
Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework (1962) [pdf] - signa11
http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/papers/scanned/Doug_Engelbart-AugmentingHumanIntellect.pdf
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steveeq1
For those of you interested in getting a replica of NLS/Augment, there's a
windows program that mimics it pretty well:
[http://www.ndma.com/resources/ndm8543.htm](http://www.ndma.com/resources/ndm8543.htm)

A one-handed "keyset" is also available here for those of you who want to
experience NLS the "engelbartian-way": [https://www.infogrip.com/bat-
keyboard.html](https://www.infogrip.com/bat-keyboard.html)

Unfortunately, the software was written in the early 90's and it's only 32-bit
so you have to run it in an emulator to make it work on modern systems.

It's a real shame that NLS didn't catch on. The big issue with it is that it's
like emacs in a sense - there's a learning curve involved in using it which
makes it intimidating to use. This makes it hard to market to commercial
markets (lotus notes took over in the '90s). It's too bad they didn't open
source this back in the '70s, this is a "could have been" software project.

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dwringer
Very cool stuff.

From what I've read, I gather that the actual keysets developed by Engelbart's
team for NLS differed a bit in style from the one in that link, but more
interestingly/importantly(?) could also provide haptic feedback by puffing air
up from under the keys. (i.e., as a very basic example, one could mouse over a
toolbar button and the keyboard might provide a physical cue by bumping the
"hotkey" for that given command - immediately teaching the user how to bypass
using the mouse next time).

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seonsakke
Thanks, this was the first time I came across this study. Will have to look
more carefully into it - but, coming from an engineering background, I just
love the engineer's approach behind this study:"... the intellectual
effectiveness of a human can be significantly improved by an engineering-like
approach toward redesigning changeable components of a system." (page 128)

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alexpetralia
How convenient!

And what would the artist, or sociologist, or musician say?

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flancian
The "processes" defined here remind me of Minsky's "agents" (which came
later), and the "hierarchy" of his Society of Mind -- which also happens to be
hierarchycally organized, like most (all?) human societies so far. All of
these systems are involved in the realization of tasks requiring intelligence.

Within this framework, one of the interesting approaches to me here is: once
you define which processes/agents are involved in a human activity, how can
one augment/externalize it? Software that effectively does this is useful by
definition. We might be missing lots of utility here due to lack (or just
inherent difficulty) of introspection.

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darkmighty
This is almost all of the software we use, I guess :) (that isn't strictly for
entertainment)

The most notable productivity boosts/cognition boosts found so far have got to
be Google [search engines] and Stack Overflow. Yes you could use books but the
speed is incomparable. I can accomplish something extremely complicated that
would require lots of thinking with just a few queries, reading solutions and
glueing them together. I can get expert advice on anything instantaneously.
Interestingly this augmentation is mostly 'oracular', just giving you the
right answers on demand. Though sometimes the rationale behind an answer is
well explained and you can somewhat incorporate the general solution model.

Should we value more augmentation devices that are less oracular? E.g. maybe a
high level programming language is a non-oracular augmentation device; you
still have to correctly encode all logic, only now you can glance over some
details (in sacrifice of some performance).

Do we risk of atrophy from this practice of getting everything almost ready?
The productivity increase would indicate you can just use your time to
accomplish more; but we all know sometimes "wasting" time is needed to learn
or maintain useful skills (e.g. you could always use a calculator, but we
chose to learn arithmetic; you could use wolfram to solve integrals instead of
learning calculus; we spend time exercising).

It does sometimes feel like I'm almost a god at the computer, and a naked
mortal away from it.

~~~
lioeters
In addition to search engines and Stack Overflow, I'd include open-source
software (and easy access to it via package managers, GitHub, etc.) as a
massive productivity boost. I think that's in line with the process you
described, of gluing together existing modules/solutions to accomplish
purpose-specific tasks.

From the perspective of augmenting the intellect via computers and software, I
feel quite blessed to be living in the current historical time - at the same
time, we're still far from Doug Englebart's vision, especially for the
general, non-programming public.

I also wonder about the "atrophy" that may come from depending on external
augmentation, that we may be losing the ability to do things directly with
"raw" intellect, without machines.

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tablet
The most interesting part is de-augmentation experiment with a brick and a
pen. Contradictio in contrarium!

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nige123
In 2019 we've only scratched the surface of how tools can potentially augment
our cognitive capabilities.

Simple word completion in the shell or in your $EDITOR saves some cognitive
buffer. Completion in Gmail feels a bit too creepy at the moment. Outsourcing
personal responses to a bot seems wrong. What comes next?

Imagine if you and your recipient(s) could toggle a setting "always accept
Gmail completion" \- in theory the Gmail "agents" could then proceed to have a
conversation between themselves.

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kace91
Which is not really that different from those Google demos that called
businesses for you to book specific dates for hairdressers and the like.

It is entirely possible that we'll end up with a highly inefficient network of
systems interacting with each other by mimicking human interaction as a de
facto standard of communication.

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bitwize
At which point Google will see an optimization strategy in replacing those
human conversations with Protocol Buffer based protocols. Anyone who doesn't
grok protobuf will be assumed to be a filthy meatbag and meatbag conversation
will be used as a fallback.

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maartenh
Great, I have been looking to experience the original NLS system. Apparently
there is an issue with ownership of the code. A derivative would be close
enough though.

Anyone bought this?

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kensai
This is very cool. But please add (1962) and fix the typo in the title. ;)

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signa11
ah sorry about that. with 'doug engelbart' in the title, i was under (the
mistaken !) impression that time period would be approx. self-evident :o)

