A research center for augmenting human intellect (1968)

C. Engelbart, and William K. English, AFIPS Conference Proceedings of the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference , San Francisco, CA, December 1968, Vol. 33, pp. 395-410 (AUGMENT,3954,). 

A research center for augmenting human intellect

by DOUGLAS C. ENGELBART

and WILLIAM K. ENGLISH

Stanford Research Institute Menlo Park, California

1 SUMMARY

1a This paper describes a multisponsor research center at Stanford Research Institute in man-computer interaction.

1a1 For its laboratory facility, the Center has a time-sharing computer (65K, 24-bit core) with a 4.5 megabyte swapping drum and a 96 megabyte file-storage disk. This serves twelve CRT work stations simultaneously.

1a1a Special hardware completely removes from the CPU the burden of display re freshing and input sampling, even though these are done directly out of and into core.

1a1b The display in a user's office appears on a high-resolution (875-line) commercial television monitor, and provides both char acter and vector portrayals. A relatively standard typewriter keyboard is supplemented by a five-key handset used (optionally) for entry of control codes and brief literals. An SRI cursor device called the "mouse" is used for screen pointing and selection.

1a1b1 The "mouse" is a hand-held X-Y transducer usable on any flat surface; it is described in greater detail further on.

1a2 Special-purpose. high-level languages and associated compilers provide rapid, flexible development and modification of the repertoire of service functions and of their control procedures (the latter being the detailed user actions and computer feedback involved in controlling the application of these service functions) .

1b User files are organized as hierarchical structures of data entities, each composed of arbitrary combinations of text and figures. A repertoire of coordinated service features enables a skilled user to compose, study, and mod ify these files with great speed and flexibility, and to have searches, analyses data manipulation, etc. executed. In particular, special sets of conventions, functions, and working methods have been developed to air programming, logical design, documentation, retrieval, project management, team interaction, and hard copy production.

2 INTRODUCTION

2a In the Augmented Human Intellect (AHI) Research Center at Stanford Research Institute a group of researchers is developing an experimental laboratory around an interactive, multi-console computer-display system, and is working to learn the principles by which interactive computer aids can augment their intellectual capability.

2b The research objective is to develop principles and techniques for designing an "augmentation system."

2bl This includes concern not only for the technology of providing interactive computer service, but also for changes both in ways of conceptualizing, visualizing, and organizing working material, and in procedures and methods for working individually and cooperatively.

2c The research approach is strongly empirical. At the workplace of each member of the subject group we aim to provide nearly full-time availability of a CRT work station, and then to work continuously to improve both the service available at the stations and the aggregate value derived therefrom by the group over the entire range of its roles and activities.

2d Thus the research group is also the subject group in the experiment.

2d1 Among the special activities of the group are the evolutionary development of a complex hardware-softwalre system, the design of new task procedures for the system's users, and careful documentation of the evolving system designs and user procedures.

2d2 The group also has the usual activities of managing its activities, keeping up with outside developments, publishing reports, etc.

2d3 Hence, the particulars of the augmentation system evolving here will reflect the nature of these task--i.e., the system is aimed at augmenting a system-development project team. Though the primary research goal is to develop principles of analysis and design so as to understand how to augment human capability, choosing the researchers them selves as subjects yields as valuable secondary benefit a system tailored to help develop com plex computer-based systems.

2e This "bootstrap" group has the interesting (recursive) assignment of developing tools and techniques to make it more effective at carrying out its assignment.

2el Its tangible product is a developing augmentation system to provide increased capability for developing and studying augmenta tion systems.

2e2 This system can hopefully be transferred, as a whole or by pieces of concept, principle and technique, to help others develop augmentation systems for aiding many other disciplines and activities.

2f In other words we are concentrating fully upon reaching the point where we can do all of our work on line--placing in computer store all of our specifications, plans, designs, programs, documentation, reports, memos, bibliography and reference notes, etc., and doing all of our scratch work, planning, designing, debugging, etc., and a good deal of our intercommunication, via the consoles.

2f1 We are trying to maximize the coverage of our documentation, using it as a dynamic and plastic structure that we continually develop and alter to represent the current state of our evolving goals, plans, progress, knowledge, designs, procedures, and data.

2g The display-computer system to support this experiment is just (at this writing) becoming operational. Its functional features serve a basic display-oriented user system that we have evolved over five years and through three other computers. Below are described the principal features of these systems.

3 THE USER SYSTEM

3a Basic Facility

3a1 As "seen" by the user, the basic facility has the following characteristics:

3a1a 12 CRT consoles, of which 10 are normally located in offlces of AHI research staff.

3a1b The consoles are served by an SDS 940 time-sharing computer dedicated to full-time service for this staff, and each console may operate entirely independently of the others.

3alc Each individual has private file space, and the group has community space, on a high-speed disc with a capacity of 96 million characters.

3a2 The system is not intended to serve a general community of time-sharing users, but is being shaped in its entire design toward the special needs of the "bootstrapping" experiment.

3b Work Stations

3b1 As noted above, each work station is equipped with a display, an alphanumeric keyboard, a mouse, and a five-key handset.

3b2 The display at each of the workstations (see Figure 1) is provided on a high-resolution, closed-circuit television monitor.