Augmenting Human Intellect

Douglas Engelbart's goal for CollaborationWare/ThinkingTools: By "augmenting human intellect" we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems.

source of Evolution?

tweet AHI

a re-FramIng of Intelligence Increase and Collective Intelligence

Oct'1962 paper: "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework"

become Super Empowered?

cf Cyborg, Global Brain

Intelligence Augmentation (IA) contra Artificial Intelligence (AI)

needed to solve Grand Challenges?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_amplification

Excerpts

Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework - 1962 (AUGMENT,3906,) - Doug Engelbart Institute

I. INTRODUCTION

A. GENERAL

By "augmenting human intellect" we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems.

by "complex situations" we include the professional problems of diplomats, executives, social scientists, life scientists, physical scientists, attorneys, designers—whether the problem situation exists for twenty minutes or twenty years

This report covers the first phase of a program aimed at developing means to augment the human intellect

we consider the whole system of a human and his augmentation means as a proper field of search for practical possibilities. It is a very important system to our society, and like most systems its performance can best be improved by considering the whole as a set of interacting components rather than by considering the components in isolation.

Before a research program can be designed to pursue such an approach intelligently, so that practical benefits might be derived within a reasonable time while also producing results of longrange significance, a conceptual framework must be searched out

In the first (search) phase of our program we have developed a conceptual framework that seems satisfactory for the current needs of designing a research phase. Section II contains the essence of this framework as derived from several different ways of looking at the system made up of a human and his intellect-augmentation means. 1a5

there is no particular reason not to expect gains in personal intellectual effectiveness from a concerted system-oriented approach that compare to those made in personal geographic mobility since horseback and sailboat days. 1a6

Section III is intended to present some definite images that illustrate meaningful possibilities deriveable from the conceptual framework presented in Section II—and in a rather marked deviation from ordinary technical writing, a good portion of Section III presents these images in a fiction-dialogue style as a mechanism for transmitting a feeling for the richness and promise of the possibilities in one region of the improvement space" that is roughly mapped in Section II. 1a7

In Section IV (Research Recommendations) we present a general strategy for pursuing research toward increasing human intellectual effectiveness

To give the reader an initial orientation about what sort of thing this computer-aided working system might be, we include below a short description of a possible system of this sort

Let us consider an augmented architect at work. He sits at a working station that has a visual display screen some three feet on a side; this is his working surface

He is designing a building

B. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY 1b

goals would be the following: (1) to find the factors that limit the effectiveness of the individual's basic information-handling capabilities in meeting the various needs of society for problem solving in its most general sense; and (2) to develop new techniques, procedures, and systems that will better match these basic capabilities to the needs' problems, and progress of society.

II. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK 2

A. GENERAL

The ways in which human capabilities are thus extended are here called augmentation means, and we define four basic classes of them:

Artifacts

Language

Methodology

Training

B. THE BASIC PERSPECTIVE 2b


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