Augmenting Human Intellect

by Douglas C. Engelbart

This is an initial summary report of a project taking a new and systematic approach to improving the intellectual effectiveness of the individual human being. A detailed conceptual framework explores the nature of the system composed of the individual and the tools, concepts, and methods that match his basic capabilities to his problems. One of the tools that shows the greatest immediate promise is the computer, when it can be harnessed for direct on-line assistance, integrated with new concepts and methods.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Computer Science, Psychology, Technology, Computers

144 pages, ebook

First published October 1, 1962

Reviews

[Michael Dubakov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Language is complicated. Still this work is very insightful for 1962. Some things still not there and we don't have the level of augmentation imagined in this paper.

Some quotes below:
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You can integrate your new ideas more easily, and thus harness your creativity more continuously, if you can quickly and flexibly change your working record. If it is easier to update any part of your working record to accommodate new developments in thought or circumstance, you will find it easier to incorporate more complex procedures in your way of doing things.
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"You're probably waiting for something impressive. What I'm trying to prime you for, though, is the realization that the impressive new tricks all are based upon lots of changes in the little things you do. This computerized system is used over and over and over again to help me do little things--where my methods and ways of handling little things are changed until, lo, they've added up and suddenly I can do impressive new things."
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"I found, when I learned to work with the structures and manipulation processes such as we have outlined, that I got rather impatient if I had to go back to dealing with the serial-statement structuring in books and journals, or other ordinary means of communicating with other workers. It is rather like having to project three-dimensional images onto two-dimensional frames and to work with them there instead of in their natural form. Actually, it is much closer to the truth to say that it is like trying to project n-dimensional forms (the concept structures, which we have seen can be related with many many nonintersecting links) onto a one-dimensional form (the serial string of symbols), where the human memory and visualization has to hold and picture the links and relationships. I guess that's a natural feeling, though. One gets impatient any time he is forced into a restricted or primitive mode of operation--except perhaps for recreational purposes.
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A number of people, outside our research group here, maintain stoutly that a practical augmentation system should not require the human to have to do any computer programming--they feel that this is too specialized a capability to burden people with. Well, what that means in our eyes, if translated to a home workshop, would be like saying that you can't require the operating human to know how to adjust his tools, or set up jigs, or change drill sizes, and the like. You
can see there that these skllls are easy to learn in the context of what the human has to learn anyway about using the tools, and that they provide for much greater flexibility in finding convenient ways to use the tools to help shape materials.
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With the human contributing to a process, we find more and more as the process becomes complex that the value of the human's contribution depends upon how much freedom he is given to be disorderly in his course of action.

[Jo Jiao · Rating 5 out of 5]

To Engelbart intelligence is augmented insofar as a human's "intellectual capabilities" are organized into "higher levels of synergistic structuring". Much of the augmentation comes from the conceptual and procedural restructuring that enhances intelligent behaviour i.e. goal-directed behaviour. It relies on the premise that some concepts are much easier to think about once the correct mental representation is chosen. For example, arabic numerals are much better for doing math than roman numerals or Chinese characters. Hence, the focus of his agenda is a system of external symbol manipulation augmentation that resembles our computer, internet, google doc, and hyperlink. Indeed, it was incredible to see that as early as 1968 there was a interactive to-do list, real-time collaboration on a document, and a mouse. Engelbart's concept-focused framework does foreshadow LLMs today, which turns natural language into a programming language, but not necessarily more hardware based automation, like e.g. exoskeleton, or even a machine that fully replaces human cognitive capacity. His vision allows humans to ascend in the hierarchy of abstraction while systems automate the bottom levels - the vision of the human-like AI, however, usurps humans role and becomes that very top-level abstraction.

[Bria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting how the revolutionary ideas of how we might augment our intellect and improve our productivity are actually just very boring basic word processing and other software tools that just aren't even interesting or worth thinking about because we use them all the time without thinking of them. I take that to mean that Engelbart accomplished his goals, and it's kind of exciting to think that we have already augmented ourselves - and will continue to do so.

[Zsombor · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enlightening and visionary text on what we could and should be doing with computers.

[Marco Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este relatório cobre a primeira fase de um programa cujo objetivo era o de investigar e desenvolver os meios para aumentar o intelecto humano. Os ‘meios’ a que Engelbart se refere são as extensões tecnológicas – como o computador – que potenciam as nossas capacidades sensoriais, mentais e motoras. Os principais objetivos do programa passavam por, em primeiro lugar, encontrar os factores que limitam a capacidade dos indivíduos em solucionar problemas e, em segundo lugar, desenvolver novas técnicas, processos e sistemas adequados às nossas necessidades, e que promovam o progresso da sociedade.
A primeira parte do texto é a mais interssante.

[Yury Adamov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really bold thing for 1962, although difficult to read. I'm not that sure that everything suggested is implemented, e.g. we still communicate in linear texts, not in mind maps or other types of concept graph. And, hell, it is still a pain to hyperlink pdf files.

It would be interesting to read a modern critical review of this book that explain what ideas of this book developed beyond author guess (e.g. hypertext, wikipedia, stack overflow) and what did not developed at all (e.g. concept graphs as a mean for human-computer interaction).

[Kristoffer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Over 60 years old now, Engelbart's report is still remarkably prescient and current. Some of the ideas laid the foundations for the computers in common use today, but the conceptual framework of augmentation is yet to be realised -- a great promise and potential now that the necessary capabilities of computing technologies are available and in rapid development.

[Alan Chan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the Bible.

[kye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read ~60% of it; had a good group conversation on it. (Notes on that are private but ask me if you're interested)

Some of my notes:
* Engelbart strongly advocates structuring everything (especially prose) as dependency trees or graphs instead of linear/serial text. But structuring it linearly forces the writer to impose a narrative on it. Humans are very good at understanding narratives and very bad at understanding trees and graphs. Maybe it takes training.
* Computer as medium vs. computer as assistant
* Are his cognitive science descriptions right?
* Essential reading https://subterraneanpress.com/magazin...
* What happened to visual programming and tablet computers?
* The role of the algorist: fast and smart ways to merge, synthesize, search, recognize, store, index, and suggest? Especially program synthesis.
* Whom to augment first: programmers, sure. But some of the most important people are those working on climate change and global warming.
* Other methods of augmenting intelligence: address cognitive biases (along the lines of LessWrong. This ties in to climate change); central nervous system stimulants (Ritalin, Adderall)

The paper itself is 55 pages, printed double-sided.