bootstrap

'Stop What You're Doing and Read This!' を読んでいます。
Will the presence of digital tools such as translations and definitions serve to enhance the reading experience, by acting as bootstraps when difficulties are encountered, or will they disprupt it? What will such directions mean to the intellectual autonomy of individuals?
"bootstraps" はコンピュータで使われる "booting/boot" の元になった言葉ですね。
・Dictionary.com:a means of advancing oneself or accomplishing something: He used his business experience as a bootstrap to win voters.
語源辞書のOnline Etymologyから "bootstrap" の項の説明を引用します。
Circa 1900, to pull (oneself) up by (one's) bootstraps was used figuratively of an impossible task (among the "practical questions" at the end of chapter one of Steele's "Popular Physics" schoolbook (1888) is, "30. Why can not a man lift himself by pulling up on his boot-straps?" and an excellent question it is). By 1916 the meaning of the phrase had expanded to include "better oneself by rigorous, unaided effort." The meaning "fixed sequence of instructions to load the operating system of a computer" (1953) is from the notion of the first-loaded program pulling itself (and the rest) up by the bootstrap. It was used earlier of electrical circuits (1946).