Doug’s 1962 Framework: Augmenting Human Intellect | Gardner Campbell | Engelbart Symposium
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Intro

00:11
thank you it's a great honor and a privilege to be here today and I'm going to give you an overview of what came before the demo in fact I think of it as the real demo it was what Doug himself called the public debut of a dream and you would think oh well that's got to be
00:27
the demo that was public but no it was a 1962 research report as is often the case with what Doug leaves us we think we understand public debut of a dream dream demo no it's this 1962 report and he wrote those words the public debut of a dream and a letter to one of his
00:47
intellectual heroes than Eva Bush what he meant was the dream was a conceptual framework completed as a project report for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research when he wrote a venire a bush it was a work in progress he was racing to finish by the time his friend JCR
01:04
Licklider was to arrive in Washington DC a report that Doug insisted was a search report not a research report because very few people could yet understand what Doug was looking for so what is a conceptual framework this is what happens when you invite an English
01:24
professor to speak to you we can start by saying what it is not a conceptual framework is not a logo slogan motto or brand a conceptual framework is not operational policies it's not even a set of clearly expressed directions in fact conceptual frameworks come before
01:46
directions it's a compass not a map and Doug makes this clear throughout the 1962 report conceptual frameworks are ideas to think about even more to the point they're ideas to think with a conceptual framework like the Magna Carta or like the Constitution I believe
02:10
we can all agree that however stimulating it may be as a Tallyho move fast and break things is not a conceptual framework [Applause] a conceptual framework aims to keep our
2:25

Dougs 1962 Framework

02:29
thinking straight open and adequate to the occasion in that respect a conceptual framework closely resembles a work of philosophy the heart of the framework is what Doug called H L a.m. /t by which he meant humans using language artifacts and methodologies in which they are trained
02:50
this elegant expression captured the system's approach Doug advanced the complexly interrelated factors in what he envisioned not merely as human-computer symbiosis but as a human-computer co-evolutionary ecosystem this distillation catalyzed everything
03:09
that would follow including the demo and it also describes as Doug himself knew from his rigorous habits of self observation his own process in writing the 1962 report his training was many thousands of hours of research and writing here's just a sample of the
03:26
bibliography that Doug compiled for the early stages of his work on this conceptual framework his methods as they in as he insisted they must be in a truly systems approach were mixed methods engineering creative writing a kind of game design anthropology
03:47
linguistics architecture and the many modalities of what we now call information science a field Doug helped to invent they're all in this report his artifacts in 1962 were mostly books articles a dictaphone telephone typewriter pencil pen paper staples many
04:07
of which have been largely superseded by the artifacts he and his lab went on to invent Doug's language is English but with idioms drawn from many different registers some of them quite unusual for an engineer as he himself acknowledges in that famous report two in particular
04:26
seemed to catch people's imagination the first was figure two the illustration in which Doug demonstrates augmentation by depicting its opposite a soldi augmented by tying it to a brick dog had a way with earnest satire and I think of this pencil with a brick page
04:47
as the precursor to the question he would ask in later years did you ride your tricycle to work today dogs other memorably puckish moment in the 1962 report was the fictional character he named Joe now Joe is a kind of Engelbart in disguise he's explaining this
05:06
augmented world and Doug pokes fun at himself by characterizing Joe as just a little preachy but Joe is a Virgil who guides us into the world that existed so far only in Engelbart's imagination that Joe section in the 1962 report might well be considered an early version of
05:27
the demo and Joe is of course a human being one who understands H L AM slash T one who seeks what Doug called very memorably a way of life in an integrated domain Doug writes we do not speak of isolated clever tricks that help in particular situations we refer to a way
05:48
of life in an integrated domain where hunches cut and try intangibles and the human feel for a situation usefully coexist with powerful concepts streamlined terminology and notation sophisticated methods and high-powered electronic aids those were the first
06:07
words I read by dog on the BART when I stumbled across the 1962 report late in my home career in 2004 I was immediately reminded of some words by TS Eliot this will seem a strange connection but I hope it's in the spirit of Doug's integrated domain Eliot wrote of the
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poet John Donne a thought to Dunn was an experience it modified his sensibility when a poet's mind is perfectly equipped for its work it is constantly amalgamating disparate experience the ordinary man's experiences chaotic irregular fragmentary the latter falls
06:42
in love or read Spinoza and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other or with the noise of the typewriter or this of cooking and the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new holes that integrated domain that amalgamation of new holes is crucial by
07:02
contrast we tend to want to think about the L or the a or the M or the T separately because it's easier it's more efficient funders are always in love with isolated clever tricks that help in particular situations but I understood that choosing a single point of
07:20
intervention is a recipe for disaster our interventions must always have the system in view without the integrated domain domain we will certainly break things most of all ourselves augmenting human intellect a conceptual framework remains the most powerful and
07:37
comprehensive articulation of Doug's vision yet while this is a profoundly personal work it is I believe a mistake to say that Doug worked largely in isolation he wrote this from the depths of his being but all along the way he submitted his work to the scrutiny and often the
07:54
baffled or even hostile critiques of others and in fact those critiques as painful as they must have been to suffer through with their misunderstandings and condescension they were helpful to Doug studying the process of his thinking from 1959 to 1963 I can see Doug
08:10
worrying revising revising again reaching out to various audiences and never giving up and I can see his more sympathetic colleagues reaching out to Doug despite their own bewilderment and doubts trying to help here is a poignant example from March 1962
08:30
Doug's notes on a pamphlet his boss Jerry Noyes lent him a pamphlet called how to communicate ideas you can see what he learned from this little pamphlet in the bold even poetic prose of the 1962 report a report that becomes a declaration even a manifesto you've
08:50
probably heard of JCR Licklider we just heard Bob Taylor two of the heroes who eventually funded the work that led to the 1968 demo but there are hidden figures in this story too as 1960 it's closed Doug found at last what all writers yearned for his ideal readers
09:07
and even more to the point colleagues of similar daring who had money to invest in his vision when he got his grant he came into contact with this woman Rowena Swanson the program officer who coached cajoled teased pushed pushed and sometimes dragged Doug through the last
09:27
stages of his monumental writing task it was Rowena Swanson a person of keen intelligence and deep insights and a zany sense of humor and a taste for eccentrics who knew what Doug could do and gave him the encouragement every writer craves and some never find Doug
09:45
turned in the draft of part one of his final report in early March 1962 and just a few days later Rowena Swanson had this response to Doug at a response that Doug must have been hoping for for many many years she writes dear Doug I read your report last night now I know what
10:03
you meant when you said it it becomes something different from what you had originally intended it may well be than what you have said has been said by others before you and that I through ignorance I'm not aware of those other expositions but I somehow doubt this at
10:17
least in part and I marvel at the capabilities and the harnessing of them by one human being which have resulted in what I read last night there is nothing I have to ask you about what you wrote because it all fits together so beautifully eventually it
10:33

A Gold Mine

10:36
would be a gem nay a gold mine of a hundred and thirty three pages with an appendix of over 200 names and organizations with biographical information that my research assistant Laura Cramer is very kindly put together over the course of my work this is an
10:55
astonishing document the Rowena herself wrote about not long afterward in an article called psych ops and computers about the country where the one-eyed man is king a good description of Doug Engelbart and his vision the first printing of this report ran out and when
11:12
people saw Swanson's article more requests came in and when those requests came in Doug said we're on a second printing we'll send it to you as soon as we can and now
11:23

Conclusion

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I come to my conclusion in one of his last public appearances Doug Engelbart accepted the honor of becoming a fellow of the new media consortium I was there that day and I watched and listened his Doug stood beside his daughter Christina and said these words
11:41
of thanks well this is you know a trite thing to say I'm overwhelmed but I sit here just feeling overwhelmed you know I wasn't doing all of those things in order to sit here and get something like this it's been so many years and I still have dreams about how the world could be
12:01
anyway I appreciate this very much so thank you thank you Doug Engelbart said and that he was seated from the public debut of his dream in 1962 until the end of his life Doug never stopped dreaming of how the world could be and any stirring and precise eulogy for Doug ted
12:23
nelson reminded us of what we must always celebrate about this man ted said and i quote no one ever had such a soaring view of human potential as Douglas Carl Engelbart and he gave us wings to soar with him though his mind flew on ahead where few could see end quote
12:44
I believe that if you want to see Doug's wings you will find them not at the mother of all demos splendid as that flight is in that epical event no you will find Doug Engelbart's wings and the pair he left for you in that 1962 report augmenting human intellect a conceptual
13:05
framework that report and how it came to be is the subject of my current research supported by the Engelbart Institute early next year I will help to lead a three-week online exploration of Doug's framework an exploration I hope you will want to be part of the centerpiece of
13:23
this learning experience will be an opportunity for us to read and respond to Doug's magnificently 1862 framework together we will annotate the document using a wonderful online annotation affordance called hypothesis you can read about the experience at
13:40
framework vectors dotnet I hope you'll join us thank you [Applause]
Word Count: 2346Character count: 11347

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