Douglas Engelbart’s Unfinished Revolution 道格拉斯·恩格尔巴特:不只是鼠标之父

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·恩格尔巴特生前就知道他会在讣告中被誉为“鼠标的发明者”。我仿佛能看到他在想到这一点时那怅然若失、带有讽刺意味的微笑——鼠标是恩格尔巴特全部发明中如此小的一部分。

在我们如今生活的这个世界里，人们在屏幕上编辑文本，通过点击来操控计算机，通过音频、视频和屏幕共享来沟通，利用超链接来畅游知识海洋——所有这些创意都是由恩格尔巴特在斯坦福研究所成立的扩展研究中心于20世纪60年代首创的。然而，恩格尔巴特从未得到过支持来实现他构想中更主要的部分，甚至在几十年后他终于功成名就时也是如此。2008年，斯坦福大学举办了一场为期两天的专题报告会向恩格尔巴特致敬，他们将报告会命名为“未竟的革命”。

对恩格尔巴特而言，计算机、界面和网络都是途径，用以实现一个更重要的目的——提升人类智能，从而帮助我们在自己创造的世界中生存下去。在他1962年一篇题为《提升人类智能》的论文中，恩格尔巴特列出了提高他所说的“集体智商”的最终结果，其中包括“更快的理解力……更好的解决方案，以及为那些以前看似无解的问题找到解决办法的可能性”。如果你想了解当今信息技术的起源和未来走向，这篇论文仍然值得一读。

恩格尔巴特想要通过电子计算机来增强人类能力的构想诞生于1945年，那时他刚阅读了《诚如所思》一文。这是当时美国的发明家和战时科研主管范内瓦·布什发表在《大西洋月刊》上的一篇文章。布什在文中写道：“人类经验的总和正在以惊人的速度增长，而我们用于穿越随之而来的经验迷宫以寻找当下重要之物的方法却与过去建造横帆船时的方法别无二致。”

这些话启发了恩格尔巴特。这位当时还很年轻的电气工程师提出了如下构想：人们可以通过屏幕和计算机来协作解决问题。此后他将余生都献给了这一构想，尽管学术界和计算机行业的业内人士反复告诫他说，他那些要将计算机用于除科学计算或商业数据处理外的任何领域的构想都是“疯狂的”“科幻小说般的”念头。

恩格尔巴特从一开始就知道，只有当屏幕、输入设备、硬件和软件成为包括认知变化、社会变化以及体制变化的系统的一部分时，才能促成人们实现必要的协作，找到问题的解决方案。他整个构想的关键是要推行能让人们更高效地共同工作的新方式，但他发现这比转变人机交互方式还要难。

在他生命和职业生涯的大部分时间里，恩格尔巴特都在致力于让人们认真考虑他的构想，而鼠标是他的所有构想中必不可少却又比较初级的一部分。他只在十年时间里得到过大力支持。1963年，美国国防部为恩格尔巴特提供了必要的资金来组建一支团队，创造未来，并通过后来被称为“演示之母”的一次演示给世界上每一位计算机设计师留下了深刻印象。

1983年，我首次与恩格尔巴特见面是在他位于库比蒂诺市一栋小楼内的办公室里。这栋楼完全处于苹果公司园区的包围之中。由于国防部撤回了资金，斯坦福研究所也终止了对扩展研究中心的支持。之后，一家如今已经不复存在的公司——泰姆谢尔收购了恩格尔巴特的实验室，并雇用了他。

恩格尔巴特沮丧地发现，尽管个人计算机一直在快速演变，但他的计划中的其余组成部分却并非如此。当时，个人计算机并未像那时的大型计算机终端那样相互联网，而且也没有鼠标或点击界面。

在我们的第一次交谈中，恩格尔巴特告诉我——我确信他一定也曾告诉过很多其他人——在一个以“使用语言、人工制品和方法的人类”为中心的系统中，计算机和鼠标仅仅是“人工制品”。

在20世纪80年代末，恩格尔巴特自己出资成立了引导研究所，以便试验其关于更高效工作的构想，并让该构想也能像他的人工制品（编注：指鼠标）那样为人们所接受。他创造出了一些方法，用于分析人们如何在一个组织内行动，还开发出了他声称将提高“集体智商”的具体技术。以被他称为“CODIAK”的概念框架为开端，恩格尔巴特进行了一系列关于那些方法的详尽展示。“集体智商用于衡量一群人同时开发、整合并应用其知识来完成任务的有效程度。”恩格尔巴特强调道。

引导研究所的办公场地由鼠标制造商罗技公司提供，但该研究所从未将引导、集体智商或CODIAK概念出售给任何出资者、大公司或政府部门。恩格尔巴特及其女儿克里斯蒂娜担任该研究所的主要工作人员。

恩格尔巴特没能成功地将其构想中比较抽象的部分传播出去，这归因于几个因素。恩格尔巴特从本质上讲是一个工程师，而工程师那乌托邦式的解决方案并非总能解释人类社会制度的复杂性。他只在实验室被关闭前增添了一位社会科学家。

此外，对于20世纪80年代的企业管理者们而言，恩格尔巴特关于技术与组织行为共同飞跃发展的论点听起来很疯狂，就和利用机器提升人类智能的论点在20世纪60年代初的遭遇一样。终于，硅谷公司的运作方式在最近几十年发生了剧烈变化，不过实现方式并不是老牌公司经历恩格尔巴特所想象的那种内部变革，而是老牌公司被激进的初创公司所取代。

2005年左右，我再次和恩格尔巴特交谈时，他感叹道，人们口袋中随身携带的设备的计算能力比20世纪60年代他整个实验室的计算能力要强上数百万倍，但是他构想的系统中比较抽象的部分依然没有发生如此惊人的演变。

恩格尔巴特为提升世界认知能力作出了贡献。和蒂姆·伯纳斯·李一样，他从未想过去占有这些成果。他创造数字媒体是为了实现崇高的使命，但有如此多的人在采用、开发他曾协助创造的数字媒体，并从中获利，却没能继续这一使命，这令他最终感到失望。

1. obituary [??b?t?u?ri] n. 讣告

2. wistfully [?w?stf（?）li] adv. 闷闷不乐地，愁眉苦脸地

3. symposium [s?m?p??zi?m] n. 专题报告会

4. collective IQ：集体智商

5. augment [??ɡ?ment] vt. 加强；提高

6. Vannevar Bush：范内瓦·布什（1890～1974），美国著名的科学家和教育家，被誉为“信息时代的教父”。

7. summation [s??me??（?）n] n. [数]和

8. prodigious [pr??d?d??s] adj. 惊人的；异常的

9. thread through：通过，使穿透

10. maze [me?z] n. 迷宫，迷网

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

12. lynchpin [?l?nt?p?n] n. 关键

13. wherewithal [?we?（r）w?????l] n. 必要的资金（或资源、设备、手段等）

14. Cupertino：库比蒂诺，一个位于美国加州旧金山湾区南部的城市，苹果全球总公司的所在地

15. point-and-click [?p??nt?nd?kl?k] adj. [计] （界面）可点击的

16. bootstrap [?bu?tstr?p] n. [计] 引导，自展（启动程序的系统），即用一个很小的程序将某个特定的程序（通常指操作系统）载入计算机中。

17. CODIAK：恩格尔巴特自创的缩写，即“知识的同时开发、融合与应用”（Concurrent Development， Integration and Application of Knowledge）。

18. concurrently [k?n?k?r?ntli] adv. 同时地，一起

19. pitch [p?t?] n. 宣传论点

20. Tim Berners-Lee：蒂姆·伯纳斯·李（1955～），万维网的发明者，互联网之父