Andy’s New Media Blog

Unlike the editors, I did not find Engelbart’s article on Augmenting Human Intellect to be either “stirring” or “prescient.”  This was by far the most dense reading we’ve had so far in the semester and I’d be lying if I said I understood it completely.  That said, I think Engelbart has some really interesting ideas that seem to be a natural progression from what we heard in Bush’s As We May Think.

Bush’s article was mostly interested in linking potentially relevant bits of information together in the hopes of quickly and intuitively gaining knowledge.  Engelbart on the other hand seems more interested in the specific ways computers can be used to increase our comprehension and understanding of that information once it is acquired.  He seems to be mainly concerned with how computers can be used to break up information into separate pieces that can each be dealt with in their own way.  Engelbart makes it as confusing as possible but I think alot of what he’s talking about can be accomplished with a simple word processor since they essentially allow you to quickly edit and take notes on things on the fly.  Engelbart’s article does a good job of pointing out some of the seemingly obvious aspects of computer use that are completely ingrained in people like me that grew up with computers, but were revolutionary new ways to process information only forty years ago.