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Augmenting
Human Intellect:
A Conceptual Framework <1962>
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. 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.
And 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. We do not speak of isolated clever tricks that
help in particular situations. We refer to a way of
life in an integrated domain where hunches, cut-and-try,
intangibles, and the human "feel for a situation" usefully
co-exist with powerful concepts, streamlined terminology
and notation, sophisticated methods, and high-powered
electronic aids.
Man's population and
gross product are increasing at a considerable rate,
but the complexity of his problems grows still faster,
and the urgency with which solutions must be found becomes
steadily greater in response to the increased rate of
activity and the increasingly global nature of that
activity. Augmenting man's intellect, in the sense defined
above, would warrant full pursuit by an enlightened
society if there could be shown a reasonable approach
and some plausible benefits.
This
report covers the first phase of a program aimed at
developing means to augment the human intellect. These
"means" can include many things – all of which
appear to be but extensions of means developed and used
in the past to help man apply
his native sensory, mental, and motor capabilities
– and 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.
This kind of system
approach to human intellectual effectiveness does not
find a ready-made conceptual framework such as exists
for established disciplines. 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 – a framework that provides orientation as
to the important factors of the system, the relationships
among these factors, the types of change among the system
factors that offer likely improvements in performance,
and the sort of research goals and methodology that
seem promising.
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.
The process of developing
this conceptual framework brought out a number of significant
realizations: that the intellectual effectiveness exercised
today by a given human has little likelihood of being
intelligence limited--that there are dozens of disciplines
in engineering, mathematics, and the social, life, and
physical sciences that can contribute improvements to
the system of intellect-augmentation means; that any
one such improvement can be expected to trigger a chain
of coordinating improvements; that until every one of
these disciplines comes to a standstill and we have
exhausted all the improvement possibilities we could
glean from it, we can expect to continue to develop
improvements in this human-intellect system; that there
is no particular reason not to expect gains in personal
intellectual effectiveness from a concerted systemoriented
approach that compare to those made in personal geographic
mobility since horseback and sailboat days.
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. This illustrative
example is not to be considered a description of the
actual system that will emerge from the program. It
is given only to show the general direction of the work,
and is clothed in fiction only to make it easier to
visualize.
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,
and is controlled by a computer (his "clerk" ) with
which he can communicate by means of a small keyboard
and various other devices.
He is designing a building.
He has already dreamed up several basic layouts and
structural forms, and is trying them out on the screen.
The surveying data for the layout he is working on now
have already been entered, and he has just coaxed the
clerk to show him a perspective view of the steep hillside
building site with the roadway above, symbolic representations
of the various trees that are to remain on the lot,
and the service tie points for the different utilities.
The view occupies the left two-thirds of the screen.
With a "pointer," he indicates two points of interest,
moves his left hand rapidly over the keyboard, and the
distance and elevation between the points indicated
appear on the right- hand third of the screen.
Ignoring the representation
on the display, the architect next begins to enter a
series of specifications and data--a six-inch slab floor,
twelve-inch concrete walls eight feet high within the
excavation, and so on. When he has finished, the revised
scene appears on the screen. A structure is taking shape.
He examines it, adjusts it, pauses long enough to ask
for handbook or catalog information from the clerk at
various points, and readjusts accordingly. He often
recalls from the "clerk" his working lists of specifications
and considerations to refer to them, modify them, or
add to them. These lists grow into an evermore-detailed,
interlinked structure, which represents the maturing
thought behind the actual design.
Prescribing different
planes here and there, curved surfaces occasionally,
and moving the whole structure about five feet, he finally
has the rough external form of the building balanced
nicely with the setting and he is assured that this
form is basically compatible with the materials to be
used as well as with the function of the building.
Now he begins to enter detailed information about the
interior. Here the capability of the clerk to show him
any view he wants to examine (a slice of the interior,
or how the structure would look from the roadway above)
is important. He enters particular fixture designs,
and examines them in a particular room. He checks to
make sure that sun glare from the windows will not blind
a driver on the roadway, and the "clerk" computes the
information that one window will reflect strongly onto
the roadway between 6 and 6:30 on midsummer mornings.
Next he begins a functional
analysis. He has a list of the people who will occupy
this building, and the daily sequences of their activities.
The "clerk" allows him to follow each in turn, examining
how doors swing, where special lighting might be needed.
Finally he has the "clerk" combine all of these sequences
of activity to indicate spots where traffic is heavy
in the building, or where congestion might occur, and
to determine what the severest drain on the utilities
is likely to be.
All of this information
(the building design and its associated "thought structure")
can be stored on a tape to represent the design manual
for the building. Loading this tape into his own clerk,
another architect, a builder, or the client can maneuver
within this design manual to pursue whatever details
or insights are of interest to him--and can append special
notes that are integrated into the design manual for
his own or someone else's later benefit.
In such a future working
relationship between human problem-solver and computer
'clerk,' the capability of the computer for executing
mathematical processes would be used whenever it was
needed. However, the computer has many other capabilities
for manipulating and displaying information that can
be of significant benefit to the human in nonmathematical
processes of planning, organizing, studying, etc. Every
person who does his thinking with symbolized concepts
(whether in the form of the English language, pictographs,
formal logic, or mathematics) should be able to benefit
significantly.
B. OBJECTIVE OF THE
STUDY
The
objective of this study is to develop a conceptual framework
within which could grow a coordinated research and development
program whose 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. We have placed the
following specifications on this framework:
1.That it provide perspective
for both long-range basic research and research that
will yield practical results soon.
2.That it indicate
what this augmentation will actually involve in the
way of changes in working environment, in thinking,
in skills, and in methods of working.
3.That it be a basis
for evaluating the possible relevance of work and knowledge
from existing fields and for assimilating whatever is
relevant.
4.That it reveal areas
where research is possible and ways to assess the research,
be a basis for choosing starting points, and indicate
how to develop appropriate methodologies for the needed
research.
Two points need emphasis
here. First, although a conceptual framework has been
constructed, it is still rudimentary. Further search,
and actual research, are needed for the evolution of
the framework. Second, even if our conceptual framework
did provide an accurate and complete basic analysis
of the system from which stems a human's intellectual
effectiveness, the explicit nature of future improved
systems would be highly affected by (expected) changes
in our technology or in our understanding of the human
being.
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