Rheingold's reading of Engelbart emphasized the integration Engelbart insisted on — the fact that NLS was not a collection of features but a system designed to enhance collective cognition. He carried this reading into his later work on virtual communities, online collaboration, and digital literacy, arguing consistently that the tools matter less than the practices that use them.
His concept of "crap detection" — borrowed from Hemingway via Neil Postman — names precisely what the Training component of H-LAM/T requires: the cultivated capacity to evaluate the fluent output of information systems. In the age of large language models, the capacity has become the specific survival skill that distinguishes augmented work from automated reception.
Principal interpreter. Rheingold's books carried Engelbart's framework to readers who would not otherwise have encountered it.
Crap detection. His concept operationalizes the Training component of H-LAM/T for the age of abundant, fluent, sometimes-wrong information.
Tangible vs intangible. His observation that the tools evolved while the cultural practices did not is the canonical diagnosis of what the industry adopted and what it ignored.