background information on Douglas C. Engelbart’s Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework (1962)

This is some background information on Douglas C. Engelbart’s Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework (1962), for people like me who are unfamiliar with his works.

One of the great inventors of the 20^th Century, Engelbart invented the defining features of the computer interfaces such as the mouse, the window and the word processor. Helped establish the Internet, first demonstrated videoconferencing and mixed text/graphic displays.  Today, he is largely unrecognized and highly misunderstood. His inventions have never been widely used to pursue the goals he envisioned.

He was committed to augmenting human intellect. He wrote this report after experiences three flashes, which eventually led to this graphic vision. His endeavors are interesting because he realized that the difficulty of mankind’s problems was increasing at a greater rate than our ability to cope. His answer to the problem was to augment human intellect.

By "augmenting human intellect" he means “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. Increased capability in this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following: more-rapid comprehension, better comprehension, the possibility of gaining a useful degree of comprehension in a situation that previously was too complex, speedier solutions, better solutions, and the possibility of finding solutions to problems that before seemed insoluble.”

Later, he began using the term knowledge work after reading a '68 Peter Drucker publication, and later switched to the larger, centrally significant concept of collective IQ. His thinking prompted assessment of the infrastructure of capabilities that support the operation of organizations of collectively purposeful humans, capabilities developed atop their genetically endowed capabilities to provide their personal and collective operational effectiveness.

Although people use his inventions daily, he is largely unrecognized, highly misunderstood; and his inventions have never been widely used to pursue the goals he envisioned. In his 20s, he realized the difficulty of mankind’s problems was increasing at a greater rate than his ability to cope. His answer to the problem was to augment human intellect. He earned his Ph.D., taught at a university for a few years, and then worked at various labs with engineers and other masterminds to carry out his vision.

In Engelbart vision, numerous technical and non-technical elements came into play, such as tools, media, language, customs, knowledge, skills and procedures. He thought these elements had co-evolved slowly over centuries, but that with the explosive emergence of digital technology, the technical elements would rapidly move ahead of the non-technical and cause a trend toward automating rather than augmenting peoples' activities.

Engelbart was most concerned with:

1.    Boosting Collective IQ—the concept of dramatically improving how we can solve important problems together and a measure of how effectively a collection of people can concurrently develop, integrate, and apply its knowledge toward its mission. His daughter Christina Engelbart wrote that he “envisioned people sitting in front of cathode-ray-tube displays, ‘flying around’ in an information space where they could formulate and portray their concepts in ways that could better harness sensory, perceptual and cognitive capabilities heretofore gone untapped. Then they would communicate and collectively organize their ideas with incredible speed and flexibility.”

I believe the Collective IQ has improved vastly in the last ten years, however, people do not collaborate exactly how way he envisioned. For example, people collect and build on ideas via wikis on the Web. Video game execs often give gamers the means to alter games and encourage them to send their ideas back to the company. While not exactly what he had in mind, it is similar. One key component that is missing for today’s “Collective IQ” is the immediate brainstorming affect. People in the same room tend to generate more ideas. While the Internet is interactive, I believe some energy is lost over the airwaves. There is less urgency to prove one’s self when people are in separate rooms. This is idea is explored with is bootstrapping concept below:

2.      Bootstrapping is purposefully investing in improving organizational collective IQ through intelligent improvement strategies promising to yield a great return. It is the expectation that anyone working on an important aspect of boosting the Collective IQ capability will seriously push the envelope through his or her own experimental usage of their work product(s).

This is also a good idea in theory. It’s true that people have different talents and strengths. This is one reason I like to the dynamics of group projects. I usually encourage students to figure out one another’s skills and to brainstorm to come up with great ideas. However, as Engelbart mentioned this type of communal work is often deemed inappropriate by prevailing paradigms of management, engineering and computer programming. While social media and networking are a dominant part of society, people prefer creating patented ideas alone and improving self-knowledge rather than “group” knowledge. This was one reason Engelbart met resistance with bootstrapping concepts. It is also the main reason he is often misunderstood and his inventions are not used for what he originally had in mind.

The first two years of ARPA support were relatively unproductive -- problems in aligning actual work with bootstrapping concepts, which were deemed inappropriate by prevailing paradigms of management, engineering and computer programming. Meanwhile funding arrived from a NASA psychologist named Bob Taylor. Later, Taylor moved to ARPA and became a significant factor in launching the ARPANet, which led to the World Wide Web.

Fortunately, a few key people had the foresight to reward the inventor for his ideas. After experiencing a mid-career dip, he received accolades and financial compensations for his earlier ideas. Today, Engelbart and his daughter, Christina, offer seminars and utilize their bootstrapping ideas with students and operate the Doug Engelbart Institute.