Douglas Engelbart’s Unfinished Revolution 道格拉斯·恩格爾巴特：不只是鼠標之父

Douglas Engelbart knew that his obituaries1） would laud him as “Inventor of the Mouse.” I can see him smiling wistfully2）， ironically， at the thought. The mouse was such a small part of what Engelbart invented.

We now live in a world where people edit text on screens， command computers by clicking， communicate via audio-video and screen-sharing and use hyperlinks to navigate through knowledge—all ideas that Engelbart’s Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute invented in the 1960s. But Engelbart never got support for the larger part of what he wanted to build， even decades later when he finally got recognition for his achievements. When Stanford honored Engelbart with a two-day symposium3） in 2008， they called it “The Unfinished Revolution.”

To Engelbart， computers， interfaces and networks were means to a more important end—amplifying human intelligence to help us survive in the world we’ve created. He listed the end results of boosting what he called “collective IQ4）” in a 1962 paper， “Augmenting5） Human Intellect.” They included “more-rapid comprehension … better solutions， and the possibility of finding solutions to problems that before seemed insoluble.” If you want to understand where today’s information technologies came from， and where they might go， the paper still makes good reading.

Engelbart’s vision for more capable humans， enabled by electronic computers， came to him in 1945， after reading inventor and wartime research director Vannevar Bush6）’s Atlantic Monthly article “As We May Think.” Bush wrote： “The summation7） of human experience is being expanded at a prodigious8） rate， and the means we use for threading through9） the consequent maze10） to the momentarily important item is the same as was used in the days of square-rigged11） ships.”

That inspired Engelbart， a young electrical engineer， to come up with the idea of people using screens and computers to collaboratively solve problems. He worked on his ideas for the rest of his life， despite being warned over and over by people in academia and the computer industry that his ideas of using computers for anything other than scientific computations or business data processing was “crazy” and “science fiction.”

Englebart knew right from the start that screens， input devices， hardware， and software could allow the necessary collaborative problem-solving only as part of a system that included cognitive， social， and institutional changes. But he found introducing new ways for people to work together more effectively， the lynchpin12） of his overall vision， more difficult than transforming the way humans and computers interact.

Engelbart labored for most of his life and career to get anyone to think seriously about his ideas， of which the mouse was an essential but low-level component. Only for one decade did he get significant backing. In 1963， the U.S. Defense Department provided the wherewithal13） for Engelbart to assemble a team， create the future， and blow the mind of every computer designer in the world by way of what has come to be known as “the mother of all demos.”

I first met Engelbart in 1983 in his Cupertino14） office in a small building that was completely surrounded by the Apple campus. A company that no longer exists， Tymshare， had purchased what was left of Engelbart’s lab and hired him after the Stanford Research Institute stopped supporting the Augmentation Research Center due to the Department of Defense withdrawing funding.

Engelbart noted with dismay that although the personal computer was evolving quickly， the other elements of his plan weren’t. At the time， personal computers weren’t networked to one another—as terminals of large computers could be at the time—and they lacked a mouse or point-and-click15） interface.

Engelbart told me in our first conversation， as I’m sure he must have told many others， that the computer and mouse were just the “artifacts” in a system that centered on “humans using language， artifacts， and methodology.”

In the late 1980s， Engelbart set up his self-funded Bootstrap16） Institute to try and get his ideas about working more effectively the acceptance his artifacts had. He developed ways of analyzing how people acted inside an organization and specific techniques that he claimed would boost “collective IQ.” A set of detailed presentations on those methodologies started with what he called CODIAK17）. “Collective IQ is a measure of how effectively a collection of people can concurrently18） develop， integrate and apply its knowledge toward its mission，” Engelbart’s emphasized.

Mouse manufacturer Logitech provided office space， but the Bootstrap Institute—staffed by Engelbart and his daughter Christina—never sold bootstrapping， collective IQ， or CODIAK to any funder， major company or government department.

Engelbart’s failure to spread the less tangible parts of his vision stems from several circumstances. He was an engineer at heart， and engineers’ utopian solutions don’t always account for the complexities of human social institutions. He only added a social scientist to his lab just before it was shut down.

What’s more， Engelbart’s pitches19） of linked leaps in technology and organizational behaviors probably sounded as crazy to 1980s corporate managers as augmenting human intellect with machines did in the early 1960s. In the end， the way Silicon Valley companies work changed radically in recent decades not through established companies going through the kind of internal transformations Engelbart imagined， but by their being displaced by radical new start-ups.

When I talked with him again in the mid-2000s， Engelbart marveled that people carry around in their pockets millions of times more computer power than his entire lab had in the 1960s， but the less tangible parts of his system had still not evolved so spectacularly.

Like Tim Berners-Lee20）， Engelbart never sought to own what he contributed to the world’s ability to know. But he was frustrated to the end by the way so many people had adopted， developed and profited from the digital media he had helped create， while failing to pursue the important tasks he had created them to do.

道格拉斯·恩格爾巴特生前就知道他會在訃告中被譽為“鼠標的發明者”。我仿佛能看到他在想到這一點時那悵然若失、帶有諷刺意味的微笑——鼠標是恩格爾巴特全部發明中如此小的一部分。

在我們如今生活的這個世界里，人們在屏幕上編輯文本，通過點擊來操控計算機，通過音頻、視頻和屏幕共享來溝通，利用超鏈接來暢游知識海洋——所有這些創意都是由恩格爾巴特在斯坦福研究所成立的擴展研究中心于20世紀60年代首創的。然而，恩格爾巴特從未得到過支持來實現他構想中更主要的部分，甚至在幾十年后他終于功成名就時也是如此。2008年，斯坦福大學舉辦了一場為期兩天的專題報告會向恩格爾巴特致敬，他們將報告會命名為“未竟的革命”。

對恩格爾巴特而言，計算機、界面和網絡都是途徑，用以實現一個更重要的目的——提升人類智能，從而幫助我們在自己創造的世界中生存下去。在他1962年一篇題為《提升人類智能》的論文中，恩格爾巴特列出了提高他所說的“集體智商”的最終結果，其中包括“更快的理解力……更好的解決方案，以及為那些以前看似無解的問題找到解決辦法的可能性”。如果你想了解當今信息技術的起源和未來走向，這篇論文仍然值得一讀。

恩格爾巴特想要通過電子計算機來增強人類能力的構想誕生于1945年，那時他剛閱讀了《誠如所思》一文。這是當時美國的發明家和戰時科研主管范內瓦·布什發表在《大西洋月刊》上的一篇文章。布什在文中寫道：“人類經驗的總和正在以驚人的速度增長，而我們用于穿越隨之而來的經驗迷宮以尋找當下重要之物的方法卻與過去建造橫帆船時的方法別無二致。”

這些話啟發了恩格爾巴特。這位當時還很年輕的電氣工程師提出了如下構想：人們可以通過屏幕和計算機來協作解決問題。此后他將余生都獻給了這一構想，盡管學術界和計算機行業的業內人士反復告誡他說，他那些要將計算機用于除科學計算或商業數據處理外的任何領域的構想都是“瘋狂的”“科幻小說般的”念頭。

恩格爾巴特從一開始就知道，只有當屏幕、輸入設備、硬件和軟件成為包括認知變化、社會變化以及體制變化的系統的一部分時，才能促成人們實現必要的協作，找到問題的解決方案。他整個構想的關鍵是要推行能讓人們更高效地共同工作的新方式，但他發現這比轉變人機交互方式還要難。

在他生命和職業生涯的大部分時間里，恩格爾巴特都在致力于讓人們認真考慮他的構想，而鼠標是他的所有構想中必不可少卻又比較初級的一部分。他只在十年時間里得到過大力支持。1963年，美國國防部為恩格爾巴特提供了必要的資金來組建一支團隊，創造未來，并通過后來被稱為“演示之母”的一次演示給世界上每一位計算機設計師留下了深刻印象。

1983年，我首次與恩格爾巴特見面是在他位于庫比蒂諾市一棟小樓內的辦公室里。這棟樓完全處于蘋果公司園區的包圍之中。由于國防部撤回了資金，斯坦福研究所也終止了對擴展研究中心的支持。之后，一家如今已經不復存在的公司——泰姆謝爾收購了恩格爾巴特的實驗室，并雇用了他。

恩格爾巴特沮喪地發現，盡管個人計算機一直在快速演變，但他的計劃中的其余組成部分卻并非如此。當時，個人計算機并未像那時的大型計算機終端那樣相互聯網，而且也沒有鼠標或點擊界面。

在我們的第一次交談中，恩格爾巴特告訴我——我確信他一定也曾告訴過很多其他人——在一個以“使用語言、人工制品和方法的人類”為中心的系統中，計算機和鼠標僅僅是“人工制品”。

在20世紀80年代末，恩格爾巴特自己出資成立了引導研究所，以便試驗其關于更高效工作的構想，并讓該構想也能像他的人工制品（編注：指鼠標）那樣為人們所接受。他創造出了一些方法，用于分析人們如何在一個組織內行動，還開發出了他聲稱將提高“集體智商”的具體技術。以被他稱為“CODIAK”的概念框架為開端，恩格爾巴特進行了一系列關于那些方法的詳盡展示。“集體智商用于衡量一群人同時開發、整合并應用其知識來完成任務的有效程度。”恩格爾巴特強調道。

引導研究所的辦公場地由鼠標制造商羅技公司提供，但該研究所從未將引導、集體智商或CODIAK概念出售給任何出資者、大公司或政府部門。恩格爾巴特及其女兒克里斯蒂娜擔任該研究所的主要工作人員。

恩格爾巴特沒能成功地將其構想中比較抽象的部分傳播出去，這歸因于幾個因素。恩格爾巴特從本質上講是一個工程師，而工程師那烏托邦式的解決方案并非總能解釋人類社會制度的復雜性。他只在實驗室被關閉前增添了一位社會科學家。

此外，對于20世紀80年代的企業管理者們而言，恩格爾巴特關于技術與組織行為共同飛躍發展的論點聽起來很瘋狂，就和利用機器提升人類智能的論點在20世紀60年代初的遭遇一樣。終于，硅谷公司的運作方式在最近幾十年發生了劇烈變化，不過實現方式并不是老牌公司經歷恩格爾巴特所想象的那種內部變革，而是老牌公司被激進的初創公司所取代。

2005年左右，我再次和恩格爾巴特交談時，他感嘆道，人們口袋中隨身攜帶的設備的計算能力比20世紀60年代他整個實驗室的計算能力要強上數百萬倍，但是他構想的系統中比較抽象的部分依然沒有發生如此驚人的演變。

恩格爾巴特為提升世界認知能力作出了貢獻。和蒂姆·伯納斯·李一樣，他從未想過去占有這些成果。他創造數字媒體是為了實現崇高的使命，但有如此多的人在采用、開發他曾協助創造的數字媒體，并從中獲利，卻沒能繼續這一使命，這令他最終感到失望。

1.obituary [??b?t?u?ri] n. 訃告

2.wistfully [?w?stf（?）li] adv. 悶悶不樂地，愁眉苦臉地

3.symposium [s?m?p??zi?m] n. 專題報告會

4.collective IQ：集體智商

5.augment [??ɡ?ment] vt. 加強；提高

6.Vannevar Bush：范內瓦·布什（1890～1974），美國著名的科學家和教育家，被譽為“信息時代的教父”。

7.summation [s??me??（?）n] n. [數]和

8.prodigious [pr??d?d??s] adj. 驚人的；異常的

9.thread through：通過，使穿透

10.maze [me?z] n. 迷宮，迷網

11.square-rigged [?skwe?（r）?r?ɡd] adj. [海事] （帆船）橫帆式的

12.lynchpin [?l?nt?p?n] n. 關鍵

13.wherewithal [?we?（r）w?e???l] n. 必要的資金（或資源、設備、手段等）

14.Cupertino：庫比蒂諾，一個位于美國加州舊金山灣區南部的城市，蘋果全球總公司的所在地

15.point-and-click [?p??nt?nd?kl?k] adj. [計] （界面）可點擊的

16.bootstrap [?bu?tstr?p] n. [計] 引導，自展（啟動程序的系統），即用一個很小的程序將某個特定的程序（通常指操作系統）載入計算機中。

17.CODIAK：恩格爾巴特自創的縮寫，即“知識的同時開發、融合與應用”（Concurrent Development， Integration and Application of Knowledge）。

18.concurrently [k?n?k?r?ntli] adv. 同時地，一起

19.pitch [p?t?] n. 宣傳論點

20.Tim Berners-Lee：蒂姆·伯納斯·李（1955～），萬維網的發明者，互聯網之父