smp@sei.cmu.edu (Stan Przybylinski) (01/08/90)
Being new to this area I've tried to "catch up" by reading from things like the CSCW proceedings, the hypertext literature, etc. What strikes me as odd is that people always tend to ignore the lifelong work of Doug Engelbart on NLS (now Augment). People have found components of his system worth reusing (e.g., the mouse, multiple windows, outline processing, hypermedia) but they always seem to have "come from" somewhere else (like Xerox PARC, Apple, etc.) when they get used. Why is that? At the SEI one of our tasks is to look at how to make technology transfer more systematic and, hopefully, more effective. So I am interested in Engelbart's work both from the technology itself (it seems ideal to support the technology development lifecycle) and as a case study in technology transfer. Based on my discussions with Engelbart here in Pittsburgh he has had more technology transfer failures than most people have attempts. (Unfortunately, you only seem to learn about technology transfer from your failures.) Is it some grandiose NIH syndrome? It seemed that way when I attended the recent Hypertext '89 conference here in Pittsburgh. People seemed to be continually reinventing hypertext systems (KMS, Notecards, Hyperties, etc.) when Augment has been around since the early 60's. (BTW, Engelbart is now at Stanford where he is heading the Bootstrap Project, an attempt to use Augment across wide area networks for collaboration. Maybe after I attend the Bootstrap Workshop this week in Palo Alto I'll have more to say about this here.) Is it that Engelbart has already done all the interesting work and researchers don't feel good about themselves unless they can do original work? That again seems to be the case in the hypertext world. I guess people don't get brownie points for taking something that exists and showing why it works or doesn't work. Any comments? *---------------------------------------*-----------------------------------* *Stan Przybylinski (Prez-ba-lin-ski) *These views do not represent those * *Software Engineering Institute *of Carnegie Mellon, the SEI, the * *Carnegie Mellon University *DoD or possibly even the author. * *Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 * * *smp@sei.cmu.edu (412) 268-6371 *All the fits, that's news to print.* *---------------------------------------*-----------------------------------*