LEGACY

VISION

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A Field Guide to 'Augmenting Human Intellect' 0

The Engelbart Archive 5b

We celebrated the 60th Anniversary of Doug Engelbart's landmark 'manifesto' with story, footage, memorabilia and fun facts below - post your favs on social media!

A Field Guide to 'Augmenting Human Intellect' 0

	Browse the research report \| Table of Contents
	Wordle of 1962 Report
	Watch short documentary (6 min.) to see what sprang from Doug's Framework
	❝ Engelbart did not think of the computer as merely improving human thinking, but as transforming the processes of our institutions in a more profound way...❞ — Janet H. Murray, on Inventing the Medium in New Media Reader
	Watch Prof. Gardner Campbell present "Doug's 1962 Framework" (12 min.)
	Watch Alan Kay present "Why we need to understand what Doug Engelbart was trying to do" (30 min.) -- Highlights: 1968 Demo - Key Takeaways \| Today? \| Why Engelbart? \| Systems Thinking to Help Us Think \| Big Idea (see below for full details.)
	Watch Doug present "The Augmented Knowledge Workshop" (1986) -- watch Framework highlights: Intro \| Framework Purpose \| Framework Report \| Expressed in 1968 \| Framework Detail / Call to Action (see below for full details.)
	❝ Doug thought at scale. He understood that a car is not simply a faster tricycle. He had faith that an augmented intellect, joined to millions of other augmented intellects, could clarify individual thought even as it empowered vast new modes of thinking, new modes of complex understanding that could grasp intricately meaningful symbols as quickly and comprehensively as we can recognize a loved one's face.❞ — Gardner Campbell, Dreams About How The World Could Be

What it is 1

Welcome to our 'field guide' to Doug Engelbart's most seminal work. It all started with a vision for humanity and a comprehensive two-year study of what he came to call 'Augmenting the Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework', culminating in a comprehensive research report, an article distilling his findings, and a concise summary proposal (detailed below) – which then served as the guiding force behind his award-winning pioneering research throughout his career, and still inspires today.

Goal – The aim of this groundbreaking study was to flesh out his ideas for making the world a much better place in the fastest possible timeframe. His basic premise? If we could discover how teams could work dramatically smarter, better, faster, i.e. increasing human intellectual effectiveness in solving complex problems, then all the initiatives tackling important challenges could be much more effective pursuing their mission.

❝ 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.❞
— Doug Engelbart, in his Introduction to Augmenting Human Intellect

This would be especially important, he reasoned, in the midst of accelerating change (which he also predicted), where the issues and opportunities we face would be growing increasingly complex and urgent, at an unprecedented rate and scale. Consider it the grand challenge of grand challenges, important to success of organizations, communities, institutions, sectors, regions, whole nations, and cross-cutting efforts large and small.

In the course of this study, funded jointly by Stanford Research Institute (SRI) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Doug forged a new discipline he called Augmenting the Human Intellect, with in-depth conceptual framework, research agenda, and strategic approach for bootstrapping the results at scale. His writings, which summarize his findings and recommendations, were informed by these essential breakthrough discoveries:

What Augments Us: A Human-Centered Paradigm – Augmenting humans means equipping them with the necessary skills and know-how, along with any tools of the trade. Engelbart saw these 'augmentation means' as a dynamic synthesis of component parts, co-evolving over time. Thus we are already augmented, so how to improve on that. He boiled the basic elements down to "Humans together with the Language, Artifacts, and Methodology they have been Trained to use," or H-LAM/T for short, operating as a system, a 'capability repertoire', whose elements are redesignable in a total-system approach. Reflecting on his research goal through this lens opened up a whole new expanded vision of augmenting human intellect and the representation of thought, manipulation and framing of concepts and symbols, where intelligence happens, intelligence amplification and synergy (and conversely the factors that limit such), all aided by new paradigms in computing and capability improvement, including what and whom to improve first, and the critical importance of learning how to continuously co-evolve the whole human-tool system in a balanced way.

Bootstrap Approach: Facilitating the Co-Evolution – It turns out 'augmenting human intellect' presents a special opportunity for augmentation research teams. They can directly improve their own effectiveness by harnessing the results of their work. "The feeding back of positive research results to improve the means by which the researchers themselves can pursue their work." This discovery led Engelbart to design a design strategy to capitalize on this positive-feedback, regenerative opportunity, with bonus provisions for facilitating and accelerating the human-tool co-evolution.

See our Glossary of Key Concepts for helpful definitions and descriptions.

Significance 2

R&D funding ensued, and so the Augmenting Human Intellect Research Center (AHIRC) was born. In a few short years, following the core principles set forth in his Framework, Doug and his team forged a constellation of breakthrough firsts to herald in a new era in team effectiveness, as demonstrated first in 1968 in what is now known as the Mother of All Demos, again in 1969 with the 'sequel' to the Demo, and beyond. Pioneering firsts in organizational computing included interactive, hyperlinked, networked personal and collaborative computing, which he and his team co-evolved alongside organizational innovations and strategic design principles that were just as profound.

And for those efforts he was recognized with the National Medal of Technology & Innovation, the Turing Award, the Lemelson-MIT Prize, an Honorary Doctorate from Yale, and more, even as he continued pointing to the future through his collaborations, lectures and management seminars.

And now widely acclaimed:

"In one 1968 presentation, this inventor shaped modern computing" - Smithsonian Magazine
"One of recent history's most acclaimed innovators" - Inventors Digest
"Visionary is one of the most overused terms in tech, but it almost seems insufficient to explain just what Doug Engelbart was' - Fast Company

In other words, Doug's conceptual framework for augmenting the human intellect drove one of the more revolutionary research agendas on record, and, like Einstein's Theory of Relativity, is still enormously relevant. And yet we have still barely scratched the surface of fully appreciating, let alone achieving, its true potential.

And all this traces back to this seminal study – the strategic thinking, big picture vision, phenomenal thought experiments, unifying conceptual framework, organizing principles, strategic approach, and application scenarios – which informed and shaped all subsequent work.

Find it Here 3

Browse with our usual enhanced navigation features (see About Our Website), or other formats as shown below. For full citation and publication notes, including possible abridged versions, click the Citation hotlink.

Report: Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, 1962 (134 pages) – the final research report in full.
Formats: permalink | PDF | eReader | HyperScope(?) | Citation

Article: A Conceptual Framework for the Augmention of Man's Intellect, 1963 (35 pages) – distilled for management in Vistas in Information Handling, Howerton & Weeks [Ed.], 1963, Chapter 1.
Formats: permalink | PDF | eReader | HyperScope(?) | Citation

Summary: Program on Human Effectiveness, 1961 (7 pages) – proposal summary including framework, approach and research agenda.
Formats: permalink | PDF | eReader | HyperScope(?) | Citation

Historical Note: Doug enclosed a copy of this summary with a letter to Vannevar Bush in May of 1962.

New! See also Case Examples under Papers below, as well as:

Audio: Readings of the first few sections of the 1962 report by Prof. Gardner Campbell for his Framework Annotation site, now available as a collection on our Audio Resources page, here's a teaser:

Section I - Introduction | read along | learn more