Augmenting human intellect
Also: Engelbart, augmentation, IA
Douglas Engelbart's program for using computers to raise humanity's collective ability to solve hard problems.
In 1962 Douglas Engelbart wrote "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework." His goal was not artificial intelligence — machines that think instead of us — but intelligence augmentation: tools that make humans, working together, dramatically better at tackling complex, urgent problems.
Engelbart saw intellect as a system of humans, language, artifacts, methods, and training co-evolving. Improve the tools and methods and you raise the whole system's capability. The computer was the most powerful new artifact ever offered to that system.
He spent the 1960s building the proof: the oN-Line System (NLS), unveiled in the Mother of All Demos in 1968, which introduced the mouse, hypertext, screen editing, and live collaboration. The animating idea — and his strategy of bootstrapping — is the spine of computing as a tool for thinking.