"From Augmenting Human Intellect" by Douglas Engelbart

-1962
-Engelbart invented the mouse, the window, and the word processor and the hyperlink (independantly of Ted Nelson).
-helped establish the Internet, investigated computer-supported cooperative work, demonstrated videoconferencing and mixed text/graphic displays, created structured programming editors and used remote procedure calls
-1) complexity of human problems increasing more rapidly that our ability to cope
2) dealing with new and complex problems might be best be done by younger engineers
3) text/graphic interface
-simultaneous, continuous cooperation

Engelbart went to work at the Stanford Research Institute and pursued funds for the augmentation research program.
-ideas often portrayed as science fiction. (!)

This seems to be the first excerpts we've read thus far that illustrates an active push to...well...augment human intellect. All of the art, media, and technologies we've been presented with thus far have given me plenty of food for thought as to how all of this is changing our perception of the physical realm, but to hear that this was, to at least one person, the desired reaction completely blows my mind. The fact that he was proposing to ACTIVELY "pursu[e] new opportunities for evolving our language and methodologies" is, in a way, rather frightening.
How must Engelbart view the way we operate now? He demonstrated a text/graphic interface, and now we're walking around, regularly and frequently interacting with touch screens, and lamenting any lapse in the immediacy or ubiquity or portability of our tools. Spoken language actually limits us, reduces our efficiency and productivity. Why spend the time describing a beautiful work of architecture when you can send a link to a 3D virtual reconstruction that utilizes thousands of photographs posted online?
I find it intriguing that many of Engelbart's ideas are illustrated through science fiction. On the one hand, Engelbart has absolutely proven himself to be a successful engineer, what with all of the tools he's created. On the other hand, the fact that he conveys his ideas through creative means also gives him a very strong humanist edge. For him to straddle that line between humanist and engineer affords him the power not only to make a human life faster and smoother but also to reconfigure the human condition entirely.