The second article on our reading list was D. C. Engelbart’s Augmenting Human Intellect from Stanford Research Institute 1962. This is a fascinating paper in which the author tries to argue that the new technology may revolutionize the way humans do their work. It contains both a framework to analyze this development and a more science fiction-like section in which possible future uses of the technology is included. (I thought I was doing something “risky” by including a fictionous “vision” in my application for the professional doctorate program, but it was not such a new idea…)
Much of what is described is standard practice today – for instance I write papers much in the way described there; by first writing a very rough first draft and thereafter moving everything around and editing until it’s okay. But in other cases the developments have gone in other directions completely. Of course, neither spam nor porn are discussed in this paper – both are important industries today. Even more significantly: the social aspect is barely touched upon.
The next article was the cover story of TIME Magazine in January 1983, the first time humankind lost the TIME Man of the Year prize: 1982 Machine of the Year. This is also an interesting read. Of course, it’s a bit closer to our time – 1982 was actually the year when I first worked on a computer (at age 10). But the amount of explaining that the writers of the article felt necessary is strange today.
I’m beginning to see where the course creators are going with this. By making us read these old articles on the developments in technology of the 20th century, we are reminded of how new the technologies are, and of how high hopes people once had in them. Of course, these hopes have partly come true, but there are also lots of potential still to be explored – and new technologies are coming every week. We are reminded to look back at life 50 years ago to see what technology has done so far, and to look forward to life 50 years from now to see what can be.
