Facilitating the Evolution of

our Collective IQ
Strategically improving our capability for
coping with complex, urgent, large-scale
problems.

Douglas C. Engelbart
Accelerating-Change Conference
Stanford University, 7-Nov-04
 Life-Changing Epiphany
Just-engaged, 25-yr-old Country Kid,
full of excited thoughts about building a family:
“Hey, but there’s also that professional career.
Some big plans there, too?” (Over-does it!)

Let me design a professional

goal which will maximize the
contribution my career can
make to mankind!
 Weeks Later: Naïve Country Kid’s
Lifetime Goal Emerged, and Stuck!

“As much as possible, to boost

mankind’s collective capability
for coping with complex, urgent
problems”

Continuous, dedicated pursuit

now for over 50 years.
 Consider a community’s Collective IQ
as its relative capability for dealing with
complex, urgent problems
• To understand them as thoroughly as
possible
• To unearth the best candidate solutions
• To assess resources and operational
capabilities and select appropriate solution
commitments
• To understand how best to organize and
execute selected approaches
• To monitor progress and adapt effectively to
unforeseen complications. Etc. …
 Collective IQ:
Emerged As Primary Strategic Focus

Dynamic COncurrently
Knowledge Developing,
Repository Integrating, &
Applying
Knowledge

CODIAK Capability
 “Capabilities” become a key,
central consideration
… and we find very important things to
observe about our capabilities:
Consider how they are derived;
And how they form an “infrastructure” that
opens an important perspective to our
quest for
significantly boosting
our “Collective IQ”!
Humans’ Capabilities Depend Upon
their Augmentation System
Capability
Human System Infrastructure Tool System
Paradigms Media
Organization Portrayal
Procedures Views
Study
Customs
Manipulations
Methods
Retrieve
Language Compute
Attitudes Communicate

Skills
Knowledge Basic Human Capabilities
Training Sensory Perceptual
Motor Mental

(This interface is much more significant than “HCI”)

 This Augmentation Model
is valid over huge scale!
Individual Community A Complete The World
Human Of Practice Country Collective IQ
Collective IQ
Collective IQ
Operative IQ

Purposefully pursuing accelerated evolution of mankind’s

knowledge development and application capabilities is
a HUGE CHALLENGE, and
requires very effective strategies in applying our resources.
 Critical Factor:
“Concurrent” Evolution of
Society’s DKRs

Concurrency: Recorded Intelligence Aggregate

Dialog Collection DKR
Scaling Up --
actually, to
global scope.
Dialog Intell. DKR
 Large-Scale Facilitated
Evolution
• No one can specify the design for our future
capability infrastructure
– Far too many of the possible “improvement
steps” will change the design environment for
other improvement candidates.

• Have to depend upon an Evolutionary

Process!
• BUT, we CAN learn to FACILITATE this
evolutionary process!
 The World’s Organizations
in Human-Tool Space
Representative distribution of world’s societies

Anticipate-able
Human System Development

Today
Tool System Utilization
 “Co-Evolution Frontier”
Human-Systems and Tool Systems
Interactively Co-Evolving
• Technology's quantum leaps generate accelerating
rate of opportunities.
• But, human paradigms already lag behind
opportunities.
• The scale of technology change = >
• Paradigm changes have to be accelerated
– Human skills, culture, governance already severely
stressed
Critically needed:
Effective Facilitation of our Co-Evolution.
 Emergent Co-Evolution Frontier
On a scale we can barely anticipate
Where best should your organization head?
….By what route? Who else is out there?
Human System Development

Uncharted, and Changing

 We need a DKR
that provides the
best possible
Best Routes? understanding of the
current and projected
states of this frontier.
 Every member
Outposts? organization can then
make its own choices
about its movements
into this frontier.

Tool System Utilization

Networked Improvement Community (NIC)
An Augmented Improvement Community,
Using best-practice Collective-IQ Capability
To improve its common-choice group capability.

Networked Improvement Community (NIC)

Org 1 Dynamic Knowledge Repository

Recorded Intelligence Knowledge

Org 2 Dialog Collections Products
• Investigate & collect intelligence
• Share experience of using leading-edge,
collective-IQ practices.
• Objective: provide best understanding of
Org N the “Co-Evolution Frontier” for augmenting
this capability.
 Large-Scale Facilitated Evolution

Common Goal: Continuous Improvement of Large-Scale

Collective Capabilities.
• Networked Improvement Communities (NICs) defined
around specific areas of interest
• Prime Goal: Improve Collective IQ of NICs!
• Organize NICs into a large-scale Improvement
Infrastructure
– for facilitating the Concurrent Evolution
– of the associated Augmentation Systems.
Central Strategy: Bootstrapping
1 2
NIC for Improving
Collective IQ

The Bootstrap Feedback Loop

1. Currently available information about Collective IQ
2. Best DKR/knowledge about improving Collective IQ
3. NIC immediately utilizing the best Collective IQ
improvement knowledge

The better we get at getting better, the

better and faster we’ll get better.
Bootstrapping: Extension to Many NICs

NIC for
Improving
Collective IQ The Bootstrap
Feedback Loop

NIC for
Improving
Capability X

NIC for
Improving
Capability Z.
 Towards Effective Facilitation
Where/How to Start our First NICs?

Universities?

Government Professional
Agencies? Societies?
NIC
Candidates?

Special
Philanthropic Improvement
Organizations? Infrastructures?

Businesses?
 The Need For An
Open Hyperdocument System (OHS)
To support the implementation and use of DKRs

• “Open” - Scaleable, evolvable, interoperable

across domains
• “Hyper” - To enhance access, maneuverability,
verification, study and integration.
• “Document” – The Knowledge Container into
which the emerging heterogeneous knowledge
is captured, integrated, and managed.
• “System” - Provides a complete “Community
Knowledge Workshop”

OHS - the critical missing piece

 Generalize and Extend the
“Hyper” term
Let “Hyper” mean this:
“anything that new technology can bring to
the generation, storage, processing, and
portrayal of symbolized knowledge.”
– This definition provides much more than is
included in current “Hypertext”.
– E.g.: High-Resolution Addressing;
Optional Viewing; Heightened Mobility;
Powerful Manipulation Capabilities; etc…
 Other Framework Items:
• Early Kickoff: a DKR about example DKRs
• Open Hyperdocument System (OHS)
• Launching OHS evolution: The HyperScope
• Knowledge-Workshop Architects
• Pedestrian Users … High-Performance Users
• Multiple UIS Options
• High-Performance Support Teams
• Inevitable: Hardcopy documents become
obsolete.
Challenges for DKR Development & Use:
Rationale for Building a DKR of DKR’s
• Special sets of skills required for increasing
capabilities
– Who will provide the integration & linking of
disparate information into the solid, verifiable
DKR structures
• Properties & structural principles for DKR
knowledge containers will be critical part of DKR
evolution
• Dynamic, seamless integration of new data while
preserving the DKR’s evolutionary history
• Assessment and rating of the organization’s
capabilities to develop and use its DKRs
• Capability Infrastructure – support a wide range
of usage capabilities, e.g. multiple user interfaces
that reflect increasing levels of user expertise.
 Selected Reference Links
• Subset of pubs that are on the Web:
http://www.bootstrap.org/institute/bibliography.html

With Special interest in Items below:

• #3: Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual

Framework. Douglas C. Engelbart. 1962.

• #29: Toward High-Performance Organizations: A

Strategic Role for Groupware. Douglas C.
Engelbart. 1992.

• #32: A Draft OHS-Project Plan (The HyperScope)

Douglas C. Engelbart. 2000.
 Argument visualization
resources
• Scholarly Ontologies Project
www.kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/scholonto
Visualizing Argumentation
(2003)

www.VisualizingArgumentation.info

Argument mapping for scholarly

publishing, scientific and public
policy debates, education,
teamwork, and organisational
memory.
 More Reference Links
• Extensive general listing:
– http://www.usabilityvews.com/eng_by_backlinks.html .
 THE END!!
AC Conference Presentation
Created and Presented by:
Doug Engelbart