the changes in the way people think, work, and
see
things, etc. That sort of change has been going on slowly that is unrecognized.
But it is going to go much faster. One of things to look at today is if
this
organization represents a professional society. It has a lot of interesting
to it. If this represents the state of California, it has a lot of it has
a lot more
things to be concerned about. What about a great multinational corporation?
That is a different structure of capabilities, etc. In the end down on
a
certain level, they depend upon a lot of the same kind of things. The
interoperation of all of these organizations around the world is totally
critical for
the society to work, depends upon things that go on at the lower levels.
Today we will have some examples of people talking about some of the
technological things, policy issues, and things that are changing. Should
it be a
surprise that it represents new challenges? No. What are the processes
and capabilities with in society that establish new policies? My Japanese
friend
is going to talk about a whole country. So, we are interested in scaling
so that in the end you cannot only talk about countries but on a global
scale as
well.
Slide: At every scale level, our Social Organisms have to have Effective DKRs
Engelbart: So we also looked at this dynamic depository structure in
that every organizational unit is, in a sense, is going to have this computer
supported dynamic process. These are the three major components (slide).
That the knowledge product is something that dynamically is kept up to
date. As if it were an encyclopedia. That at any given time will explain
to you what you need to know about the current given state is of the applicable
knowledge of your organizations. As it scales up, you see not only
does the big organization have one that is bigger, and more complex, but
also it is
composed a lot of others. Each of those independently has to have it's
own operating dynamic knowledge depository. These things are evolving
concurrently and integrated, interactively coordinated. So, that is
a real challenge. So things like that put down requirements on the technologies,
processes, and methods that are being employed. The only way that it
is going to happen is to have an open system for evolving the standards
for
which your knowledge containers embody your knowledge. By which people
can interact and integrate those things across an organization. There is
no
way in which a monopolistic marketplace will be able to handle such
a thing.
Slide: Effective Improvement Infrastructures
Engelbart: These are all issues that come from my assessment and analysis
though the years. I look forward to having some dialogue consistent with
some people who are spending a fair amount of time thinking through
this kind of thing, with their background of experience from their organizations.
Then we also saw that improvement infrastructure you can get the A,
B, C way of looking at it.
Slide: Social Organisms
Engelbart: And identify that the tool system and human system exploding.
We have a frontier like this a clustering of today's society, where they
fit in
some sort of level of tool system utilization and human system sophistication.
The tool system has just exploded in the horizontal direction, you get
this
large frontier. It would be to get people doing scenarios and dialogues
about the extent of the frontier. How it is greater and more challenging
it is then
anything anyone society has had to faced before. And what that challenge
is. These are important things.
Slide: Social Organisms B&C Improvement Infrastructures are now very important
Engelbart: The idea that with in any capability infrastructure that
is where you would plant the capability to improve itself. With the organizations
as
they are having to move up stream. Get higher and spend more money,
etc. We also need people working through this to get the value proposition
based upon any given organization. If you don't spend more attention
looking ahead and trying to steer your way into the future, you are going
to get
lost, left behind.
Slide: NIC
Slide: Bootstrap Alliance
Engelbart: We talked about improvement communities that are networking
together and acting smart. We called them NICs. We talked about the fact
that NICs need improvement too. They cluster together into a MetaNIC.
These are all things that part of looking for a strategy that has scalability
to it.
Slide: Community "governance" is important
Engelbart: Barbara Simons
Simons: Scaling. I am made very aware of this as I log on each morning
and see e-mails from the east coast have sent me in my in box and I try
and get
even with them at night. I think that a lot of what Doug has been talking
about and trying to accomplish is important and worthwhile.
Slide: Bootstrapping Technology Policy
Simons: Basically the thrust of what I am going to talk about is that
this is good and important stuff and we have to make sure that it can happen.
Some
of the issues that I am going to be discussing are of concern to me
because they are going to impact some of the things that Doug wants to
accomplish.
Slide: Where are we going?
Simons: In particular, I am sure most of you are being made aware of
this as you read the papers. The policy and technology decisions that are
currently
being made will determine the options that are available to communities
and institutions such as the kind that people have been talking about in
this
seminar. Some of the issues are very basic and fundamental; so we need
to consider issues like free speech and censorship, free libraries vs.
pay per
view, and fair use and first sale vs. contract law. And I will define
those terms later. Those are not related to intellectual property law that
is what I am
going to focus on in this talk. But in fact, the issues are broader
than intellectual property alone. The last issue about wills the net be
regulated like the
radio. I have to confess that I don't know much about the history of
the radio, but I have been learning a little. In the old days when the
radio first came
into play as a new technology, there were a lot of individuals who
were broadcasting. In some ways, it was a bit like the net before it first
grabbed hold.
Before e-coms became the major concern. My feelings are that there
is a move to regulate the net, to tame it. To make it safer in some ways,
depending
on what your definition of safe is. That we might find ourselves in
the not too distant future where the net is as regulated like the radio.
Slide: Will Bootstrap Communities need to Hire Lawyers?
Simons: Will everybody need to hire Lawyers if you are going to be doing
stuff? I am going to illustrate this in the talk. Will researchers at the
universities; corporate research labs and independents need to hire
layers to see if what they want to do is legal. Are people going to be
concerned
what can be copied, at libraries, schools, and for individuals? The
point that I want to make ties into to the thrust of this seminar is that
computing and
technology professionals need to make their voices heard on policy
issues relating to computing and technology.
Slide: Thesis
Simons: I have been working as a dedicated amateur in this area for
some time. When I started, it was clear to me that a lot of the policy
makers did not
have an understanding of the technology very well. It still is a major
problem, because in fact nobody can understand all of the technology. It
is too
broad, too fast moving. None of us can understand it all. So, you do
have a situation of people devising and writing laws that neither they
nor their staff
really understand all of the implications of what they are doing. So,
the area I want to focus on is copyright. I am not a lawyer I am a computer
scientist.
I am functioning very much as an amateur in this field so if you start
asking me very complicated questions, I will have to refer to a lawyer
in the room, if
there is one.
Slide: Copyright
Simons: So copyright was defined in the Constitution of the United States.
It says that congress shall have the power "to promote the progress of
science and the useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors
and inventors the exclusive rights to their respective writing and discoveries."
Now
limited time was not underlined in the Constitution.
Slide: Why does copyright matter?
Simons: The idea behind copyright when it was established was a trade off. It was to encourage creativity.
In order to do this the goal was to give rewards to the creators to
make them want to do this. So, it was a trade off, a monopoly on the one
hand, and
making the information ultimately available on the other hand. So again,
it is my personal belief that there is a move to privatize information.
We are in
the information age, there are laws that are being passed or being
considered, that has the effect of reducing the rights of the users in
copyright or
moving away from copyrights all together, to contract law. Contract
law does not contain the same rights as copyright. Again, it was a trade
off, you get
a monopoly, but the user also gets some rights.
Slide: UK/US History of Copyright
Simmons: The history of copyright is very interesting. Again, this is
a very brief history. It is US/UK because there actually was some stuff
going on in
other countries as well. So really, it started in the UK in 1710 with
the statue of Queen Anne. Prior to then, the publishers would publish works
by
authors, and not compensate the authors. They didn't have, to there
be not right to copyright. So, the statue first recognized the right of
the creator. To
own what he or she has created.
The US for many years was a haven for piracy. Given how a lot of people
today are concerned about the piracy that has been going on in China. I
am
not condoning that, but in the 19th century, we were doing the same
thing.
Translations were not covered by copyright in this country until 1870.
There is a famous law case where there was a German translation of Uncle
Toms
Cabin, and the judge looked at the English version and looked at the
German version and said, "These are clearly not the same." So, the German
version
is not covered by copyright. That wasn't fixed until 1870 where a law
was fixed that covers translation. Similarly, works published outside of
the US
were not protected until 1891. So, Charles Dickens was furious at this
country. His works were routinely sold in this country for a fraction in
the example
I found, The Christmas Carol. It cost six cents in the US and two fifty
in the UK. I don't know what the US dollars that is but the point is that
there was a
significant difference in price.
His works were being published in basically pirated versions in the US.
Slide: Length of Copyright
Simon: When copyright was first established, it was for twenty-eight
years. In 1976 it was retroactively extended to up to seventy-five years.
Then
some of you may remember that in 1998, the Sony Bono Copyright Term
Extension Act of 1998 extended yet another twenty years. If you do the
arithmetic, you will see that there isn't much of a gap there. If you
are a Mickey Mouse fan, you might be able to do a little backtracking and
you will see
that Mickey Mouse is staying copyrighted very nicely. Thank you very
much. The question is basically is copyrighting basically going to be
unbounded?
Slide: User rights under Copyright
Simon: User rights, first sale. If I by a book, I can give you the copy.
Can't do it to sell it to you cause that is contract law.
It's kind of interesting that there was an effort made to licensing
books in the early 20th Century. Basically put books under contract law,
to kill the first
sale right. By licensing them and basically any resale was marked by
the original retail price that it would cost. It would kill the used books
market. This
was thrown out by the courts. This is similar to the things that are
going on today with software, in my view. That is first sale. It exists
in copyright, but
it does not exist in contract law.
If we are going to publish books, digitally under shrink-wrap license
provisions, we won't have the first right sale necessarily. Fair use is
not really a
right but it is a defense. If you are accused of copyright violation,
you can defend yourself by saying that what I did was fair use. And again,
fair use is
defined in the seventy-sixth legislation. It's a libel for purposes
such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple
copies for
classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of
copyright. It's subjective, how much did you copy and what are the purposes.
These
things frequently get decided in court.
Slide: NRC Report on Intellectual Property
Simon: There was a report that came out a few months ago of the NRC
(National Research Council) and they are basically saying the same thing
that I
am saying in this talk. This is they are calling for delays in new
laws on intellectual property. "Legislator should delay any overhauling
of intellectual
property laws and public policy until markets have had ample time to
adjust to new models of doing business and until sufficient research on
the issues
is conducted" That is from their press release. They express concern
about first sale and are concerned that copyright law will be replaced
by contract
law.
Slide: Where are we going?
Simons: So where are we going? Basically what happened a few years ago
is that the movie and record and publishing industries looked around and
said we have the net, we have electronic publishing, people can make
unlimited amounts of copies that are identical to the original that are
as good as
the original, and distribute them for free. This causes a lot of concern.
As a result, there was an increase of push for legislation in the early
90's. I do
believe that one of the reasons that this happened is that the people
in Washington who are concerned about these things are mainly lawyers and
not
technical people. Their main focus was how can we change the law to
protect us, as opposed to how might technology protect us from the technology
that we have created. There was a push for legislation, and the legislation
almost uniformly has restricted rights of users and has stiff penalties.
This is
an example that I want to discuss for most of the remainder of the
talk and that is the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (98). It was passed
in 1998. This
is just one example of intellectual property legislation that has passed.
There are other laws that are pending, but this is one of particular interest.
Slide: DMCA
Simon: It was to implement the world intellectual property organization
treaty on intellectual property. It was a treaty that was written in part
in response
to the net and changing technologies. It was passed in 1998 and signed
as a law. It takes the approach of criminalizing technologies and technology
devises and it was selected over an alternative that many of us found
to be far superior which was a bill proposed by Butcher and Campbell, a
democrat
and a Republican. So, we will discuss both of the bills. The DMCA outlaws
reverse engineering except for compatibility, encryption research (with
permission of copyright holder), privacy protection, and to protect
minors against porn. It is kind of interesting because the encryption research
carve
out was put in there when a number of companies in Silicon Valley looked
at this bill and said that it could make some of the things that we do
illegal.
So, they were able to get encryption research some thing worked in
to the law. Notice it does require permission from the copyright holder.
So if you
think that someone is selling you something with bad encryption and
you want to try to reverse engineer it to see if it is breakable, this
law makes it
illegal. Some of you know something that has been in the papers recently
that involves a fifteen year old student.
Slide: DMCA
Simon: Since it primarily makes technologies or devices that are primarily
designed for circumvention illegal, it could criminalize some routine computer
security R&D. For example, computer system people will routinely
try to break into systems because we can't prove these are secure. You
try to break
into systems, and if you are a professor of computer security, you
try to teach your students how to break into systems. This is in fact circumvention.
This is the kind of thing that the law forbids. Looking at some of
the definitions of the digital millennium that are kind of interesting.
These theory
people try to get good definitions things. You read some of this legislation,
and your head can start to spin.
Slide: Digital Millennium- definitions
Simons: Technological measures for protecting copyright are what they
talk about. That is basically effectively controls access to work. What
does
effectively mean? Is strong encryption effective control? What about
weak encryption? What about data compression? What about obscure human
language? Compilation? Could
Decompilations become illegal? It is not obvious because the people
who were writing this legislation were not thinking about that. They were
not out
to make decompiliation illegal, I am quite sure. You worry about what
the words are meaning. They are primarily designed with circumvention.
Would
VCRs be illegal in terms of having the ability to copy? Or is breaking
encryption illegal. I had an interesting conversation with someone from
the
government. You know we use krypton for a lot of our stuff what would
happen is someone was to break our SA our one of our encryption
log-rhythms. He said, "Why would you want to do that?" I said that
you could get ten year. He said, "Well you could enjoy your ten year in
prison." I
don't think that he meant that I think he was half joking. But the
concept that anyone would intentionally want to break an encryption had
not occurred
to him.
Slide: Digital Millennium Criminal Penalties
Simons: The penalties are pretty significant. This is for circumvention.
The first offense you can be penalized up to $500,000 or five years in
prison, or
both. Subsequent offenses are doubled. That is the maximum. That does
not mean that everyone is going to get these. This is a federal offence.
Slide: Opposition and Concerns
Simons: The potential for being hit hard is serious. This legislation
was opposed by the librarians. They were very concerned that contract law
would
replace copyright, and also fair use and first sale being eliminated.
ACM was very concerned about this because we felt that technology had not
been
taken into account.
Also that it outlaws technologies instead of behaviors.
Slide: Digital Era Copyright Enhancement
Simons: Now the alternative bill that was also introduced in Congress
took a different point of view. It prohibits altering or deleting copyright
management information for the purposes of infringement. The purpose
is not included in the bill that passed. Some of the things that we computer
scientists and technical people routinely think of as being legitimate
things to do, and we are not trying to infringe on anyone, might, under
this bill be
considered illegal. It would prohibit enforcement of terms in " shrink
wrap" and "click-on" agreements when they reduce privileges recognized
by
copyright law. It would have incorporated fair use and first sale rights.
Slide: Digital Era Copyright Enhancement
Simons: It also would ensure the rights of librarians and archivists
to preserve copies of copyrighted works, using the latest technology. It
protects
author's work under traditional legal understandings while allowing
incidental copies for otherwise lawful use of a device. And it only had
civil
penalties not criminal. A couple of final comments. ACM has a digital
library and we have been investing a great deal of resources and time into
building this library.
Slide: The ACM Digital Library
Simons: I like to think of it as an existence group because we are not
depending upon this type of legislation to protect our intellectual property.
We are
taking a very different approach. In fact, our copyright policy is
about as liberal as you can get.
Slide: ACM's Copyright Policy
Simons: You can copy and of our stuff at anytime, so long as you is not doing it for commercial reasons.
We consider ourselves to be educating society; we want to make sure
that this is available. But we have to make sure that we get some income
so that
we maintain the library. You have to subscribe to a digital library.
We want people to take this in light of our intentions. We want people
to make use of
the material, but we want people to support us. What we are doing is
important in showing that you can put your information on-line, you can
make it
easily available, and you are not going to go after people for making
copies or distributing it -you are not doing it for profit. And you can
stay in
business. I think that is one argument against some of these bills
that are being passed.
Slide: ACM Digital Library Initiatives
Simons: We have most of our since 1985 till now in our library. We going
back and are eventually going to have everything that ACM has ever
published. We are acquiring other society works; we are going to third
party "popular content". We are subscribed to by individuals, institutions,
and
consortia. We reduced dues and fees for tiers two and three countries
that are the economically disadvantaged countries. In part because we want
the
to have access to our work and it makes them available to afford. We
have provided high-speed blinks that are costing a lot of money. It makes
it
possible for people outside the US to download this material in a reasonable
way.
Slide: What can you do?
Simons: So what can you do? If you are a researcher or editor, if you
do publish anything, check their copyright policy, their fair use policy
and their
pricing for library policy. I have not gone into that, but some of
the for-profit publishers are charging libraries a great deal, and libraries
are having a lot
of trouble being able to continue their subscriptions to everything
that they want to get. This is also true at Stanford too. This was pointed
out to me,
very strongly by some Stanford librarians.
Slide: What can you do? (Continued)
Simons: Be informed as a consumer and producer of information. Work
on educating policy makers and the judiciary about the implication of various
proposals on technology. About unintentional implications about criminalizing
computer security R&D. I think we all agree that computer security
is
very important. No one wanted to criminalize it. I don't think that
we are going to have midnight raids at Prude University on Jean Spackart
who is a
very well known computer security expert. Having laws like this means
that you may have university professors having to consult with lawyers
in order
to see if they could conceivably be subject to prosecution for the
research that they are doing. Hopefully, I am convincing all of you that
it is important
to get involved with this. Thanks.
Engelbart: I really enjoyed listening to that, I think in the future
that is an example of things that are complex. What are the communities
of stakeholders
in that, which should be involved in that? How can we provide better
means for them to have discussions to go through the issues, and then
understand them better? Then go through something of deciding the nature
of those things. Next, I would like to bring in Allen Cox. He is executive
director for the executive event for the government of technology.
Cox: Good Afternoon. It is nice to be here today. I have a long-standing
relationship with Doug through my father. He and my father worked together
years ago at SRI when it still was the Stanford Research Institute,
before it became the SRI International. I lived in Palo Alto; I was born
on the campus,
my parents both graduated from Stanford. Across the way at Palo Alto
high school, that is where I used to come bowl when I was in high school.
It is nice to be back here, I would love to live here, but you all need to do something about the pricing, Sacramento is a lot more affordable.
Slide: eRepublic Inc.
Cox: I work at eRepublic, for a publishing company. We are an improvement
community. I am going to tell you about what our company does. I will tell
you about the area that we work within, and what are the statistics
of the area are. I'll talk about the trends that we are in and the improvement
opportunities that are there. So eRepublic, we publish all sorts of
things we publish a national magazine, a government technology magazine.
This is
been a something that we published for thirteen years; it is sponsored
by industry advertisements. It is free to anyone who wants to subscribe.
It's all
about what are state local governments in the states and other parts
of the country, doing with technology to solve their business problems.
In
government, you are dealing with a community that is very much a knowledge
community. If you take correctional, officers out you take the department
of transportation people who are out fixing freeways, and engineering.
You have primarily knowledge workers. Social worker, caseworkers, people
who
are dealing with criminal justice dealing with law. It is very much
a knowledge group that you are working with. We also publish a magazine;
this is a
very new one called Converge Magazine. Converge is all about the converge
between technology and education at all levels. From the K-12 point of
view higher Ed, life long learning. All sorts of money are coming into
education to buy technology. For the most part educational institutions
are not
aware of the value of technology in educating. Here we have a web cast
going on and this is a very innovative way of using the technology, but
where
does a kindergarten teachers use a PC and where do they use that in
their classroom? We talk about some of that.
We also found that there was a problem about some of the people who
sell to govt. They don't understand whom they are selling to, they don't
understand what government is about, and they don't understand the
politics. They don
'92t understand the budgeting or the dynamics of the organization. There
is a huge difference between the public sector and the private sector that
we
will get into. We also publish our editorial information in the form
of conferences and events. This week we're in Austin, Texas for the entire
week with
about fifty classes, seminars, tutorials, and keynote speakers. Three
hundred and fifty exhibitors and a large trade show that is called the
Government
Technology Conference Southwest. It is for the region around Texas.
We do one in California in Sacramento that has about twenty two thousand
people attend annually. We also do one in Albany, New York. As you
will see from one of my slides, these are the three largest states in terms
of IT
budget and employment.
Slide: eRepublic cont.
Cox: The Center for Digital Government, I will talk about this more,
which is our main effort right now to act as an improvement community.
Since we do
publish, we are talking about a very linear way of reaching people.
We can gather information from all around the country, as to what is going
on in NY,
what is going on in Albany, what is going on in New York City, what
may be going on in Iowa or Idaho. But we can only publish that very linearly,
once
a month or talking to people in a classroom setting, or at one of our
conferences or executive level events. So, the Center for Digital Government
is our
effort to improve with how we actually provide people with access to
our information. The government. There are fifty states in the United States.
Slide: Number of Governments in the US
Cox: Someone published a thought that the fifty-first state might be
a cyber state. There are five territory numbers of counties in total about
87,000
different governmental organizations are this country. That is a pretty
sizeable group. If you are talking about scaling, which Doug mentioned
very early
on, you are talking about cities that have a very small number of people.
Where I live in the foothills, in a very small town call Georgetown. It
is about
fifty miles from Sacramento and about forty miles from our office in
Folsom. It's a very small community, we don't have a sheriffs department,
and we
don't have a police department. We have a volunteer fire department.
It's your traditional small community in the gold country of California.
When you
compare that to New York City, well, NYC's annual budget is as large
as anyone in the four to one hundred. So, in dealing with the use of technology
in
government, the scaling of what people do in California is that you
might have fifty people doing the automated process, which Rhode Island
has two
people doing part-time manually. There are very different ways that
people are handling all of the data and services that they provide for
government
organizations.
Slide: Government Employment
Cox: Government employment is huge. You may not realize how many people
are employed in government. Here I show 12.4 million people in local
government, 4.6 in state, 2.7 in federal civilian and 1.5 million in
federal military. If you start looking at this 16 states are in the fortune
100 in terms of
their operating budget. California is in the top ten. All fifty states
are in the Fortune 500.
Slide: State and Local Government Snapshot
Cox: 12.5% of the United States workforce is employed in the government
organization. 10% of the US IT spending. In the government marketplace.
It is
the largest vertical if you are a marketer or salesperson, compared
to legal, banking, or one of the various vertical markets that the computers
industry
sells to. $55.8billion in IT spending. It is a huge amount of money
spent by government to automate what they are doing in a lot of ways.
Unfortunately, you read about the areas where the government is having
challenges. California has had many notable ones; I hate to mention the
one.
That is not the very biggest DMV failure in the county. You can go
to a state just north of us to a state that had an even more expensive
failure in their
DMV system. California correctional management information system was
also shown. Very expensive. You are dealing with millions of dollars of
effort.
California's state wide automated welfare system. Another problematic
system. Every state in the country is grappling with these kinds of situations.
California just has a problem of being so huge and so vast with so
many people the number of motor vehicles, so it is a staggering issue of
how you
apply the technology. You could find all of these great lessons learned
from other parts of the country, but looking at how Wyoming automates it's
motor vehicle system compared to how Cal automates their motor vehicle
system. The scale is tremendously different. You can talk all of Los Angeles
County and say well we still have more cars than Wyoming. So there
are some challenges that the government faces. So, what is going on now?
This is
where I think that it gets to be interesting in terms of technology.
I have a few quotes for you.
Slide: Trends in Government and Info Tech
Cox: This is Joe Thompson, former CIO of US General Services Administration.
"Right now you should now that state spending on it is accelerating at
four times the rate of federal spending. The reason is simple, that
the federal agencies are discontinuing activities and giving them to the
states and
cities. This is a major move.
Local state government is being asked to provide these services. This
creates quite a challenge. Where you had one group providing the services,
now
you have fifty, in the case of states. Or 87,000 in the case of towns.
Towns are growing. There will be 5% more towns at the end of these years
than
there were at the start of the year. More and more are springing up
everywhere and they are being asked to provide services that the federal
government used to provide. If you look at any part of the private
sector, let's take a Home Depot as an example. You don't go to the Home
Depot to
buy a hammer, the go across the street to the Nails R Us to buy the
nails. Then to Wood MI to buy wood. You go to one place to buy all this.
Well in
government instead of having the government provide all this, instead
they say let's cut taxes, and let's have the states and the cities and
counties
provide all this. The state does this in the same way to the counties.
The state says were going to lower taxes, then they grab tax money back
from the
counties and they say but you are still going to provide the services
that you are providing. There are some interesting paradoxes here. Money
is being
pushed down to the state and local level; this has been going on for
some time this is why we focused in on this area. It's where most of the
technology
spending is happening at the state and local level.
Slide: The Big Story
.
Cox: Well what is going on? Well we have a large digital economy that
is going on, certainly in Silicon Valley. The e stuff is definitely the
buzzword. My
brother and sister are very involved in this kind of community. I'm
sure that you all are to some degree. The culture is changing dramatically,
Don Taft
cost writes about this in his book, Growing Up Digital. Kids who grew
up with toys and computers more powerful then the general who neither used
to
command nor had at his disposal. All of this is impacting right at
the middle of government, education, and manufacturing and banking. The
bottom
three of those have definitely taken advantage of that. You look at
a Dell computer organization or a SYSCO who have taken the intranet tech
and used
it and used it to streamline their processes and their efficiency from
end to end. Now governments don't necessarily work that way. Not to say
that is
the focus of government but to say that I am going to replace everything,
one you don't have the budget to do that.
Two you don't have the political will to do that. You don't have a CEO
that can say oh no this is what we are doing like it or not Mr. or Mrs.
Employee.
So, what you have is the deliberate tempo of government running headlong
into a world running on Internet time.
Slide: CIO of State of Washington Quote
Cox: This is from Steve Kolodney who is the chief officer of the state
of Washington. Washington is a very progressive state in terms of technology.
They actually have a statewide infrastructure that is as sophisticated
as any private sector. All of the cities, all of the counties, public education
institutions, all of libraries, and law enforcement have access to
this infrastructure. And all of state departments are involved in this
as well. So, as far as
moving and sharing information, access to information you have a very
sophisticated network there. Washington for the past two years has won
the
digital state awards which our organization and the Progress and Freedom
Organization runs annually. We will talk a little about that. It is an
issue.
Most people look at the government as a bureaucracy because it is a
bureaucracy. They look at it as slow and plodding. To a large degree, it
is and it is
designed to be that way. It is maybe antiquated in the way that it
does things. It serves many purposes to be slow.
So, that government does not rush into many things and then maybe fail.
Maybe they fail slower. Government does have a reason to be somewhat
deliberate.
Slide: IT issues
Cox: So Barbara talked about this, about how well informed our policy
makers are. Well the JFK school of government did a study at Harvard, and
found
out that in government CIOs are fairly well familiar of technology
as well as they can be given that CIO's are very strategic rather than
tactical. CEO the
country administrator officer, the director, the agency secretary,
there are fairly familiar. Much less so than their chief technology officer
would be.
General Managers that would be your general business manager are maybe
running the women and children project. The WIT program in a state in the
US or our head of the fleet management operation of accounting, are
definitely farther down the scale. Executive oversight and budget personnel
even
less so then you would expect in most organizations. Here we have legislative
bodies, these are your elected officials, and 7% of them felt that they
were well informed about technology issues. This study is at least
two years old. If you polled how well are you informed about transportation
or
environmental issues, you might find a similar response from them.
But is definitely a problem because we are entrusting them to make valid
decisions
on the use of technology and on the funding for technology in our government
organizations.
Slide: Digital State Survey
Cox: So the Digital State Survey, this is the recent one, and you see
who is ranking at the top and who is ranking further down. You may be surprised
at
California being a very progressive state in terms of the electronic
commerce industry, is the development of technology, ranks in the bottom
of every
category of technology use and government. Near the bottom, if not
at the bottom. In California, you have a history of the governor not being
very
involved in technology. When you have a failure of the DMV, the you
get tired of hearing that. His response was, give me a CIO, ok Mr. CIO
you job is
to protect me no more failures. How do you have no failures in technology
in government? You don't let anybody do anything. So, California therefore
is not fairing well. Washington is ranked number three in electronic
commerce. This is actually January result of this study. In taxation, Washington
is
ranked at number two. You again have Washington near the top of the
study. You also notice states like Georgia, Alaska, ranking number two
states all
different sizes and shapes are moving very quickly into electronic
commerce and providing more than a form that you can print out on your
computer,
fill out by hand, and stick it in your mailbox and now your tax return
is filled out. Which is California form of tax automation, to actually
be able to fill out
a form and actually pay your taxes on-line. Very different methods
of doing this. Kansas scored one hundred out of one hundred points possible;
they
are very progressive on how they handle taxation and revenue in this
state.
Slide: Improvement Opportunities.
Cox: So given the scale, given the differences, given the number of
entities, what we have tried to do with as an organization for the past
fourteen years
with our conferences and events. For the past thirteen years with government
technology for the past year and a half with Converge and a three or four
years with Reson. We have tried to find where people are doing things
in government that are working. There are plenty of places that you can
read
about the failures. Your can read in the San Jose Mercury, the Sacramento
Bee, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times. Plenty of that is out there.
No one was actually taking a look at state and local government and
say, ok you need to reinvent yourself that is clear. There is then no more
talk about
it so we talk about it. We find that the private sector very close
to the vest about what it is doing with technology. It is a competitive
advantage in some
ways years after it has been implemented SYSCO says yeah this is what
we did with our Internet and this is why it is so important. Dell and Microsoft
are the same way. Government is willing to talk about it because they
don't have any secrets. They are very willing as a CIO as a department
manager to
talk about what they are doing, why they did it, what they bought,
what they paid for it. It is all public record any way. We find that people
are willing to
show their successes. We are trying to bring them together in one place.
So that in the remote portion of Washington they can find out the same
things
that you could find out by going to some meeting here in Silicon Valley.
We can grasp all of this information but the problem is very linear. Mailing
this
out once a month is not very timely. It is not all the content. I meet
with state level CIOs or department level CIOs all over the country.
We work with governors and state legislators; we collect a tremendous
amount of information so we see what the improvement opportunities are.
Now
it is just a matter of how we improve our abilities so that we can
actually get that information to people in a usable way. And from different
points of
view, we have all of this information but how do you look at it. If
you are in the private sector, public sector, if you are a citizen how
do you look at that
same information? How do we package it so that it is easy to access
from your vantage point?
Slide: Bottom Line vs. Political Agenda
Cox: John B. Kelly a CIO for the state of Arizona says that "By establishing
a technical architecture, the CIO must be aware not only of the current
infrastructure, including hardware, software, telecom and personnel,
but also the legal, financial, and cultural restrictions that make an organization
operate the way that it does." He is talking about the bottom line
of the private sector compared to the political agenda. He doesn't have
the luxury of
saying this is what we are going to do and if you can't buy our product
on the Internet, well too bad. That is the only way that we are going to
sell it.
You have a problem in government in that you need to be available to
everybody. The city and county of San Francisco has just put a resolution
on
their books, which means that their web sight will be available in
a hundred different languages. If you are in the private sector, you can
say this is what
our sweet spot is. Spanish speaking peoples that is our focus. If you
happen to become a big enough market well then tackle you. The government
doesn't have the luxury. Nor can it only tackle on-line, it has to
tackle in-line. There is a different decision making process that the government
has to
go through.
Slide: Collaboration vs. Segmentation
Cox: So Paul Saffo the director for The Institute for the Future. In
an interview, he said " Imagine using the Web to coordinate among agencies
that
have similar activities, but haven't done the best job of coordinating
in the past. Look at a drug bust in your random city where everybody coordinates,
and it works fin. When it goes badly, you've got city cops stumbling
over undercover DEA cops and FBI cops and everybody else in-between and
it is
a mess."
Well this idea of collaboration vs. segmentation is a major issue with
in govt. Government is very stove pipe-ish in its organization. You have
health
services, you have motor vehicles, you have corrections you have a
variety of different groups that share similar information. Someone who
is part of
the Women, Infant, and Children program, which is part of the social
services department of California. Very well likely may be a cosmetologist.
They
have licensing issues. They very well pay taxes at the franchise tax
board. They very likely have a motor vehicle that they have registered
and they
have a drivers license or an identify card. They are in at least in
a dozen different databases with the current way technology works, with
varying
amounts of accuracy of that information. Or someone who gets arrested.
How do they move through the criminal justice system with their information
following them electronically? Today it does not work that way; the
files are moved in a very manual fashion. Someone can get moved from one
facility
to another with in the California Department of Corrections with no
idea of what their record is to know they should not have been put with
that type of
population because that is dynamite. We just created a prison riot
by doing that. There is a need to collaborate and coordinate all of these
different
systems.
Another issue may be a fire in the Berkeley Hills. The government agencies
had no idea of the equipment that they needed to bring in and combat that
fire. In terms of hoses connected to fire hydrants there were different
standards being used. There was no way to collaborate and that is the constant
segmentation of govt. It is a problem of jurisdiction, are you going
to be willing to give up your territory for the collective good of the
citizens that you
serve. Does the pollution stop at the boarder of Palo Alto, before
it goes into Menlo Park? It must because that is the way that the politicians
treat it.
We have one version here and you have one version here, and the chemicals
that we regulate don't go across to your boarder, and vice versa. That
kind of thinking needs to change, and it is definitely an issue for
government as they progress forward. How do you collaborate? There are
nice
examples of government organizations that take their abilities and
share them with others.
San Diego Data Processing Corporation is a non-profit entity set up
by the city of San Diego to handle all of their data processing. They provide
the
information to cities and counties all over the US. The city of West
Coven, same idea. They have decided to be experts in this area and their
viewpoint
is that all we are talking about this is a police management system
for your records. Why don't we centralize all of that we have a state of
the art system
you can use ours and have all the access you want, we take the people
and charge a fee. Why do you want to reduplicate what we have already done?
That kind of thinking makes sense with technology, and is lost on the
political side of things.
Slide: In-Line vs. On-Line
Cox: "many Americans, including those who own and operate their own
businesses, are on the wrong side of the digital divide because of
governmental regulations" This if form a paper called The Other Digital
Divide by Phil Burgess and Florine Raitano for the Center for the New West.
They deal with a lot of rural issues, the telecommunications being
one of the largest issues. The digital divide being a very discussed issue.
One of the senior senators, Polonko, also focuses on this issue. He
represents the Latino caucus for all of the Spanish speaking legislatures
and
senators in California. The digital divide effects people who don't
speak English and who cannot afford educational skills to use technology.
It effects
people who cannot afford it. It effects the private sector where there
is the business that cannot afford the high-speed lines and the others
that can.
It effects business-to-business e-commerce is going to be 1.2 trillion
dollar business by the year 2003. How does government work with this issue
of
who has tech and who does not. We have people standing in line and
everyone wants to be on-line. In Palo Alto fiber, everything as everyone
wants to
be on-line. You don't have that in Georgetown, we are lucky when we
get our power restored. We have different challenges there. The government
has
the challenge of providing basic services. There are many improvement
opportunities there.
The issue that we are trying to grapple with is how to present this
information to people so we have created the center for digital technology
and the
purpose is to collect information. I go out and meet with people regularly.
We have contact with a lot of different people. We hear a lot of very
innovative ideas we hear about successes and what people would like
to do for solutions. We haven't had a way to gather that. But the intranet
and
Internet seems to be the solution for that it is allowing us to create
a knowledge engine and put together a community of people who want to talk
about
these subjects electronically and make it available to other people.
In terms of our research there are not many people doing what we do. We
have a few
research companies that dabble in this area. Gartener and Forester
you have the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, that definitely spends
some time here. Really, no one is spending a lot of time helping the
govt. Government needs a lot of help, they need bootstrapping they need
augmentation of their knowledge, they need to hear what other people
are doing, and they are not getting it. This is our effort at being an
improvement
community. That is the center for digital govt.
Slide: Final Thought.
Cox: This is Dennis McKenna from our Government Technology Magazine
"When Launching Government Tech back in 1987, several colleagues
couldn't understand why I would want to start a publication about what
they thought were two of the dullest subjects around. Technology and govt.
Contrary to their expectations, this field has been very dynamic and
grows more each year."
With that thank you very much for you time.
Feel free to visit our website. www.govtech.net
Thank you.
Engelbart: A challenge now is get them to ask questions to each other.
It is clear that improvement is going to happen. What aspects of the
improvement challenge improvement communities and NICs how would they
have to grow in effectiveness before they would actually support the kind
of things you see? Challenge each other.
Audience: You talked about the combined databases for law enforcement
and I was thinking about privacy. I am wondering to what extent the people
that are dealing with these issues are concerned with privacy and how
they are trying to build that into the whole structure.
Cox: Clearly from the government point of view there are a couple issues
of how they are dealing with in providing information electronically. One
they
are mandated programs that the legislature has met. The poly class
is one where section predator information is on the Internet from a law
enforcement
agency. You also have the issue of person's records, someone who has
been accused of a crime and is moving through the correctional system in
a
particular way. If there are two different systems, there are very
private intranets that the government runs up and down the state for law
enforcement.
There are also more public things on the other side of the firewall
so to speak for the more public information. It is an issue that policy
makers are trying
to talk about. Security and privacy issues are topics at every one
of the conferences and executive level events that I conduct. From a variety
of
different ways. Normally we get involved with moderated panel discussions
in this area. Yes, policy makers do talk about this, it is something that
we
spend a considerable amount of time researching and writing about.
Audience: Given your positions, which communities would you suggest
would start with the greatest bootstrapping gain? This is hard to define,
but
which would be your pet immunities if you had a choice.
Cox: I see a ruin in the education community in general in how we educate
children in general. In terms of being able to find collective success
all over
the world that gets lost at the teacher level. The educational community
needs to look at what they are doing and how they are doing it, to improve
on
the process of education.
Simons: My interest is the technological community; those are the people
I am trying to reach. Policy is one, which is important because it can
framework discussions. In addition, I would like to see more educational
involvement, like K-12. If we could use our technological infrastructure
to teach
others in education knowledge that would be beneficial. It is hard
for the schools to get people that are familiar with technology and computing
to
teach. I think this is terrible, and would like to see fundamental
changes in education in this country. Since I am not in a position to do
that, maybe I can
harness some of the energy and enthusiasm in the technological community.
Audience: Are your respective organizations concerned with how you quantify
the improvements that you are effecting on your particular areas? If so,
what sort of things do you do to try and quantify that?
Simons: If you are working on policy, it is very hard to quantify. It's
not like we are a lobbying organization. We are focused on educate our
policy
makers, members, and public. If you do something like that, it is hard
to measure. Bad legislation sometimes gets passed, but that does not mean
that we
did not have some kind of impact.
If you had any ideas, I would be interested.
Cox: For a publishing company it is hard to measure the success of what
you write. It is hard for us to measure the changes in the use of technology
and government, and the level of understanding that an elected official
will have. The only way we can do that is when our readers will e-mail
us or send
letters to the editors. It is the feed back that we get that tells
us if we are helping people and serving their interest. That is really
the only way that we
quantify what we do. Over time, at our meetings and at our conferences
we see growing numbers of people that attend and the shifting of the focus
of
the event from an educational point of view. So we know we are interesting
and people are coming back for more information. It is hard to measure
if we
are having a profound impact of govt.
Audience: Taking a look at he Palo Alto and Menlo Park pollution control
issue. If you look 20 30 yr. down the line, and you could have any technology
that you wanted, what would the system look like that would let the
Menlo Park people interact with the Palo Alto peoples information, add
to it and
improve it, that would reach the best decision.
Cox: I don't see a technology that can address that. But the "rise of
the region state", if you will, is having boundaries become less meaningful
to
government organizations, from city to city in a large metropolitan
area. So, what makes the most sense for the region is considered. There
are a lot of
groups that work in that way. Instead of a technology, it is a human
tool of collaboration that would evolve here and make the most sense and
change
things. The technology can be applied anywhere, but it is how well
the people can work together and collectively use the technology that will
help
solve that problem.
Audience: So you are saying to redefine boundaries to solve problems flexibly.
Audience: Speaking of government software and copyrights, in the past
there was a government exemption to copyrights. There was a case where
a law
enforcement agency took software that a company had written and distributed
it and sold it internationally. It seems to be a barrier to have commercial
input to that sort of thing.
Cox: I think I remember the case that you were talking about, although
I am not that familiar with it. On a related topic, I do know that the
federal
government cannot copyright its own material. Some of the state governments
can though by law. So any reports that are published by the federal
government are not copyrighted, so anyone can copy and publish them.
Which I think is a good thing because it is paid for by our tax dollars.
At the
federal and state levels both, sometimes they contract out to a private
organization to produce a study, then it can be copyrighted. Some info
that we
may feel that we have a right to free, we have to pay for. As an example,
West publishing publishes the legal decisions. It is standard for lawyers
to
refer to legal cases by the volume and page number by West. It is my
understanding that it is very costly to get these volumes. It seems like
a possible
thing for these things to be on the net. Have the courts to publish
on the net. The data base bill is an effort being sponsored by West and
other
companies to copyright facts for the first time.
There was a case that determined that the phone book could not be copyrighted.
It is a collection of information that is not creative. Copyright is to
encourage creativity, rather than the sweat of the brow. That is why
in Palo Alto we get many phone books, because it is not copyrighted. It
is the
reason that the data base bill is being pushed. As in the copyright
bill, there are two competing bills. One takes a stand like the copyright
bill, and that is
a push is to make everything illegal. The other tries to take another
approach, are you trying to infringe, am I stealing all of your work.
Engelbart: Time is running out. Thank you very much.
Engelbart Colloquium At Stanford
An In-Depth Look at "The Unfinished Revolution"
Session 7
February 17, 2000
Tape 2
Engelbart: Welcome back after the break. I am torn with in trying to
develop a framework. It is going to have to be a framework that can accommodate
and integrate the things that we are doing today. It is very hard for
me to do that with out dropping in the details that will bore people. So,
this is an
experiment. One of the things I tell people is that we need people
that can come as fellows from these different environments, and we can
co-habit for
two or three months and working on this together. We can take these
things that people are working on and we can piece them together in a framework
of details. What would you do? You look at the complexity of the things
that they are offering and suggesting, and you know that you are going
to
have to find a strategic approach in order to get things moving. I
will pick up in Bootstrapping the strategy, that all by themselves that
don't grab
people, it takes some fitting together. I will pick up in talking and
then we will have more speakers.
Slide: Co-evolution
Engelbart: This business of the co-evolution it's just a very real,
basic thing. In order to co-evolve the kind of capabilities that we are
talking about, it is
going to have to be a number of proactive communities who are doing
their work with new and evolving tools, conventions, dialogue practices,
knowledge sharing policies, collaboration generation of both next stage
and long range evolution. These have to be the organizations that are trying
to
move out of that frontier. So, that is what we have to find and recruit
those. Then in another level, we have to start learning what it is that
works
integrate that. Among the innovative tools and processes, can we try
to cross feed these things? To show the different comminutes are possible
and let
them choose and move with the best visibility they can have of what
other communities offer. The whole domain of government at all different
levels is
going to be a challenging one. The complexity of the world is going
to demand that all those infrastructures are going to have to get better
and better at
doing the job. The job is going to be moving faster at more complexity.
It is a very rich need. We will ask you next week what the solutions are.
The
coactive user community working together...
Slide: Co-evolution via pro-active user communities
Engelbart: You are going to have to have better sharing, co-operative
effectiveness, attitudes, spirit, bonding and work practices. It isn't
my job right
now, if someone is engaging to define a job that I am going to do as
part of the improvement. People don't define it very well. Communities
are built up
and they need to cultivate a co-operational way of doing it. It may
run against the culture from which they come. In the government domains,
it may be
less of a problem than in business. There are still a lot of details
there, so I hesitate to bet on that every much. The sort of thing that
we need to look at
are the new capabilities for doing the collaborative work that are
going to depend on enhancing what these electronic documents contain and
the
properties that you use, and they way you employ it. We keep getting
hit about dragging into the technology side of it. It is what is going
to make the
capabilities grow. That is going to have to co-evolve with the other
practices. There are some people who don't want to talk about the technology.
But I
don't want to talk about the books and pages. I don't want to talk
about the footnotes. Those equivalents are going to be important in the
tool systems
that they're going to apply. They will be very important in learning
how to fly. The people who are interesting in the details are going to
start
recognizing the ideas and processes that people are going to employ
are going to be very real these people have ideas of what is going to shift
and are
going to be suggesting, could your technology do this. That is the
co-evolution that we are going to have. When we get the example of some
people
describing the problems. We just have to realize that the hope for
this is going to come from getting pro-active co-evolution going. That
is what it is
going to take. Here is an example on the document, properties, technology
and capabilities.
Slide: Capability Evolution Comminutes
Engelbart: Your are going to need capability evolution comminutes, the
ones that really want to use it. They are going to have to be watching
and
evolving their human system aspects. It also need that you are going
to have to do the development integration and the application going on
of the
open source tools and the standards for how the document structure
goes, and the dynamic knowledge base that is going to be describing this.
What
importance that you give the focus of this is going to be a strategic
issue? The very first on will be on the dynamic knowledge base of how you
develop
dynamic knowledge bases. Then how you develop communities that work
together. Then gradually spread out to the rest of the world. Unless you
get
a nucleus like this working, you are going to have a hard time doing
much effective co-evolution out in the big world. I wonder if I would do
better on a
bible tour or something. The issues about the human system evolving
we have people coming about the technology and tool system, etc. I don't
want
them to say "Hey you are ignoring this". How do we start getting ideas
how the human side can get better? How can we specify better what they
can
do so they can better use what they have now evolving their tools better
than they are now and be a real proactive partner in evolving the tools
while
they are doing their job.
Slide: Human System
Engelbart: That is what it is going to take, people from a number of
representing comminutes that have to be involved in this will be brought
together in
some of the early take off. Which communities that needs to be encouraged
to get together. Where can you find them that are willing and the resource
and interest? On the other hand, some would be more effective in the
early evolution. So now, we come to Jon Bosak.
Slide: Government: The Killer App? Jon Bosak.
Bosak: I work for Microsystems. I am delighted to be here today. Partly
because this is the first presentation that I have given in forty years
that isn't
about S&L. I said during one of the sessions here, a proposal had
been made for the beginnings of doing a dynamic knowledge depository group.
I said
hey, I have an application in mind for this. Doug and Marcel had been
kind enough to give me a soapbox on which to talk about this. The seed
for this
idea that I am about to spin out for you is by a fellow Ken Klemmens
of Foresight Institute, a senior associate. We met at a nano smooze. I
had come
from a trying day of a session of an organization that I work for called
Oasis and the United Nations. We had assembled a hundred and fifty of the
top
electronic people in San Jose. I had staggered out of this meeting
saying give me something else. I sat down with Ken. Here I had spent several
years in
what you would consider an improvement community. In W3C and this other
one in OASIS and the UN, developing this thing called S&L. Ken had
spent a similar amount of time in this organization called IEEE developing
802.11, an incredibly complex application of wireless networking. So, we
were
comparing war stories about this. The idea of how you actually get
standards to work and people to agree on things. He came up with this idea,
which
you are about to see the result of. I went home, and it kind of cooked.
I give Ken the credit of what came out good in this and take the blame
for the
more bizarre aspects of what I am going to suggest. I am chiefly interested
in the idea of collective IQ. I have seen it work, it works, and it's a
wonderful
thing. Groups of people can come together and come up with things that
are beyond one person. That is my idea of collective IQ. Doug has pointed
out
in this colloquium that we have a number of problems. We are going
to use collective IQ to solve this problem. I believe that is true and
it has an effect
on all of us. Solutions that have been proposed revolve around the
idea of better information. I think that better information is necessary,
but I would
like to start with my observations about that. My observation is not
all disagreements are due to misunderstanding and lack of information.
Probably
the most obvious example is the abortion debate. People disagree with
each other on this subject. They are not going to stop disagreeing if you
provide
better information to them. A social policy problem that is not going
to be solved by better information and more communication. My observation
is
that a lot of the problems share this property to a large extent. We
spend a great time earlier about the energy problem. Anyone who listen
to the man
who explained the size of the energy problem and then went off and
though about it for a few minutes, I think would come to the concluding
that we are
going to solve the energy problem by using less of it. How are we going
to do with less energy? There are two ways to go about it. Are we going
to
share what is left fairly or will we let the rich people use up what
is left?
Slide: Agreeing to disagree
Bosak: So, I mean the basic question are we or are we not going to get
people out of driving big cars and on to the bus or not? That is not a
question
that is going to be solved completely by information alone. So, I would
like to talk about augmenting the DKR itself. Dynamic knowledge repositories
are essential to what I am going to propose, but I would like to say
is that they are a necessary but not a sufficient part of the solution.
The big
problems are not going to just require us to design solutions but we
also must agree to be bound to the solutions. We are gong to have to be
able to
take someone who will not get on a bus and drag them on. If we are
going to solve the energy problem. It is not enough to say that now you
know this
is the answer. We are going to have to compel that. How do we facilitate
the process of making legally binding decisions? How do we do that? We
have
a traditional answer to this problem. We have a process. I brought
some examples. Here are the standing orders of the house of commons of
parliament.
This will solve large problems. This is not new, pieces of this go
back four centuries. It's called the parliamentary process. In the U.S.,
we have a
standard form of this thing. It's Robert's Rules of Order.
Slide: Traditional Answer.
Bosak: How many people are aware of the Robert's Rules of Order. How
many people know about Robert's Rules of Order, I didn't say love it. This
is
how Ken and I got started we both happen to be working for organizations
that are run by Robert's Rules of Order. If you go look, you will see that
this
thing is deeply woven into our legal and social structure. Pretty much
every corporation, university, all 87,000 governments are run based on
this or
some interpretation of this. So, we have a process. What is wrong with
it? It is slow; it is complicated and worst of all it does not work on-line.
I will not
get into it. We don't want to deal with this. Instead, we go to consensus
based solutions. We will just develop a consensus and do this. The problem
is
that consensus based processes won't deal with the problems when people
just do not want to agree on things. I don't want to give you my
consensus, what are you going to do about it? Consensus is not going
to work for a lot of these problems. If only our parliamentary process
worked
on-line. There are some really good things about this ancient thing.
It is the epitome of democracy. When we say democracy in practice, we are
talking
about Robert's Rules of Order. That is what majority rules this amounts
to when you work out all of the corner cases.
Slide: Parliamentary Procedure
Bosak: It's comprehensive, it's fully documented. You can go into any
bookstore in the country, and get a copy of Roberts. You can order it on
amazon.com. It is thoroughly debugged. The reason that it is seven
hundred pages is that they finally figured out all of the hard problems.
There is a
solution in there somewhere. Surprisingly, it is capable of bootstrapping
itself. You can take a Robert's Rules of Order. It starts with a group
of people
milling about in a room and turns it into what is called a deliberate
of assembly. That is pretty amazing.
Slide: The Heart of the Problem
Bosak: The heart of the problem is that mail is too slow to conduct
a real parliament process. You can conduct pieces of it. You can hold mail
ballots,
but you cannot amend motions. The cycle is too long here. The solution
is not to simply transpose the traditional process isomorphicly into e-mail.
We
need a different way of looking at this. I will suggest to you a different
way. My observation is as follows. Any process that is set up according
to
Robert's is a state machine. I
Slide: Parliamentary Automata
Bosak: A traditional parliamentary process constitutes a state machine.
I am not saying it could be, it is. What is its state? It is the information
that gets
saved when we adjourn. So, if you say at any moment in a deliberate
of assembly, we are adjourned, you move from state to state. We move from
state
to state in a determined way. The parliamentary motions (84) can be
seen as commands to the machine, the instruction set. Perhaps we can instantiated
such machines in software. Interesting idea, where does it go?
Slide: Parliamentary Assistant
Bosak: Ken and I came up with this thing called the Parliamentary Assistant.
Let's think about one of these machines running on a web server. The
server takes care of all of the procedural details, and maintains the
document base, so it is doing a great deal of work here. Interaction with
this machine
takes place through the forms
that the server generates to the user. Not unlike ordering a book at
amazon.com or working with a game. If we can make this thing work fast
enough and
interactively enough, the social dynamic of such a thing could start
to resemble the social dynamics of a multi user game. Perhaps we could
take
technology that we are using for electronic commerce and technology
that we are using for D&D and put it together to actually make a framework
by
which you could actually make decisions.
Slide: Benefits of the Enough
Bosak: Here are some of the benefits of this thing. First, all the procedure
is handled by the server. All seven hundred pages of impossible to follow
nits
can be handled by the machine. One of the consequences of this, I know
all of you have had experience of a Robert's process where some jerk got
into
the process and started raising points of order. You can't have a point
of order; you can't do it because you are not offered any choices that
are not
legal. There goes that whole bunch of stuff that is no longer a problem.
You can't have priority conflicts between speakers. Most of the machinery
of
traditional parliamentary procedure is saying, " You have the floor"
no, " you have the floor". It's about people not interrupting each other,
but in this
kind of a setting, you can't have people interrupt each other. Something
comes in one millisecond later, and it is later. It is not a problem deciding
what
the prorate is. The key to this if it works, is if it is properly implemented
it can be substituted for exiting processes. I am not talking about something
that
would be cool in helping us out. I am talking about taking the school
board down the street, or General Motors Corporation, or the state of California,
or
the Bishops of the Lutheran Church, or any of those organizations that
is run by Robert's or something close to it.
Tomorrow you can start using this environment that is fun. And a lawyer
says that it is legally equivalent to what you were doing before. If we
can't do
that the idea doesn't work, so that is the idea.
Slide: Application of Machine Concepts to the Traditional Process
Bosak: If you start thinking about the Parliamentary process as a machine,
you can start applying some of the concepts of a machine. For example,
the
compete of recursion. The traditional process is saturated with the
concept of computer recursion. When you amend something, you make a motion
to
amend, and then you make a motion to amend the amendment. At each stage,
you are calling the same process. In fact, Robert's says the language they
use is said to reoccur. A related concept is the idea something multitasking.
Which is another layer of recursion in the sense when People are getting
together to do this process are getting together to form a committee,
they are spawning a child process. They are creating an automaton. In
implementing this thing you are getting a lot of efficiency that we
say once we have the machinery handling a motion, or any stack of motions
once we
have the machinery for setting up one of these things, we have the
machinery for setting up any level of subcommittees. Optimization. We can
start
thinking about machine level optimization. One of the things that really
slows us down is that you can only talk about one thing at once. For example
if
a motion is before us and at the same time, you want to talk about
shall we stop debate on the motion? We have to stop debate on the motion
to talk
about if we should stop debate on the motion. Because the motion to
stop debate on the motion is not itself debatable, there is no reason you
have to
do that. In a machine, you could have the motion to stop the debate
in the background, on another track from the thing you were talking about.
You
could start collapsing some of the time frame. You could extend the
thought to say let's separate the main motion and it's amendment to discussions
about when we will hold the next meeting or shall we remove somebody,
things that are administrative. Robert's actually makes this distinction
in
language that you have to work really hard at to figure out that that
is what is going on.
Slide: User Interface
Bosak: We could have user interface. We could use current user interface
engineering to create a different kind of environment. All of the machinery
that we are currently using to do business can be used for this purpose.
Fill-in forms, menus, this kind of thing. And notice that the form that
is
generated for any user at any instance in this process has only the
legal options available for that moment. You don't have to remember what
it is that
you have to do. It is like ordering, the only to be presented with
things that you are able to do at that point. I think a really slick interface
to that kind of
thing, would not only show you what is legal to do, but it would show
you a preview the state of the machine if you did it. Basically, what you
could
do, the thing Ken and I were observing is that Roberts works really
good once you understand it, once you have studied up on it. In fact, if
that were
not true, we would have labor uniting and church groups, and sewing
circles, and popular forms of this thing work. They way that they do it
is appoint
one of their people to be an expert and call that person the parliamentarian.
What we are saying is that you don't have to do that anymore. This process
will hold you hand. One of the best things I like about this is the
remaining function of the human chair.
Slide: Remaining Functions of the Human Chair
Bosak: It is the chair that slows this ordinary process down. If the
chair doesn't have to decide for every conflicts of who has the floor,
if the chair
doesn't have to declare what the procedure is and if the chair doesn't
have to doing a bunch of things it does. You have cut a lot of latency
out of the
operation of the machine. However there are going to be some things
that are real problems. Setting agendas, I don't know how to get around
that one.
Checking lexical form. Robert's says that you cannot say I move that
we do not move this. You have to say I move we do X. That is a classic
example of
something that is brain dead simple for a human being to decide, and
really hard for a machine. The problem that what is relevant to a discussion
this is
a problem. I am not trying to say that this has completely been thought
through I am saying that more work needs to be done.
If this could be done, it will have potentially revolutionary implications for society.
Slide: Potentially Revolutionary Implications
Bosak: I think that the distributed yet synchronous but legally binding
proceeds would make possible global decision making by people who are
distributed in space and time. Local decision-making. I would like
my neighborhood to decide what the speed limit is going to be on my street.
And
everything in between. All 87,000 thousand of those governments can
be implemented this way. If it works, that remains to be seen. This could
be a
viable way to solve the big problem we are facing. There is a lot of
promise here and a lot of working out to do. This is the first group I
have shown this
idea to. I think that it is directly related to the idea that we are
talking about which is the improvement of process and decision making.
It is going to take
some work to find out if there is going to be anything to it. The first
reaction I had from someone was a very smart person that I work with at
SUNN. He
could not decide if this was insanely great or greatly insane. I don't
know either and it is going to take some groups to figure that out.
Slide: Relationship to the Improvement Process
Bosak: The relationship here is that these parliamentary assistants
assume the existence of a dynamic knowledge repository. This is an AP for
a DKR.
You have to be able to handle large bodies of data and cruise around
in them. And say where were we last week. That all has to be in place before
this
idea can work. There is another thing, like in this course, where we
are in the layers of abstraction. We have improving things and we have
the process
of improving the improvement process. If this is practical, this would
be a way to do the kind of work that Ken and I do. Which is where we came
from in
the first place. Gee wouldn't it be great if in our committee work,
we had something like this. This could provide governance as well as being
an
improvement process. The development of this idea, if I am able to
find enough crazy people. We will work with in OASIS. (Organization for
Advancement of Structured Infrastructure Standards) It is easy to join,
under two fifty a year, and it is using Roberts. So, we will use the process
itself
to develop the process that we are using. There is a certain neatness
that appeals to geeks about that.
Slide: Interested?
Bosak: If you are interested in this, you can look at two URLs that
are on the screen. One is the proposal itself, which is in much more detail
than what I
have just said and a preliminary plan of action. Both URLs begin with
the string http://metalab.unc.edu/bosak/pa. The only difference is one
is /pa.htm\
and the other one is /pa-act.htm. You can also contact us by mail with
the address at the bottom of the screen. This slide will be on-line. Basically,
when
you read these plans of actions, Ken and I will be checking around
whom else thinks that this is to put some time into. If you think it is
interesting
enough after reading these two documents, then get back to us. Thanks.
Engelbart: That makes a great environment for the rest of the problem,
and then you have your procedural actions cleared up and organized. Then
you
better environment to take up all of the knowledge that you are going
to have to develop about the changing world and handle that too. I just
donated a
slide here; you can go take a look. It is interesting to hear this
discussion it would make a good example it. It cleans up the way that the
knowledge that
you are going to put together and exercise to make decision. There
also have to be a lot of careful compositions and designs and a lot of
knew
knowledge it is going to take to plot through problems, before you
get to meaningful decision-making. It will be a huge marketplace for better
collective
knowledge development. So, it will just be very much fun to have that
be part of the evolution. What we are going to do next is...He says just
call him
AKI. I met him two and a half years ago with Jeff Goldson. We were
helping arrange meeting inside of Japan to see if people were interested
in the
bootstrap idea. So, a year ago last November they formed a Japanese
chapter of the bootstrapping alliance. We are curious how it goes. Aki's
chance to
come by and visit is a good chance to say how are things in Japan and
how are the chances of things in Japan going in a way that we can cooperate
with better.
Slide: Bootstrap Activities in Japan
Aki Uyetani: Thank you very much for inviting me here today. It is a
pleasure for me. Great work on the series of sessions that you are doing,
in the past
and advance. Another one, unfinished liberation. I think Doug is working,
so I am working with him.
Someone mentioned the notorious Californian DMV. I lived here three
years from 94. My wife passed the test. She got the paper as you know.
She had
to renew her paper five times, and then one year later she got her
license. This a different country I thought. In Japan, the train runs every
six minutes
with out a delay of a second. So, our countries are working at a different
time basis. That is some difference between the countries. I started my
career
as a computer engineer long time ago in the late 60's. We designed
the computers. You may know or not. 1k for memory 4k drive, 8''and 6' height.
The
other day, we talked to all the people and friends we used transistor
and so on to create those cabinets. I forgot what I said in the past. But
my friend
said you said is that will be my lunch box computer in the future.
Did I say it? Yes, you did, he said. I asked my wife please find my lunch
box. I will
show you my lunch box. This is the size of what I said in the mid sixties.
If I am fancy enough like al and Kay maybe I am famous. This is original
one,
the aluminum. The new one is plastic. So this size, this thick. This
portion is filled with the rice. This portion is filled with assorted vegetables,
sometimes meat or fish. My kids generation is different, the grow taller
than me. This is a kind of joke, I think that the world is changing and
revolutions
are coming up every second. So, I remember the Doug as he started FDAC
in 68, I got a copy of his paper in late 69. At that time, I couldn't understand
what he mentioned. It is very sophisticated. In a quarter of a century
as he mentioned we get together in Tokyo. He explained about bootstrapping
alliance. It is so hard to understand. It is so hard to understand
especially with a beer. I had to say something so I talked about our (TQC)
total quality
management. What we did in the past. Which is under generation can
propose his own idea to the senior management. Like a small piece of the
venture.
I felt something. I did not' fully understand. But any way he asked
me to join the bootstrap alliance. So I did. Any way one item he said,
Collective IQ. It
is quite familiar with us. Brush up on the IQ for the university. IQ
is a very strong.
I am very much interested therefore; we should start something in Japan. Then we started the seminar with Doug.
Then a number of people get together and start to think about what he
mentioned. So, I think as what is the best way to implement bootstrapping
or a
NIC. If we are explaining bootstrapping itself or a NIC it is really
tough. So, start with an argument. So, we can do that. One thing I started
with JMBA,
which is the member of the manufacture of the facts. So, every year
or every other year they make some kind of proposal or some standardization.
I was
called in late '68 coincidentally near Doug's meeting. They asked me
to chair some committees. Created by Japanese people. Mostly they are standards
coming form the U.S., and we will use them and implement them. So,
the beginning was only twenty people. I didn't know most people. So I thought
what shall we do. Now it is a hundred and fifty people working together.
We are now providing some solutions that will of May this year. So, I will
talk
some details. I don't want to touch this itself but mostly the operating
system come from the U.S.
Slide: Current Network Connection
Aki: Those are also coming from the U.S. and then our vendor is working
to come on our printers or fax to check with functions. Every time you
use
something, we have to work on that. And every company does not help
each other. If we introduce a product, they do not talk to each other.
That is a
big problem in Japan. We are Japanese manufacturing our product maybe
seventy percent worldwide. Therefore, my proposal is we do not want to
change the proportion, we will upset everything.
Slide: Target for JBMA standards.
Aki: However, what kind of standard, what kind of functions are these.
We should have talked and talked, so we have defined the commons services
by
devices. If we can meet this context, then we can talk wherever we
go. If I bring the PC here, I want to read a doc, I will find out any print
out. Rather
than someone asks, I have to ask please print this paper and song.
So, that kind of thing is ongoing. We are working on these areas.
Slide: Scope for JBMA standards
Aki: Discovery of all of the printers and papers and so on. Data format,
job device control those are maybe 70, 80% achieved. All of the companies
bring
their papers. This is a very in Japan. It used to be each company has
its own idea, they do not disclose their ideas, but NIC solved the problem.
This is
very difficult technology side.
I think that those kinds of ideas can be diversified. So, we think of traditional Japanese community as a hierarchical structure. Life long services.
Slide: Traditional Japanese Community
Aki: To the top we sit together for over thirty-forty years. We don't
make any documents, but understand each other. Same culture, meeting at
the same
time, everything. One example, a cooking book, big diverse between
countries. UK cookbook they outline every statement. Sentence. Japanese.
Just
pictures. One spoon two spoons. We have the same culture so we understand
each other, what we should do. But Americans in the middle. Those
kinds of knowledge has to be implemented now that we change our organizations.
Then mostly and inside company structures and then the bottom up.
The seniority just observing the activities of those people. Sometimes
no concern, mostly they are consensus basis. They fully understand the
meaning
of each. Therefore, our organization strong lists those in mass productions.
Making the product. Even thought we don't give up any visions and so on.
But, we decided what we should make it is very strong. Then one culture
we decided does the high productivity. We can do some NIC because we are
doing the TQC as you can see. But those NICS are industry segmented.
The iron steel manufacturer has his own and automobile has his own and
they
don't communicate to each other. Across stretches, we don't dictate.
Because of the human being long life. Therefore, we have to change some
paradigm. One is NIC across the companies. It as to be developed based
on we have to erase the organization boundaries or company boundaries.
We
still lack the network communications. Now as the Japanese telephone
company providing I-mode which using telephone for communication, just
pushing the thumb to send the mail, it is a Japanese trick. Rather
than pushing the keyboard. Then bottom model execution and single race
monoculture. Then lack of visions. Those kinds of things we have to
think modernizing. About changing by bootstrapping.
Slide: New Approach
Aki: The idea of JBMA is each company has one or two people, then after
that, each company after has ten or so. The divisions are from the printing
divisions, or copying divisions, or other divisions. They start at
some correlation. NIC that is the correlation. We have ten companies each
has his own
NIC. We have a JBMA NIC now. We are talking to each other beyond the
companies. This is the first time. So all the document is open source for
membership. So, we are going to open up around the May time frame.
We are going to do our demo at the business show in Tokyo. After that we
are
going to do that. But still this is little. Not going to world wide
and so on. How to bring this idea to other countries. And we are thinking
about that. I
think that these actives can and will be done in Japan very soon. Still,
we have a bunch of problems of government structures, education and so
on. So,
I think this little we have to change our paradigm. That bootstrapping
in Japan would be one of the drivers for changing community. The network
economy will be implemented very soon. Then we hope to bring this idea
in to the Japanese government national project. It takes time. I think
it is a
small project that is started. This is the kind of the softer houses
get together but the small softer houses are implement but they don't have
enough
sales force. So those are the cases we provide with a common database
or repository so that they can access from the outside. Those are started.
Currently the only few example that we could have
Slide: Summary
Aki: In the past, we have been trying to deliver "less expensive and
better quality" products through TQC cultivated within a company or NIC-like
activities seen in some industries as value added implementation.
Now we feel it is important change our company attitude and also working
global, to have an organization to cope with the world wide issues, as
discussed in this colloquium by linking coordination a wide variety
of existing and emerging NICs ranging from individual to the nation levels.
We think
this linking process is "Scaling"
Thank you very much.
Engelbart: We have twenty minutes or so that we could use. The best thing would be to get some dialogue going.
Audience: Question for Jon. I think your ideas sounded very interesting
to me. Two thoughts came to mind. Interface could be an issue. I could
imagine
if this kind of thing could work, the other thing would have parallelism,
and having multiple things going on at the same time. And then if you have
a
problem with trying to figure the order or sequentialize it.
Bosak: I know what you are talking about. Basically it can't operate,
here has to be a clock cycle where things are asynchronous. I think it
is the cycle it
takes between the time we are going to vote on something and the time
it takes to finish voting. I can't see getting that period down about 48
if the
process is going to involve the people who are traveling. So if I am
going to be able to get on the plane for Tokyo get my things and get my
mail and
actually think about something. Typically, 48 hours is the min to get
there. My observation about parallelism. If you study the traditional process,
it is
filled with very confusing terminology about four different classes
of motions. Main motion, subsidiary, and a couple of other categories.
What is really
going on there is the traditional categories in Robert's separates
out the ones that have to follow that clock cycle and are being voted on,
debated and
the ones that are undebatable. It is the undebatable ones that you
would get little lag and do parallelism. Working out all of the details
is something that
has not been done yet. Interface, I'm not sure what you see the problem
is.
Audience: I can see the automation or touring machine, how every you
are going to model it. The part that is going in between the human and
the
model is what I have a hard time envisioning.
Bosak: The interface I have in mind is one in which the machine knows
who you are as if you are ordering shoes. It knows what your past history
is in
that you can't second your own motion. At any moment, it would present
you what the state is at the time. While there are some interface design
decisions that need to be made about what is the best way to do that.
They are all really old problems we are talking with presenting you is
the same
information that you would have been presented with a hundred or two
hundred years ago. What is the motion, what is the text of the motion,
are there
amendments, what are the amendments, etc..... What you are talking
about conveying the same in for you have now, plus this is the real benefit
of the
scheme if it works is it would show you through menus what you could
do. What is legal to do at that point? The hardest part of the Robert's
process
is what you legally can do at any given point. It would be relatively
easy as such things go, to give you menus only of things that as in order
at that
moment. The interface is the strongest part of the idea. The weakest
part is how do you establish an agenda. I think that there are some pretty
deep
issues there.
Audience: This is for Jon. There are many organizations grappling with
the idea how do use the Internet to debate public issues. The idea fits
hand and
glove with the issue that you are trying to grapple with. Right now
I know that several government institution with in California have actually
contacted
with the woman voters to act as the moderating authority so to speak.
I think you will have some very willing partners and I can name quite a
few right
now that would be interested talking to you about this because it is
a situation that they are trying to figure out how you can handle and discuss
these
things in an open forum. The issues that you are going to run in to
is the people who are not going to have the technology to implement this.
It is very
separate from what you are doing is how you are going to facilitate
this. In you implementation, that is where you are going to run into your
very visible
barrier today.
Bosak: The Brown Act is familiar to all of us in California because
it guarantees opens access to all the areas governments up and down the
line. It
actually under the Brown Act what I proposed is illegal. It forbids
of any electronic means of communication. You cannot even hold a telephone
conversation. Its effect is to limit access. It's like not being able
to walk in. What I assert in a much longer paper that I refer to is that
if this were
properly designed if you could take into account the difficulty of
actually physically getting to a meeting. You have a rising curve of the
difficulty of
physically getting to something and a falling curve of difficulty of
getting to it on- line. At some point those things cross. While there will
always be
people who will not be able to get to it on-line just as there are
now a lot of people who can't get there in person. At some point more people
will
actually then be given access by the on-line version then the people
that are getting access through the in person version.
Audience: This is for Aki, in Japan It is my understanding that there
is a very different relationship between government and private sector
than in the
U.S. That may be a false impression, but you can correct me. I am interested
in what it will take to create the higher levels of the improvement community
that you envisioned where you had businesses within themselves working
to improve and now you are creating a call between businesses. What will
it
take to create more of a global approach that you envision? What will
it take, what will it require and how can a group like this help you?
Aki: That is a good question. Anyway I can say we senior management
in Japan, has to be needs to change through leadership qualities. Mostly
Japanese attitude is bottom prepared all of the documents for the seniors.
For example, if someone invited a talk, he doesn't talk by himself. That
kind of
attitude leaves a Japanese no right way. In U.S., most of management
can talk and go his own way doing business in such a way. In Japan, it
starting
from the bottom going up takes time. We are loosing a lot of business
time. We have to change. At some portion, we should think bottom up, but
sometimes we need to take the top down approach. Especially the worldwide
organizations.
Aki: If I may ask a Question for Aki. In my work, I have seen that there
are more similarities between Japanese and U.S. styles. The Japanese style
is
changing more towards U.S. style and the U.S. style is changing more
Japanese.
What is your perception on that?
Aki: I spend here three years and then some time in the U.S. structure.
I think that this type of paradigm I am implementing in my small company
right
now. It's workable. Large Corporation takes a long time, over ten years.
It goes over all of the infrastructure social security and medical care,
based on
age basis. Small company that paradigm.
Audience: My name is Neil Jacobstein. At the risk of being impolite,
I would like to suggest that we do not have ten years to organize these
types of
activities. Ten years of calendar time is like seventy years of web
time. Because of the acceleration thing we talked about earlier. That kind
of thinking is
going to lead us to a situation where we do not have the infrastructure
to lead us to the changes that we want to see over the next ten years.
So I guess
my question for you is there an opportunity to accelerate the critical
path. By calling on individuals in companies, perhaps individuals from
quality
interest groups. That are meeting outside of the walls of their institutions.
That are self-selected, that are interested and that can move quickly to accelerate the critical path.
Aki: I said ten years for the Japanese. I think we are talking to several
key guys in each company. So we should have some interests groups, then
we
can act alike.
Audience: Actually this is perfect timing. I have been having mixed
reaction to the series of presentations. On the one hand especially the
first two my
reaction is. Thank heavens that people are working with the policy
and governmental folks. I don't mean that derogatory. This is complicated
technology. It has not been around for a long time. Have trouble understanding
this. As reporters try to cover these topics, they get it wrong. For any
interesting process, there is someone who is upset. They think that
this is news. For any there is going to be someone who is upset. A well
documented
procedures that have been developed over a long period of time. All
of what is the difficult problem here is not putting the machinery in place,
not
educating the policy makers, but trying all of us to worry about perspective.
The perceptive is that ten years is too long. The counter to that is we
are
thinking about changing institutions that have taken centuries to develop.
Ten years is too short. The truth is both of my statements. I don't know
how
to reconcile that. Equally, and I have increasingly been sensitive
to this we have the perspective for many reasons, that is really U.S. centric.
We have
forgotten, as much as we think we haven't how many other perspectives
there are. So, Robert's Rules in Order for example or it's variant as well
probably would work well in certain countries. Japan I would expect,
very well, possibly in Germany. Maybe some other countries. I guarantee
you
inspire of the fact that it has some English a British back group in
law, it won't work in Malaysia. It won't work in most of the world. I don't
think it will
work over here real well. There are some institutional processes that
absolutely goes in line with Robert's Rules of Order, that is not where
the real work
gets done. That is where the final decision gets done. Hence, the thing
that I found myself reacting down the line. I think each of the things
that
everyone of you have said is right if we take the view that it is a
beginning point. Which we should look at as being wrong. Which to say is
look at how
does it not fit. It is a good base of reference, but the interest to
come from it is to look for the ways that it is inaccurate. A simple example
because it is
the most precise, is instituting Robert's Rules of Order. Roberts vastly
too mechanical for most human daily work, but it is a good starting point.
Panel: I was forced into looking at Robert's. I had to deal with it
twenty years ago, and when I had to look it at again, it was with a sinking
heart. What I
have come to the conclusion after a couple of months dealing with this
and figuring out the OASIS committee procedure, and so have the other people
that are in some of the committees that I am on, that Robert's is essentially
what you will get even if you start over, as long as what you are talking
about is majority rules. This is the key. The cultures you are talking
about that won_ 92t work and the situations you are talking about that
won't work
and the ones in which majority rule won't work. It isn't the machinery
the machinery is what you will get over four hundred years as you explain
all of
the weird cases. What it all boils down to is that this is what falls
out if you decide that you really are going to be ruled by majority, rather
than
consensus.
Audience: I am Ray Glocker. I had a comment that may be on the point
of chaos in with regard to of the Roberts Rules of Order adaptation. First,
I was
fascinated by it and I want to make the distinction between legislative
and policy thinking. I am calling it legislative to fit into the traditional
thinking.
And judicial or educated decisions. I am not limiting it to government.
Just as you did not eliminate legislative decisions. The kinds of policy-making
decisions of the organization that I am going to go to after this seminar.
Similarly, educated or judicial does not only include courts, but administrative
hearings, it would include disciplinary items on an agenda for a private
organization. More at a meta level, I would like to say that legislative
decisions is
where we report to be making a decision about suspense and policy or
prioritization between subsequent options. Judicial is being where we reporting
to be applying given policy to a particular fact or individual or entity.
That is the traditional approach to it. Now for the point of chaos. It
is in the
legislative decisions that have a numerical input whether it be strictly
majority or some other numerical definition. That Robert's Rules of Order,
or any
other mechanistic procedure applies. One of the things in judicial
kinds of proceeding one of the things that makes it a problem. Not necessarily,
an
unsolvable problem is now the very articulation of procedure becomes
discretionary rather than mechanistic. The legislative context, you can
look up
the answer in the seven hundred-page books. In a judicial context,
the judge is frequently are required to weigh as a discretionary matter
whether the
probative value of a particular piece of evidence outweighs the prejudicial
impact of the fact finder. A thousand and one other discretionary decisions
that strike me as not susceptible to the mechanisms that we are proposing.
Now the very point of chaos. And I got this from the Decanting Opinion
of Justice Bannen and Magost vs. California for those of you who are legalists.
A death penalty case. Where in reality, the legislative process places
heavy reliance on the accumulation of judicial knowledge to inform its
subsitive
choices. There are many areas of policy where the legislative process
recognizes that this is not something that should have a final formulation
this
week, this month, this year or even this decade, but choose to commit
the substitutive issues to a judicial process to work out over time. Historically,
we
call it the common law we also delegate decisions like to the pubic
utilities commission to the work out what is the good energy policy. That's
all.
Engelbart: Thank you Neil, then Barbara.
Panel: I think it is easy to conflate two very different issues. One
is the historical perceptive and futuristic. I would argue that Doug's
is very long.
Doug's impatience is great, I share that impatience. I think that we
all have to have a great deal of impatience in putting some capacity infrastructure
in
place for dealing with some of the changes that we are going to see.
That is very different then the perspective that we bring to the table.
And the kind
of issues that we want to look at, and how far into the future we want
to look.
Barbara: Picking up on your impatience, I too have impatience, but it
is my sense that you are up against human nature when you say that ten
years is
too long. I have heard talks on global warming that has scared the
hell out of me and you wonder why are we not all out there trying to do
something
right away. We could be destroyed and no one is doing anything. We
don't have a sense of urgency that we get from these scientific talks.
I think what
underlies all of this is we are very good about denial. We need to
be good at denial because we couldn't go on existing in this world if we
didn't have
that ability. It is a survival skill, but it works against us in situations
like this. And you need to overcome that if you are going to get a sense
of urgency
about something that is so abstract.
Engelbart: It is my understanding that the Nile is a river in Egypt.
Audience: I wanted to say that both of talks are exciting. I am interested
in the possibility that as you develop the software to implement Roberts
Rules
of Order. Given that much of it is asynchronous and there are a lot
of new alternatives that are available to you. Whether you can compliment
a formal
decision making process that that body of procedures was designed to
address. With support for the consensus process the pulling off into small
groups, having discourse, strengthening discourse, being able to reference
the dynamic knowledge base and figure where in the Robert's Rules of
Order it will be appropriate to step out of that formal process. And
to these other processes. My second point is to also be able to look at
other decision
making processes from other cultures and their modes of ordering discourse
and see where this can be implemented in the support process that you are
developing.
Engelbart: I like that. With all of my instincts of scales and evolution,
there would be a lot of concurrent change going on. Let's get some mechanical
support to the process and assume that there is going to be evolution.
The rate at which people are going to have to put together and integrate
the
knowledge about issues has to go up at the same time. That is going
to have to be meshed in to the processes that making decisions and upping
the
motions. It is going to be a great future in ten years.
Audience: You were talking about state machines, Jon. Usually when people
talk about state machines, they mean finite state machine. These are
revisionist. I don't think that we-every deliberate body infinite state
machine even thought you may use a finite state matching to implement it.
It has to
be an infinite state machine.
Bosak: I was very careful not to say finite.
Audience: I've got a question about the proposal here, Jon. I like the
idea of moving a physical meeting on-line. I think the proposal addresses
that. I
think that there are definitely questions about scale, like Doug just
said. How do you scale it? I think that de-bugging it will have to happen,
because
you will be introducing a new domain that it will be taking place in.
My main question is that you brought t up difficult problems like abortion
and that
are not misunderstanding problems, just difficult problems. Our normal
Robert's Rules of Order meetings can't resolve this problem right now.
I am
wondering how this helps.
Bosak: They actually do, they do not solve this to the satisfaction
of everybody, and they solve it to the satisfaction of the majority. Robert's
is not
something special, the rules of the House of Commons is not something
special, they are what fall out when you say, given an otherwise irresolvable
problem that we cannot achieve consensus we'll go with a majority.
Once you make that one decision the rest just falls out of that.
Audience: What Jon is suggesting is a way of solving complex problems
that it is hard to achieve a consensus on. What that Dave pointed out is
that
there is more than one way to do it. So the question is what other
alternatives exist? The judicial decisions are a great concept because
it automatically
requires a knowledge depository. So, it seems to be a good model to
attack. What are the things exist as procedures that we could possibly
model?
Panel: I was not trying to say look at other models. What I was trying
to say is as we try to move existing models into this environment we should
be
aware of the fact that they will not work as is. For that matter, the
most important thing is that there are multiple models and we need to recognize
the
importance of variety and not get locked into one that is too ridged
for where the real work gets don't I am appreciative that one of our speakers
is not
from the U.S. I raise the point that what works in one place, not only
do we need a variety of mechanisms for a variety of tasks, but we also
have a
variety of cultures. The Internet brings them all together. Go figure
what the right balance is.
Audience: I was inspired by Barbara's question to Jon about what is
the interface. And Dave's reflection that there are some limitations to
Robert's
Rules Order. Which itself reminds me of a brick. Reminds me of de-augmentating
the pencil by tying a brick to it. So there is a meeting that I had
previously today by a company that is called web box that is a facilitator
for corporate communications. For instance, they take the Sacramento
municipal utilities commission and what is the corporate culture? They
visualize this process and create these diagrams. What I see is that they
are
embodying what is the corporate culture of communication in to a fixed
state. In fact, you can use this as a context where people create dialogue.
Here is
a situation which is a bureaucracy, I am not sure if majority rules.
You can talk facilitators, the corporate culture which embodies a wide
range of
different forms of reaching a decision and embody that in terms of
what is the representation visually and acting upon that visual as a context
to create
a dialogue. From there you can embody rules that allow people to interact
based on the context. Here is a company that is facilitating the process.
We looked at Robert's Rules of Order that was written in the eighteen
fifties. The family still owns the copyright because they keep updating
it, so it
brings and interesting conclusion.
Audience: I want to make an analogy to the whole question of genetic
diversity when we talk about different models and how different groups
work.
That the Internet actually introduces, if we put the governance of
Robert's Rules Order, and put it internationally then we loose the diversity
and
decision making in the way that different cultures do things. It might
be the case that something comes along that where dictatorship is the right
way
for the world to survive. But we have lost that because the Internet
has imposed say Robert's Rules of Order on all societies. There is parallel
to the
genetic diversity issue to this.
Bosak: Several people have mistaken what it is I am trying to say. I
don't like Robert that well; I am not saying that we use it for everything.
We should
take the hundreds of thousands of organizations that legally operate
under it and put them on-line.
Engelbart: That is the end of the broadcast. I have Ted Nelson coming
in a few weeks. This CoDiak information about integration is some really
interesting stuff. Thank you.