[HN Gopher] Doug Engelbart's design for knowledge-based organiza... ___________________________________________________________________ Doug Engelbart's design for knowledge-based organizations (1992) [pdf] Author : conanxin Score : 47 points Date : 2022-09-02 14:07 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.dougengelbart.org) (TXT) w3m dump (www.dougengelbart.org) | physicsgraph wrote: | This seems to be a preview of an article available as PDF after | you sign in. Without the main content the purpose isn't clear to | me. Am I missing something? | Jtsummers wrote: | https://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/seminars/sembinder1992nov... | - A PDF of the actual thing, matches the two opening paragraphs | and you don't need to sign-in. From 1992, for the curious. | 082349872349872 wrote: | > _From 1992_ | | That explains the fax-mediated comments section. I guess HTML | FORMs[0,1] weren't going to hit until late[2] 93... | | [0] https://web.mit.edu/kolya/.f/root/net.mit.edu/sipb.mit.ed | u/u... | | [1] View Source confirms still in use by HN | | [2] http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www- | talk.1993q4/0447.ht... | dang wrote: | We've changed to that from | https://www.customers.com/articles/doug-engelbarts-design- | kn... above. Thanks! | Terretta wrote: | I read this as a prophecy of Foam | (https://github.com/foambubble/foam), Obsidian.md | (https://obsidian.md/), and the like. See this thread on Foam | from 2020: | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23666950 | | Despite "design for knowledge based organizations" being the | title of the article in the PDF, this is perhaps more about | approach and capabilities for organizing flow from capture to use | to pruning of knowledge, more than the organizations working on | knowledge. | | There is one aside about the organization itself: | | > _Engelbart sees every organization as a collection of | interacting knowledge domains. He has focused his research on | designing support structures for knowledge collection and | refinementwithin and across these knowledge domains._ | | But then that jumps down into a given domain, and goes on to | propose a knowledge management approach within that (and each) | domain. | | This is where it gets interestingly predictive of the recent | coalescence in knowledge management tools emerging after the two | dark age decades of style over semantics. | | The first idea is a concept of bringing knowledge in, working it, | and keeping it. He calls this Concurrent Development, | Integration, and Application of Knowledge (CODIAK) process. | | To make this workable he proposes a time-relevance layered | approach very similar to the (perhaps easier to action) "PARA" | method adopted by many KM tool users today: | | https://fortelabs.com/para | | After this, he goes into functional implications, and describes | almost to a T capabilities in the latest round of knowledge | management tooling "systems" such as, say, Obsidian.md, built on | standards (markdown, wikilinks, front matter) and extensibility | enabling journaling, querying, views, as first class citizens. | | When hypertext markup iterated into a page style description | advertorial tool rather than linked semantic knowledge structure, | that left an opening for the tools we're seeing now. Today, | Obsidian.md is close to the mark, except, of course, for | approachability by casuals. For casuals, consider e.g. Craft.do | (https://www.craft.do/). | | If you're doing a comparison before jumping in, it's worth | diffing the tools against Englebart's take. | | I'd argue he's dead on. | majormajor wrote: | There are similarities but I'd disagree with this: | | > Despite "design for knowledge based organizations" being the | title of the article in the PDF, this is perhaps more about | approach and capabilities for organizing flow from capture to | use to pruning of knowledge, more than the organizations | working on knowledge. | | I would agree that without the tools, an organization wouldn't | be able to collaborate effectively in the way he advocates for, | but I think unlocking group productivity should very much be | more the goal here than single-person productivity. From the | second page: "Englebert realized that they key to dealing with | increasing complexity was human collaboration." | | No amount of methodology will let a single person keep up with | a team using a similar methodology. | | Another key line from me: "Englebert is not advocating that we | perform artificial acts with documents by superimposing | structure on them. Instead, he advocates that we capture the | inherent structure in all forms of human expression in order to | make them easier for people to navigate through, view in | different ways, and hyperlink." | | As you note, there are a lot of similarities in there to Roam | Research and those similar systems, especially the cross- | linking/blocks type stuff vs just having a single hierarchical | document structure. But don't just think of it for your own | navigation and recollection, but for others to learn and get up | to speed and then offer their perspectives. | | But I think it's a big disservice to think about it only from a | single-person's POV vs a way of capturing knowledge inside a | group. | | Think of "git" for software dev too, which is very along the | lines of the logging/journaling of changes discussed in the | article, but which differs from some previous iterations by | being _far_ more multi-user friendly (remember fighting over | SVN locks?). | mikewarot wrote: | Bush's Memex and Engelbart's mother of all demos hint at | something much more powerful than HTML and the premature | optimization that we got as a result. | | In reading the pdf linked by Jtsummers, I recall how some of the | sales people I supported had 20+ gigabytes of email in their | inboxes... which drove me nuts (Exchange Server really didn't | cope well with it back then), and _now I know why_ , they were | building a hyperlinked database (well, threaded) that they could | search through. | | Here in HN, we do the same thing over time, building a tree | structured database that preserves context and is searchable. The | main limitation here is there's only one possible tree, and it's | the privileged view. | | There's at least a billion dollars of knowledge captured _here_ | in HN. Yet, it takes Dang and a strong community to keep that one | view rational, due to the corrupting forces of human nature and | profit motives from spam and scams. | | There's got to be a better way. | dr_dshiv wrote: | Autoencode it into the latent space of the collective | conceptual understanding. (See OpenAI's latest paper on | concepts arising due to "multimodal neurons" [1]). Then use all | of hacker news to "fine tune" GPT-x. That will preserve the | knowledge in a highly flexible manner that can be queried at | will to generate any representation you like. | | [1] https://openai.com/blog/multimodal-neurons/ | Xeoncross wrote: | I think Google, GPT-3, co-pilot, simple tricks like a | 'wordcloud' and even regurgitation/review communities like HN, | reddit and good reads show that the presentation format of the | information in a given system can be transformed to many | diverse representations. | | Books and movies have long made plots off new ways to help | humans learn things and form connections by either 1) changing | the presentation format or 2) downloading all the information | into the human brain to let it do the sorting. For example, | overlying data on a map in 3d using glasses or wiring a human | brain into a computer's serial ports. | | The main problem moving forward is making the data available. I | have a fear that in the future only governments and large | companies in bed with governments will have access to this data | and use it in unethical ways. | | Meanwhile, startups and individuals will be bared from creating | 'unlicensed' presentations or accessing the underlying data | itself (i.e. running a search engine) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-02 23:00 UTC)