First thing I have to say: Good Lord man, how the heck did he write all that without falling asleep? On another note: I liked what Engelbart had to say. It was often hard to understand but he was still able to convey his over arching concept: Processes that often take up a lot of time and energy in the human brain to think about and compute could be done by computers in order to allow humans to conceptualize other, often more difficult, constructs of creative thought. I like how he attacks this idea by breaking up the different means by which we as humans structure ideas and processes and shows where these processes can be encapsulated by what he terms as “artifacts”. These artifacts would help perform a series of complex tasks and free up the cognitive powers of the human brain. This is what most machines and tools allow for, the ability to perform a task that, while hard to perform on ones own, become very easy with the use of said machine or tool. This idea goes along with the programming and technical idea of the black box, a system that has been made in such a way that the operator does not have to have intricate knowledge of how the inside of the black box works or the science behind its invention. All the operator must know is what must go into the system or “black box” and what he should expect to come out. This knowledge of the inputs and outputs of a system would also allow many of these “black box” systems to be connected and used together to further refine a task or allow many different tasks to all contribute to solution of one larger task. Englebart takes this whole concept and abstracts it from just the realm of computer science and attempts to apply it at a meta-physical level to all problem solving laborers in all fields of human thought and invention. He proposes that research be pursued in this area in order to determine just how this same process could continually and effectively be applied. This is hard to imagine as the shear size of this abstraction makes it an almost insurmountable task. However, I feel that through the use of computers to analyze and draw conclusions about this abstraction and its applications i.e. using Englebart’s concept of augmenting the human thought capacity in order to investigate this same concept, one might be able to make a beneficial advancement in the real world application of the aforementioned meta-physical thoughts. All in all, Englebart is one smart cookie who puts a majority of us (the human race) to shame.
AUGMENTING HUMAN INTELLECT: A Conceptual Framework – By Douglas C. Engelbart
2010 -
01.25