Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing (Writing Science) (Paperback)

by Thierry Bardini (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Some revolutions are thoroughly televised. When Douglas Engelbart first demonstrated small-w windows and a funny wooden device called a mouse back in 1968, interest jumped quickly and he became the progenitor of the PC. Now, less widely known than the successful entrepreneurs who made billions from his innovations, his story deserves deeper attention as an outstanding example of practical creative research. Communications professor Thierry Bardini examines the scope of his work before and during his tenure at the Stanford Research Institute in Bootstrapping, a thoughtful history of an underreported story.

Bardini cleverly sidesteps the postmodern superanalysis of his colleagues to present a clear, straightforward glimpse into Engelbart's environment of inspiration. As an engineer familiar with the earliest computers, he quickly came to understand that their complexity could rapidly outpace human ability to cope--and thus was born the concept of the "user." His team used their computing power to determine how best to use their computing power--a reflexive assignment of profound brilliance--and churned out novel concepts and designs faster than their contemporaries could absorb them.

How and why this occurred as it did is the focus of Bardini's research, and students of creativity and the history of computing will have fits of ecstasy that he has compiled his work so accessibly. Better still, Bootstrapping shows research done right and is essential reading for R&D types everywhere. --Rob Lightner

Review

“Bootstrapping fills an important gap in the story of personal computing.”—Technology and Culture

“Thierry Bardini particularly explores the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of Engelbart’s book. . . . Indeed, the breadth of Engelbart’s contributions and influence, documented in meticulous detail, are astonishing. . . .”—Enterprise & Society

“Anyone who has worked in computer-human interface or in and around Silicon Valley institutions such as SRI, Xerox PARC, IBM Almaden Research Center or Apple Computer will certainly relish this book. Moreover, those in a private, government or non-profit office filled with the fruits of contemporary productivity technology will appreciate Bardini’s tales of politics, committees, funding and grants, demos to funders and skeptical management, and all those fascinating projects at PARC and SRI.”—Leonardo Reviews

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Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press; 1 edition (November 20, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804738718
• ISBN-13: 978-0804738712
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #213,816 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Story of a little known pioneer!, August 4, 2001

By A Customer

These days only the big guys get the credit for the technology we use every day. In Bootstrapping, Bardini looks at the life and contributions of Douglas Engelbart to the personal computing revolution. More than the story of technology, Bootstrapping is the story of a personal crusade to make interfacing with computers easier. Bardini focuses too much on the person and not enough on the context of Engelbart's innovations, hence the 4 stars.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Uneven, but interesting account of Engelbart's crusade., May 24, 2005

By	Marcin Wichary (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While possibly everyone even mildly interested in the history of GUIs will have heard of Doug Engelbart's groundbreaking "mother of all demos" of oNLine System from 1968, there's usually much less emphasis on its history, relevance and context. "Bootstrapping" provides this knowledge, giving a detailed history of Doug Engelbart's "crusade" -- starting with his studies and ending with the closure of Augmentation Research Center. It also positions NLS in a broader context of Engelbart's vision of the symbiosis of the user and the system, which went much further and deeper than just the mouse and proto-hypertext (that's not to say that these inventions do not get their fair share of attention in the book). Superbly researched, the book suffers from sometimes overly dry and scholarly tone, going into unnecessary details, and perhaps exhibiting too much sympathy for Engelbart. However, it's worth its cover price, even if for accurate portrayal of the future that hasn't been.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An Academic Work--Throrough but very dry, August 12, 2008

By	...Bill (St. Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews

Audience: Academics, detail-oriented historians of computer interaction

I bought this book looking for a detailed history of Douglas Engelbart's work and Bardini certainly delivers that. Actually too much detail. The result is a very thorough and detailed history, but one that's not engaging to read and meanders into minutia. As written, it's for only those deeply interested with the NLS system history and patient enough to wade through sub-topics better left to appendices. To be of interest to a wider audience it needs serious editing and rewriting to provide a story arc to the history.

Details:

It's clear that Bardini had unprecedented access to many of the key people from Engelbart's group as well as the archives. This means he had a unique opportunity to write a definitive history. The problem is one of editing; it often feels like having that having all this information at hand he decided to incorporate more of it than appropriate for a story narrative. The result is copiously annotated doctoral thesis and not an engaging (hi-)story.

For example, impact of '60s era movements like est as archived in the SRI logs is extensively tracked including several pages of re-presenting another book's story on the event. The author goes into great details of the group dynamics need to be covered and are worthy of following -as if this was new, unique or special because of the time and place where the group worked. Certainly it had its particular nuances, but it could have been summarized in a just a few pages (or paragraphs) to keep the story moving along.

In contrast to the sidebar topics, the famous 1968 "Mother of All Demos" is presented almost as an afterthought. The author seems to take for granted that the reader has seen the video (something easier to do today than when the book came out in 2000) and does little to really capture the impact it had. There's no description or transcript; just a few photos, some comments and a dry inventory of the major effort it represented. What should be a (even "the") climax to the book seems to pass by with less description and detail than many other lesser sub-topics.

That said, the dedicated reader will get a much deeper understanding of what drove Doug and how his group created the computing experience we now take for granted. It does provide the greater picture of how far advanced the vision was. It clarifies the distinction between "user augmentation" and "user friendly" but doesn't really follow that through to the current day. It stops when the NLS project ends (1974) and doesn't follow anything of Doug's work or the themes forward. The "coda" section makes some effort to put the work into perspective but quickly spins in multiple directions and lacks focus.