I want to return to Vannevar Bush. His paper is generally recognized as the first seminal work on knowledge augmentation. This work was developed and turned into an extended research program by Doug Engalbart, Allen Kay, Ted Nelson and others. Practicing architecture, I was ignorant of all this work when I built the conceptual model of CyberCon. I built my concepts of augmentation from my study of cybernetics and systems, and, from thinking about and designing solutions in hope of supporting the work I was doing. This involved jumping from theory to practice with very little awareness of the state or course of technology at the time. At the Renascence Project and MG Taylor, we conceived a great deal of the Internet, e-commerce and the form-factors of the devices used today. I was hostile and remain so to the notion of “applications” as they emerged in the personal computer world and was astounded by the augmentation literature when I first discovered it in the mid-80s. It seems that these seminal thinkers assumed many of the same approaches that I had. The difference is they were in the game and had a great impact in the early days of personal computing and the building of network systems. I do not see so much of this influence now. I do know from causal dialog, in recent years, with Doug Engalbart that he believes many - perhaps, most - of his ideas and those of his peers have been ignored he is carrying on the work at the Bootstrap Institute [future link]. I believe that he sees little of what he would call true augmentation in the marketplace today. It is all about “applications” that let you do things not about capabilities that augment your ability to produce solutions. For me, all this went full circle when the Japan Stanford Institute had me come to Japan, in 2001, to dialog with a group of engineers, from different disciplines, whose task was to go back to As We May Think and see what the opportunities are for this thinking given the technology that now exists. A worthy task. We should rethink “as We May Think.” Technology development is the consequence of “push-pull” processes - it is heuristic and intentional at the same time. Innovation pushes - the market adapts innovation and itself - and pulls. It is possible to be brilliant and blind to greater consequences and opportunities at the same time. It is possible to think of old ideas as out of date, irrelevant or wrong when then may have real gold buried in them from the perspective of capability and experience that did not exist in their time. Originating ideas often are proven flawed or are just skipped over but they often carry a clarity and power that is lost down the long road of realization and commercialization. Bush did not have the technology we have today. I think he would be astounded to see our capability but disappointed in how we have employed it. He did have a firm understanding of the core issues related to knowledge management (a term I do not like) and a number of ideas that are still not accomplished - and still needed. Like many seminal thinkers who pioneered a new model, he had insights which still ring true and represent worthy challenges for today’s designers. Bush was thinking systemically. Much of what I see now is “parts” focused with little integration from an augmentation perspective.