{"id":249,"date":"2014-10-20T14:48:31","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T14:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/?p=249"},"modified":"2014-10-20T14:48:31","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T14:48:31","slug":"from-augmenting-human-intellect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/?p=249","title":{"rendered":"From Augmenting Human Intellect"},"content":{"rendered":"

My comment for\u00a0From Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework<\/a>\u00a0by Douglas Engelbart (published 1962) from\u00a0the New Media Reader<\/a><\/em>.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

In Augmenting Human Intellect, Douglas Engelbart defines the topic as \u201cincreasing the capability of man to approach complex problems\u201d. At first I didn\u2019t know what to make of this definition. As I read on to the details of his process building out this system, I started to understand \u201caugmenting human intellect\u201d as building tools that would aid human\u2019s intuitive thought process. I\u2019m not sure about actually increasing or enhancing our capabilities, however. Engelbart provided an interesting example by experimenting with three ways of putting a sentence (thought\/idea) down on paper\/screen. In his words, one is augmented by a typewriter (it took 7 secs), one is done in cursive script (it took 20 secs), and one \u201cde-augmented\u201d by attaching a piece of brick to a pen (it took 65 secs). I thought the \u201cpen attached to brick\u201d was a very illustrative analogy to the available tools that people had before the personal computer. And perhaps even today, we are still using a version \u2013 albeit a more advanced version \u2013 of the \u201cpen attached to brick\u201d tool to collect our thoughts and collaborate with others.<\/p>\n

The most amazing part about reading this report was that I was able to dive into the mind of one of the greatest inventors of the 20th Century. Here I should note that Engelbart was the inventor of the word processor, the mouse, the window, and had helped to establish the Internet. Following through his detailed discoveries and thought process behind inventing tools that we take for granted was both insightful and inspiring. I had recently went to a prototyping workshop, where the speaker talked about using the least amount of time and resources to make \u201cworks-like\u201d prototypes to test out ideas. Engelbart\u2019s card indexing system, which was inspired by Bush\u2019s Memex device, was essentially a \u201cworks-like\u201d prototype of a very early word processor and part of the Internet mixed into one. But he was filing and marking his cards physically! He would group cards into separate decks based on category and subcategory. Each deck would have a master card with holes that link to individual cards in the deck. Reference would be marked by serial numbers on each card. And he would needle sort individual cards into linked cards based on his thought process. While doing this experiment, he made multiple discoveries with his team relating to how the human mind process information. Then he was able to make a leap from the cards, and imagine a powerful memory to store these information and connections virtually.<\/p>\n

There are a lot from the report that we can learn from. First and foremost is the importance of prototyping, which can lead to discoveries previously unimaginable. Another is Engelbart\u2019s way of choosing research projects. He chose projects that not only would have long term impact but also more immediate practical applications. And he remained introspective in deciding what he want to work on. Lastly, he understood the importance of keeping up with technological trends. At one point he mentioned that it would have been possible to build an electromechanical card filing system, but that he knew it would be obsolete very soon and that electronic computers would dominate in operating this type of system.<\/p>\n

Someday, hopefully soon, I would love to read Engelbart\u2019s entire report. I think it would be an excellent read for anyone interested in building tools and platforms for new media.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My comment for\u00a0From Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework\u00a0by Douglas Engelbart (published 1962) from\u00a0the New Media Reader. In Augmenting Human Intellect, Douglas Engelbart defines the topic as \u201cincreasing the capability of man to approach complex problems\u201d. At first I didn\u2019t know what to make of this definition. As I read on to the details of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250,"href":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/itp.fromjia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}