# Bootstrapping *By Thierry Bardini. Stanford University Press (Writing Science series), December 2000.* > I did not read the book. The description and contents come from the publisher and library listings; the reception comes from review abstracts I found by search, and I did not read the reviews in full. The author's background comes from his own CV and a conference biography. I give no page-level claims about the book's arguments. The source that mentioned it, the Doug Engelbart Institute's biography page, lists it only as further reading. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing* | | Author | Thierry Bardini | | Publisher | Stanford University Press, in the *Writing Science* series | | Published | December 2000 (publisher) | | ISBNs | Hardcover 9780804737234; paperback 9780804738712; ebook 9781503618367 (ebook published 21 January 2022 per De Gruyter) | | Pages | The publisher and Waterstones list 312 pages. A review in *Enterprise & Society* gives "xix + 284 pp.", and Google Books lists 284. The difference is probably the back matter, but I did not check | | Translation | Japanese, Computer Age Co., Tokyo, 2003 (author's CV) | | Language | English | **Where it came up.** One mention, as the first item in the "Selected reading" list: - [Doug Engelbart: Biography](https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/183/), a sourced biography compiled from the Doug Engelbart Institute, ACM and other published sources (note published 1 November 2026). The note also draws on Bardini's ACM Turing Award biography of Engelbart. Vault note: [[Video Summaries/Doug Engelbart/Doug Engelbart - Biography]] ## 2. Book resources **Free (legal).** In copyright; I found no legal free full text. - **Internet Archive / Open Library.** Open Library lists scans, such as [bootstrapping00thie](https://archive.org/details/bootstrapping00thie) and [bootstrappingdou00bard_0](https://archive.org/details/bootstrappingdou00bard_0), all flagged print-disabled lending only (ordinary borrowing may not be available). I did not open the borrow pages. - **Libby/OverDrive.** I found no copy in the Los Angeles Public Library catalog. Your own library or an interlibrary loan may have the print book. I did not check Hoopla. **Paid.** - Publisher: [Stanford University Press](https://www.sup.org/books/media-studies/bootstrapping) (hardcover and paperback; opened via search). - Ebook: [De Gruyter Brill](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781503618367/html) (I did not check price or access terms). - Amazon: an Amazon search showed [a listing with hardcover, paperback and Kindle formats](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJ516RK1). I did not open it, so I have not checked price, stock or which format is which. - Audible: no audiobook found. - Waterstones prices in the search result (£112 hardback, £26.99 paperback) are a snapshot. **Cover:** [Open Library cover image](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/577827-L.jpg). ## 3. Author biography Thierry Bardini is a French sociologist and full professor in the Department of Communication at the Université de Montréal, where he has taught since 1993 and chaired the department from 2015 to 2019. He trained as an agronomist (ENSA Montpellier, 1986) and took a Ph.D. in sociology at Paris X Nanterre (1991). He was a visiting scholar at USC's Annenberg School (1990 to 1993) and at Stanford's Silicon Valley Center (1994, System Development Foundation fellow). His research concerns cyberculture, from information technologies to molecular biology. Other books: *Junkware* (University of Minnesota Press, 2011) and, with Dominique Lestel, *Journey to the End of the Species* (2011). Sources: [Bardini's CV](https://www.thierrybardini.ca/cv/); [transmediale biography](https://transmediale.de/en/people/thierry-bardini) (both opened via search). The book's own jacket copy, as quoted by De Gruyter and Google Books, calls him an Associate Professor, which was his rank in 2000. ## 4. Author interviews and talks - Bardini wrote the [A.M. Turing Award biography of Douglas Engelbart](https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/engelbart_5078811.cfm) for the ACM. My Engelbart note quotes it (the contrast between automation and augmentation). I did not reread it for this note. - My Engelbart note lists him as editor ("ed. Bardini") of the Stanford oral history of Engelbart by Henry Lowood and Judy Adams, which it says is linked from the ACM page (per my Engelbart note; I did not open the transcript). - I found no interview or talk by Bardini about this book that I could open. His CV lists 89 conferences and lectures but I did not read the list. ## 5. Summary **Thesis (publisher's description, paraphrased).** The book studies the genesis of personal computing from technological and social angles through one researcher: Douglas Engelbart, who with a small team at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s developed cornerstones of personal computing, including the mouse, the windowed interface and hypertext. Bardini argues that the assumptions and motivations behind these inventions are less well known than the inventions themselves. Engelbart's goal was to augment human intelligence by co-transforming, or co-evolving, humans and the machines they use. What he invented was not only a system but a new kind of human, "the user", through a "bootstrapping" process in which the builders of the hardware and software would simultaneously reinvent the human. The book also narrates the collapse of Engelbart's laboratory at SRI and the later "translation" of his vision, in which coevolution came to mean technological progress and human adaptation to "user-friendly" technology. **Chapter outline (page numbers from the front-matter contents as reproduced in the AbeBooks listing, which I opened; they are for the hardcover and may differ in other editions).** - Preface (p. xi); Introduction: Douglas Engelbart's Crusade for the Augmentation of Human Intellect (p. 1) - 1. Language and the Body (p. 33) - 2. The Chord Keyset and the QWERTY Keyboard (p. 58) - 3. The Invention of the Mouse (p. 81) - 4. Inventing the Virtual User (p. 103) - 5. SRI and the oN-Line System (p. 120) - 6. The Arrival of the Real User and the Beginning of the End (p. 143) - 7. "Of Mice and Man": ARPANET, E-mail, and est (p. 182) - Coda: Where Hand and Memory Can Meet Again (p. 215) - Appendix: Personnel at Engelbart's SRI Lab (p. 233); Notes (p. 235); Works Cited (p. 263) **Reception.** - A review in *Technology and Culture* (2002) opens: "Most people do not know the name Douglas C. Engelbart", and says the book "is the first major book that explores Engelbart's contributions to computing", aimed at historians, communication specialists and sociologists (abstract as shown by DOI; I did not read the full review). - A review by Wendy Cukier appeared in *Enterprise & Society* (March 2002); I saw only its citation. The search tool also names reviews in *Leonardo* and *Global Business and Economics Review*, which I did not open. **Why it is here.** The Engelbart biography note lists it first under "Selected reading", alongside Markoff, Waldrop and Turner. My Engelbart notes also use "bootstrapping" as Engelbart's own term for a team improving its tools by using them. ## 6. Fact-check Overall verdict: **supported** for the publication facts; the argument summary is the publisher's, not my reading. | Claim | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | Stanford University Press, December 2000, *Writing Science* series | Supported | Publisher page; Waterstones | | ISBNs 9780804737234 (hardcover), 9780804738712 (paperback), 9781503618367 (ebook) | Supported | Publisher page | | 312 pages | Disputed | 312 per the publisher and Waterstones; 284 per Google Books and the *Enterprise & Society* citation (xix + 284) | | First major book on Engelbart's contributions | Reviewer's claim | *Technology and Culture* review abstract | | Engelbart's lab team developed the mouse, windowed interface and hypertext | As the publisher states it | Not independently checked here; see my Engelbart note | | Bardini wrote the ACM Turing Award biography of Engelbart | Supported | My Engelbart note cites the ACM page by title; I did not reopen it | ## 7. Citations and references - [Stanford University Press: Bootstrapping](https://www.sup.org/books/media-studies/bootstrapping) - [Waterstones, hardback](https://www.waterstones.com/book/bootstrapping/thierry-bardini/9780804737234); [Waterstones, paperback](https://www.waterstones.com/book/bootstrapping/thierry-bardini/9780804738712) - [AbeBooks listing with the front matter and contents](https://www.abebooks.com/9780804737234/Bootstrapping-Douglas-Engelbart-Coevolution-Origins-0804737231/plp); [Google Books](https://books.google.com/books?id=CEc1OOGmA5IC); [De Gruyter Brill](https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781503618367/html) - Reviews: [*Technology and Culture*, 2002](https://doi.org/10.1353/tech.2002.0005); [*Enterprise & Society*, 2002](https://doi.org/10.1093/es/3.1.181) - [Bardini's CV](https://www.thierrybardini.ca/cv/); [transmediale: Thierry Bardini](https://transmediale.de/en/people/thierry-bardini) - [Open Library: Bootstrapping](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL8443929W); [ACM Turing Award: Douglas Engelbart](https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/engelbart_5078811.cfm) - Source: [Doug Engelbart: Biography](https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/183/)