Historic Firsts:
For Team Work
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Doug Engelbart is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking technological firsts from the 1960s, such as inventing the computer mouse and delivering what became known as the "Mother of All Demos," as foundations for modern computing.
However the real target of his research was first and foremost to prototype the organization of the future to more effectively tackle important challenges. The technology was all in the service of that. Here's how he framed it in 1962:
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Man's population and gross product are increasing at a considerable rate, but the complexity of his problems grows still faster, and the urgency with which solutions must be found becomes steadily greater in response to the increased rate of activity and the increasingly global nature of that activity. [...]
By "augmenting human intellect" we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems. Increased capability in this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following: more-rapid comprehension, better comprehension, the possibility of gaining a useful degree of comprehension in a situation that previously was too complex, speedier solutions, better solutions, and the possibility of finding solutions to problems that before seemed insoluble.
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The point of greatest leverage would be in equipping the teams, initiatives and organizations working on the toughest problems with the most enabling tools and processes possible. The first pilot projects would be enabling experimental teams and networked initiatives, and the first would be enabling the team(s) developing the enabling tools and processes.
See Also
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Explore the Web
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- Visit Historic Firsts
- for more of Doug Engelbart's many groundbreaking firsts.
- Visit Doug's Vision for Humanity
- among those Historic Firsts, this describes the larger context of his work.
- Visit Doug's Great Demo: 1968
- brings to life his early accomplishments with archive footage,
photos, fun facts, story, and retrosectives
(aka the "Mother of All Demos" – snippets shown above).
From Doug's Lab
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- Doug Engelbart - A Lifetime Pursuit, a biographical sketch by Christina Engelbart (5 pages).
- Working Together. Douglas C. Engelbart and Harvey Lehtman. 1988
- A Software Engineering Environment, Kenneth E. Victor, Proceedings of AIAA/NASA/IEEE/ACM Computers In Aerospace Conference, Los Angeles, CA, October 31-November 2, 1977, pp. 399-403 (AUGMENT,29292,)
-
Augmenting Human
Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, Douglas C. Engelbart.
1962. See especially what he envisioned for any time, any
place team work in this 'backcast' section 7. Team Collaboration.
- Intellectual Implications of Multi-Access Computer Networks,
Douglas C. Engelbart. 1970. Written for the nascent Computer Networks community, Doug unveils his thoughts on networked teams and initiatives, and the emerging knowledge market.
- Toward
High-Performance Organizations: A Strategic Role for Groupware,
Douglas C. Engelbart. 1992.
From the Press
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