Common ground
Rosemary Michelle Simpson · interactions · 1996
perspective 1995-1997 is a watershed period for computing with the 50th anniversaries for Vannevar Bush's seminal article "As We May Think," computing itself (marked from the construction of the ENIAC), and ACM.It is a time in which the notion of human augmentation which underlay Bush's article is taking on entirely new meanings, and during which the global electronic village is becoming a reality.CHI 96's theme, Common Ground, could be taken as the theme of the entire year-a year in which the research, Internet, and user communities forge a new alliance.Conferences are freeze-frame snapshots of the work of a community at a given point in time.They provide invaluable opportunities for integrating the current state of that work.What is needed in addition is a resource that provides continuity across communities and time, linking together people and ongoing projects as the work develops.A web site can provide that and can be an ongoing resource that, in reflecting the past and present work of a community, influences the future directions that community takes.Brown University is developing such a web site from hypertext conference, workshop, and symposia materials archiving the roots of past work and reflecting current research, people, institutions, and commercial projects.Immediate plans for the contents of the site include: digitized videotapes of the Bush Symposium, a hypertext of symposium transcripts, and dynamic tracking of research and commercial developments, including projects, people, institutions, publications, conferences, and themes.In this note I describe some of the interre-lated ideas and the people who are presenting them in a series of conferences, and then close with more details about the Web site plans.