CS 575Spring 20102010-05-21

K.V. Bapa Rao

Outline

• Administrative• Review of previous class• Douglas Engelbart’s demo video (Conclusion)• Student Presentations• Discussion of Engelbart’s Paper on Augmenting

Human Intellect• General Discussion• Summary• Agenda for next meeting

Administrative

Review of previous meeting

• Video of Engelbart’s demo (part 1)• Student Presentations: – Ethics of Human Enhancement (Yuri)– Crowdsourcing (Gaurang)– Security, Privacy, Crime (Abhishek)

Engelbart’s “Mother of all demos” video (Conclusion)

Student Presentations

• Armen Galstyan: Gaming & Entertainment• Kevin Diep: Network Security• Rucha Bhatt: Robotics• Khushroo Shaikh: UI Standards and tools

REMINDER: A [flexible] structure for our study

• ‘Human issues’ is all-encompassing• Many interlocking dimensions• Human roles vis-à-vis the computer

– User– Inventor / researcher– Visionary– Content creator– Hacker– Criminal– Business person– Wealth generator– …

• Human-computer coupling– Symbiosis, tool, …

A [flexible] structure for our study (contd)

• Domains of human activity– Education, Entertainment, Play, Family, Reproduction, Art ,Wealth generation,

Government, consumption, religion, philosophy, …• Values

– Many values depend on role, domain, …– Absolute values?– Creativity, aesthetics, access, opportunity, freedom, spirituality, rationality,

peace, brotherhood, prosperity, …• Vision, potentials, realities

– Babbage’s Analytical Engine, Bush’s Memex, …• Pragmatics

– Is it possible? How to get there?– Techniques, Design, Technology,

• Scaling and emergent phenomena– Will a whole new thing emerge if huge numbers of humans interact with

computers in a certain way? How do we understand that ‘thing’?• Other aspects, dimensions?

Engelbart Video Discussion• Object-oriented system

• UI, Code, Documentation, Papers

• Language design– “overlay” hierarchy of objects– Custom languages

• Finite State Machines• Compiler-compiler

• Software Engineering– Source-code control, Documentation

• Communication– Message handling and management

• Human-computer, Human-human collaboration concepts implemented in hardware & Software sytems– Remote Videocams, mouse, …

Augmenting the Human Intellect• 1962 Engelbart’s report/proposal to Air Force Ofc. Of

Scientific Research– http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html

• Capability to obtain better solutions to complex problems• New conceptual framework

– Not small tricks• Example scenario: an architect’s workday

– Design alternatives– Operational environments– Functional specifications– Detailed design– Tools

• Synthesis, analysis, verification, debugging

Engelbart Overview• Conceptual framework is needed to know

– What to augment• artifacts• language• methodology• Training

– Goal: problem solving process• Process is what we actually do, and are trying to do more effectively

– Structure or organization across the board• Little steps, organized as a process hierarchy

– Versus objects?• Process repertoire or toolkit• Basic capabilities (‘hardware’) to higher-level capabilities

– Synergy, emergent capabilities, …• Which subprocess to choose?

– Executive Capability: planning, selecting, and supervising – Augmentation impact

• Suppose you had a better writing tool…– Hardware, software, dictionary, spell checker, fact researcher, …– Pencil to word processor

» Benefits?» Break down old process, come up with new process» New capabilities!

Engelbart: Two-domain system

• H-LAM/T

Engelbart (contd)• Capability repertoire hierarchy– Basic capabilities (human and artifact) are the raw

materials– Mental structuring (cognitive structures)

• Development Models: garden, basketball team, machine building– Concept structuring– Symbol structuring– Process structuring

• ‘M’ in H-LAM/T– Physical structuring

• A in H-LAM/T– Interdependence among all these structures

Engelbart (contd)• How did humans get ‘augmented’ during our

development?– 1. concept manipulation– 2. symbol manipulation– 3. Manual, External, Symbol Manipulation

• Whorf’s hypothesis: Language affects our thinking and capabilities– 4. Automated external symbol manipulation (neo-

whorfian: technology affects language and capabilities)• Language can also evolve to meet conceptual and task needs

(counterargument to whorfian hypothesis)

Engelbart (contd)• Brick-pencil experiment

Engelbart (contd)• Brick-pencil expt (de-augmentation)– Typewriter: 7 sec– Pencil: 20 secs– Brick, small letters: 65+ secs– Brick, large letters: 42 secs

• Impacts on effectiveness of culture– Too hard too few people doing it– Different concepts for work, record-keeping, etc.

• What about known impacts of actual augmentation, 46 years after Engelbart wrote this proposal?

Engelbart (contd)

• Concept structuring– concepts are tools– concepts have handles--representations– concept structures map to mental structures– some concept structures are better than others– language (natural lang esp) is the grand concept

structuring tool

Engelbart (contd)

• Symbol structuring– some symbols work better than others • depends on the purpose

– need flexibility, translatability– view generation capability (rather than physical

linear ordering)

Engelbart (contd)

• Interdependence among hierarchies– Cyclic– Regenerative• Improvement in one category feeds improvement in

other categories

Engelbart (contd)• Roles and levels– executive– direct-contributive

• model of executive superstructure– Bureaucratic hierarchy is onerous– contractor-subcontractor model

• Flexibility in the Executive Role– executive tasks are complex– orderly flexibility requirement on symbol etc. structures is

costly– disorderly process of change must be supported

• ‘agile methodologies’

Engelbart (contd)

• Who will benefit– Every person who does his thinking with

symbolized concepts • Human language, pictographs, formal logic,

mathematics, …

– Architects, engineers, lawyers, writers, …– ‘information workers’

Summary

• Human Augmentation & Man-Computer symbiosis studied systematically very early on

• Today’s developments flowed from early conceptual research as well as engineering

Agenda for next week