User:Natasa Siencnik/notes/bardini2/

Abstract

Thierry Bardini: The Arrival of the Real User and the Beginning of the End. In: Bootstrapping. Stanford University Press, 2000.

Wikipedia on NLS [1]
NLS, or the "oN-Line System", was a revolutionary computer collaboration system designed by Douglas Engelbart and the researchers at the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) during the 1960s. The NLS system was the first to employ the practical use of hypertext links, the mouse (co-invented by Engelbart and colleague Bill English), raster-scan video monitors, information organized by relevance, screen windowing, presentation programs, and other modern computing concepts.

1. Augmentation Research Center (ARC) – 1960s
   • premise that computers are able to perform as powerful prostheses
   • computers enable new modes of creative thought, communication
   • bootstrapping as coadaptive learning experience
   • ease of use is not among the principal design criteria
2. Adaptation of Users
   • problems between the virtual user of NLS and its real users
   • adapting too become the kind of programmers the system demanded
   • structured text was very important, but not all users like structure
   • affected the way people wrote, be it text or programms
   • hierarchical information structures can also be limiting
   • structuring conventions were needed because of complexity
3. Collaborative Work
   • ARC community early example for computer-supported collaborative work
   • trend from the augmentation of individuals to task-oriented teams
   • effect of technology draw users of ARC laboratory together in a group
4. Computer Person
   • out of its context of the laboratory operation was very difficult
   • took about ten hours of exercising to get the operating system working
   • knowledge worker became a generic programmer again
5. Time Sharing
   • Engelbart wanted to stick to the time-sharing technology
   • part of the ARC team (system builders) moved to Xerox PARC
6. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) – 1970s
   • first notebook computer (Dynamobook) and new language (Smalltalk)
   • experiments with children as most demanding users of computers
   • first personal workstation (Alto) designed by Alan Kay
   • led to the Apple computer and broader range of actual users
   • ease of learning later translated into the notion of "user-friendliness"