Tangibles and intangibles  2

The Engelbart Colloquium, held at Stanford University from January 6 to March 9, 2000, is called "The Unfinished Revolution - II." But unlike its forerunner, a 1998 symposium named the "The Unfinished Revolution," the real thrust of the 2000 colloquium is an overarching personal commitment. "It is forty-nine years ago," Dr. Engelbart reminisced at the outset of the first lecture, "that I, in some wild moment, committed my professional career to seeing how much I could maximize my career's contribution toward this thing of helping humankind's collective ability for coping with complex, urgent problems."  2A

The tangible components of Engelbart's productivity are a string of inventions -- the computer mouse, display editing, outline processing, multiple remote online users of a networked processor, hyperlinking and in-file object processing, multiple windows, hypermedia, context-sensitive help. These are very much up front in the 1998 symposium. A site maintained by Stanford University provides a rich documentary about that event along with links to various points of interest that in words and pictures demonstrate Engelbart's contribution to computing and, hence, to our life as now we know it. Try to imagine personal computing without his inventions, is the question asked. The symposium may be viewed online.  2B

Here we introduce the colloquium-related part of the Bootstrap Institute's website. It is, at once, a companion piece and an extension of Stanford's second set of web pages devoted to the unfinished revolution, or "UnRev-II" for short. Its pages, which can be reached through the above menu bar, are not intended to be a capstone on the past, they are intended as an invitation to participate in an ongoing continuum of inventiveness for the good of humankind, to work toward more fully realizing ideas that have been on Engelbart's mind for decades, but still haven't yet sufficiently caught on  to bear still more copious fruit for the benefit of all. These pages concern that very lifetime pursuit: a strategy and means for the executing that strategy, which is to, as much as possible, boost humankind's collective capability for coping with the world's complex, urgent problems.  2C

Engelbart's experiential basis for this pursuit lies mostly within industry -- so much so that there is a strong tendency to perceive of his strategy as fundamentally an industrial management strategy. That is a mistake. It really is a strategy for all sorts of complex endeavors in which people need to work together, a strategy for all sorts of "social organisms," with the ultimate one being the United Nations, representative of all peoples populating one shared habitat.  2D

The ten, three-hour colloquium sessions conducted by Engelbart and his more than 30 guests were webcast live.  The events have been recorded also for later viewing and transcription. Today, they may be freely accessed through a series of archived webcasts. Access to the webcast will be provided upon registration with the Stanford Center for Professional Development.  2E

The sessions may also be followed from transcripts, separately or concurrently with the webcasts. And interested parties may still join the ongoing online discussions which mainly focus on work to further enhance the augmenting of human intellect with computers. [vE].  2F

Some details for online viewers  3

The latest Media Player software from Microsoft is required. A download is freely available for various operating systems.  3A

Reception of the webcasts deteriorate with reception at a bandwidth less than 28.8 Kbps. Bandwidth measurements are available online.  3B

It has been found that accessing the webcasts with marginal bandwidth, e.g. under fairly congested network conditions, it is well to increase the Media Player's buffer to, say, 30 seconds from the default 5 seconds. Instructions for doing so are found here. In addition, participants may also get useful advice from a help page.  3C

People who should be especially interested  4

• Leaders of government (all levels: local, state, federal, other; countries, and the U.N.), institutions (education, health, research, etc.), professional societies and consortia.  4A
• Business executives and managers concerned with transformation strategies, and with the potential and dynamics of collaborative processes and the technologies which support them.  4B
• General public interested in collaborative processes and knowledge management, and/or in the history and future development of information technology.  4C
• Academics who are studying the history and sociology of information technology, the nature of societal or organizational transformation, and/or the collaborative process.  4D
• Technology developers who are designing for future organizations, teams and communities.  4E
• Consultants who are designing services for future organizations, teams and communities.  4F

Sponsors  5

This colloquium was made possible through private donations by Pierluigi Zappacosta, Dan Lynch, Sun Microsystems, and through the hard work of many volunteers who have contributed their time and effort.  5A