User:Inge Hoonte/Bootstrapping

Thierry Bardini Bootstrapping

Cover: Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the mouse. Firm lips, hooked nose. Judging by his hand gesture, he's in the middle of making an important point. Notice the grey streak of hair that's glued to the rest of his head with gel. There seems to be a wire coming out of his left ear.

'Thierry Bardini on wikipedia, author of Bridging the Gulfs: From Hypertext to Cyberspace, where he described the history of hypertext through the visions of two early pioneers in the field: Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson.'

Bootstrapping: The term was also championed by Doug Engelbart, to refer to his belief that organizations could better evolve by improving the process they use for improvement (thus obtaining a compounding effect over time).

• Uses and users
• The screen was not always the interface, the point of contact betw human and computer
• Inventor of tool also invents the kind of people that will use their innovations
• Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theater. Chair of Design Program at CCA. Worked at Atari.
• Laurel: that which joins computer and human. Computer already knows about human, their terminology is embedded in the design, decided on by the designer. The user is represented IN the interface, it's where it interacts with the computer, therefor there are narratives in the interface.

(After this most quotes are from Engelbart)

• User manipulates an iconic version of its document (the graphic on the desktop, in the folder, etc), an illusion. This involves a representation of the USER as well! User starts as a virtual concept, a script, invented by the designer. They even test on these imagined users, who are often mental representations of the designer him/herself. Often see themselves as a typical user. This results in prospective testing.
• Programmer's Input = working data. Output = complex solution or design.
• Difference betw virtual user and actual user.
• In testing phase of mouse, they placed it against already existing devices with similar purpose. Mouse outran them all. Important: ease of getting hand to and control device, fatigue effects on posture. Mouse designed to facilitate functions for text-manipulation that are not part of the keyboard. Tested on experienced and non-experienced subjects. Exp found it faster and more accurate than other devices (pointer, pen), whereas non-exp performed better with the light pen which pointed visually directly at the object, rather than disembodied from eye to hand. To test techn you have to assume user is experienced.
• Along with dev virtual user, real user, came tech and vision of its creator.
• Knee controlled device: access time slower with mouse as you have to move your hands away from the keyboard. By 1992, designs were made for foot mouse, head mouse, back mouse. Surreal now, but back then THEY MERELY REPRESENTED SYSTEMATIC ATTEMPTS TO IMAGINE WAYS TO USE THE POSSIBILITIES PROVIDED FOR INSTRUMENTATION BY THE HUMAN BODY.
• It had five, then three buttons (not room for more)
• 1988: "the technology side has grown way out of proportion (...), but all we have to do is turn and look at ourselves to realize that our culture has not yet understood that the human side is open for progress and change"

Turn in the plot: Push for connecting workers, users. Begin to develop ways that computers could allow users to share and shape knowledge together >> NLS.

CHAPTER SIX .....