APD pee 17-pEc~70 11:29 5255 ° INTELLECTUAL IMPLICATIONS of MULTE*ACCESS COMPUTER NETWORKS INTELLECTUAL IMPLICATIONS OF MULTI-AOCESS COMPUTER NETWORKS D. Ce Engelbart, Stanford Research Institute : A paper for the Froceedings of The Interdisciplinary Conference on Multi-Access Computer Networks Austin, Texas, April 1970 ORGANISMS AND ORGANIZATIONS I'll take an Unlikely start and begin with dinosaurs, I have @ six-year-old son who is tremendously impressed and intrigued with dinosaurs. We read and re#=read ali of the dinosaur books, and every time we go to the library we have to bring home new ones. , Consider a dinosaur (with what little we know and much we may speculate) ag a big, monstrous organism whose specialized Organs cooperated reasonably well by the then-prevailing standards of "orgenism design", but whose function was coordinated by a clumsy, crude nervous system and a pitiful little brain. My image of this "clumsy nervous system' can be Characterized py the story I've heard (or perhare this is one that I've invented for six-yeare~old consumption, and now. believe) about an embattled dinesaur not.sensing for several Minutes that it was dead. But yet apparently this was an organilem marvelously fitted to its environment. The dinosaurs thrived for over 200 million years, aS I remember from all those books, much Longer than our race has heen around, But suddenly -= suddenly in terms of geological time -= they disappeared, My learned deduction, derived from firstecrade sectentific literature, 1s that competition from better=designed nervous systems did them in: better sensors; better sensory=data analyzers (perception); pvetter peripheral contingency decision Making (reflexes); better coordination of the functioning of cr@ans, muscles, ete.; better rational analyses of events and history; better accumulation of learned experience; better projection, visualization and planning, etce, etc. I Want to fix in your minds an image of a biological organism that possessed formidable capability within the environment ea 2b 2c 2a DCE 17=DEC#70 11:29 5255 INTELLECTUAL IMPLICATIONS of MULTI*ACCESS COMPUTER NETWORKS into which it evolved, but which couldn't make the gerade against the competition that a continuing evolution brought into that environment. Human organizations can be likened to biological organisms, ana I find much value in considering the analogy. Organizations evolve too; their mutations are continually emerging and being tested for survival value within their environment. I happen to feel that evolution of their environment is beginning to threaten today's organizations, large and small == finding them seriously deficient in their "nervous-system" design -= and that the degree of coordination, perception, rational adaptation, etc. which will appear in the next generation of human organizations will drive our present organizational forms, with their "clumsy nervous systems", into extinction. It is these "nervous-system" functions, within human organizations, where I find the most significant intellectual implications stemming from the forthcoming multi-access computer networks, AUGMENTATION SYSTEMS For many years I have been developing a research program at Stanford Research Institute aimed at Augmenting the Human Intellect. By intellect I mean the human competence to make, Send, exchange and apply to decisionemakinge the commodity Called Knowledge, as applied toward giving human individuals and organizations more effectiveness at formulating and pursuing their goals. My basic formulation of such a pursuit considers a large system of things to be involved in being intellectual, and being successful at it.