Last July, the Bootstrap Institute began publishing the e-journal
"Engelbart in Context," but a lack of active support within the
Institute made it difficult for me, the Institute's volunteer webmaster,
to sustain it. This is nobody's fault. Beyond Doug Engelbart there is
only one other staff member, Doug's administrative assistant Mary
Coppernoll. They are assisted by a number of volunteers who take care of
the Institute's server and do other chores toward furthering Doug's aim
of seeing his Open Hyperdocument System becoming a reality. This OHS is
seen as a tool for more efficiently solving urgent, complex problems in
the private and public sectors of world society.
The Institute has some material support, but is very much in need of
additional funding. An important source of funding used to be the
Bootstrap Alliance, a small, international group of stakeholders. With
the enthusiastic help of a prominent volunteer, Jeff Rulifson, a
vice-president of Sun Microsystems, and Karen Robbins, president of
Amtech, an attempt is made to reinvigorate the Alliance. Amtech's reason
for being is to create partnerships among private and public
institutions. Details about the state of the Alliance's affairs may be
found at http://www.amtech-use.org/bootstrap/
On its part, the Bootstrap Institute formally created a Central Planning
Committee on October 10. Committee members are Doug Engelbart, Mei Lin
Fung, Eugene Kim, and Jack Park. The Committee, which reports to the
Alliance's Board of Directors, chaired by Jeff Rulifson, addresses three
areas:
1. OHS development framework
2. Obtaining grant funding for Bootstrap Alliance for some specific
programs
3. Bootstrap communication
As a consequence, the publishing of the e-journal, although perceived as
valuable, will not be receiving the hoped for minimal wherewithal to
sustain it. This goes for funding as well as for participation. A few
days ago, Doug proposed that I proceed with the journal within the
Bootstrap framework, but editorially independent from it. In practical
terms, there will be no funding for it in the foreseeable future - not
until sufficient grants are, if ever, obtained for the Institute's
operations.
The editorial independence, which relieves Doug from overseeing the
e-journal's editorial conduct, comes with a name change from "Engelbart
in Context" to "Fleabyte." The editorial stance remains pretty well the
same, however. It may be summarized as augmenting human intellect or
thinking with computers. A more detailed statement is found at
http://www.bootstrap.org/context/archive/eic-3.html#3F
I should emphasize that Fleabyte is intended to address people in
various walks of life. The study of augmenting human intellect embraces
computer science, psychology (or neuroscience as it is now more properly
named), education, publishing, the worlds of work and of civics.
Question at this point is, can we sustain the publication? Equipment,
maintenance, essential subscriptions, other literature, telephone costs,
automobile use - all remain personal expenses. More significantly, there
is no funds for attracting editorial material. Can one who does not pay
the piper call the tune? Additional handicaps are my age and limited
personal skills as well as uncertainty about the Bootstrap Institute's
future. That's the downside. Off hand, we might as well throw in the
towel right now. But why not first try to fathom what the upside look
like?
Our Urev-II discussion forum has more than 200 registered members. A
fair number of members are highly active and have produced a body of
about 4000 posts, many rich in content and reference material. This
content bespeaks of an interest fully in accord with the envisaged
editorial breadth. It also is a motherlode of facts and notions waiting
to be mined and refined for public presentation, i.e. to take another
step toward becoming useful. Moreover, many references exist that may
lead to morphing the very nature of publishing the e-journal toward
becoming a true, Engelbartian DKR (Dynamic Knowledge Repository), which
Doug often refers to as a "handbook.". One aspect of this is
interactivity among authors and readers - in fact, becoming a discussion
forum raised to a higher degree of lasting utility.
We already have some volunteers as well. Peter Jones, a member of this
forum and formerly a editor and co-author with a big publishing house,
has done a fine job of copy-editing for our journal. Gwen Pariset, a
lady experienced in project work, has volunteered to become a webmaster.
Lambert Gardiner, formerly professor of psychology and now of media, has
contributed an article and is ready take on an editorial role. We still
have to learn how to more efficiently co-operate in turning out a
product, but that is part of the birthing pangs of an e-journal.
The editorial approach would be to attract material with an eye on
forming a handbook. This material would be partly unsollicited, partly
sollicited. Together they make the editorial process one of directed
opportunism. Which brings us to the next question: Can I count on people
- members of the Unrev-II forum to begin with, but also others as time
goes by - to provide quality, purposefull content? To take the
contributing seriously?
I'll pause at this point and wait for reactions from this forum to see
whether or not we may have a fighting chance to create a journal,
experimental and evolutionary in itself, that will further the
augmentation of human intellect.
Any thoughts? Any specific contributions (academic advisors, subject
editors, successors to myself, authors, Unrev-II miners, production
people, etc.)?
Henry
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