

Augmenting Human Intellect (1962) - bhaumik
http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html

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smarks159
For those of you that don't know Doug Engelbart was one of the pioneers behind
modern day computing. He invented, among other things, most of the
technologies behind the web and collaborative software among other things. If
you go to youtube and search for the mother of all demos you can see a
demonstration of some of the technologies he invented, it is amazing
considering it was done in 1968. Even more impressive than his technological
inventions was his vision and the problem he set out to solve.

Engelbart realized early on that the technology related to computing would
increase in an exponential fashion and would bring about with it massive
changes to society as we know it at every level. The problem is that human
beings are not naturally adapted to live in an exponential world where
everything is constantly changing, so how to we as a society adapt fast enough
to keep up with these changes? Engelbart set out to attempt to solve this
problem through his research.

"Augmenting Human Intellect" describes in detail the strategy Engelbart
developed that people would need to follow in order to keep up with these
changes. Engelbart used this strategy himself in his research. Before reading
this paper, I would suggest starting with this paper here[1] which provides a
refined summary of these ideas and a few additional ideas and then go back and
read this paper. The more I learn about Engelbart's vision, the more I am
amazed about how accurate his predictions of the future were.

For those who are interested in trying out a system with a similar interface
to the NLS, I have built an experimental system similar to Doug Engelbart's
NLS system here[2]. Scroll down to the getting started section.

[1]
[http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-132811.html](http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-132811.html)

[2] [https://github.com/smarks159/hyperdocument-system-
wiki](https://github.com/smarks159/hyperdocument-system-wiki)

~~~
bhaumik
Thanks for the comment. Bret Victor referenced this paper in his essay [1]
describing his vision. He loathed the idea of people simply calling him "The
Inventor of the Computer Mouse"

[1] [http://worrydream.com/#!/Engelbart](http://worrydream.com/#!/Engelbart)

