I'm thinking of Englebart's SRI team in the early 70s, where they invented
the mouse, windows, the first full hypertext publishing environment,
etc. Probably the most successful such attempt. A team that takes
off by focusing on its own augmentation was Englebart's big thing, but
it created an ingrown focus that made it difficult for them to make
their tools useful for other people. They would claim these tools
were useful, if you were willing to invest enough time in it, but
others preferred WYSIWYG. Mostly it was the ideas they pioneered that
have lived on, not their specific tools. Englebart is still pushing
his vision. See:
Robin D. Hanson hanson@hss.caltech.edu http://hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/