Augmenting Human Intellect is prescient in so many ways that it's helpful as an exercise to examine predictions which seem off. Collecting notes…
#1 (p13-17): DE paints a vision of word processing, describes how it'd help people develop ideas more rapidly and flexibly. (cont)
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He suggests that in competitive spaces, there'd be strong market pressure to adopt and improve augmentations like this (the implication is those who don't would get left behind).
It's striking, then, that some of the most successful writers draft by hand, or on typewriter!
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If Gaiman, Rowling, Stephenson, Sontag, King, etc can succeed without non-linear text editing, then it seems that either a) the augmentation must not be *that* transformatively powerful; or b) competition among top authors isn't that fierce, so "inefficiencies" can be tolerated.
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I like this framing.
Not sure exactly how it fits in, but I do often think of this John McPhee piece (that I think I came to through ) newyorker.com/magazine/2013/ as an example of where software seems really integral to a successful author's craft.
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I *love* this essay. And what a great example of the role of the machine—even, an almost n-of-1 role. Bespoke software! A homecooked meal! etc
Yea! It feels so suggestive to me of collaborative possibilities for making software (expert + engineer). I'd love to be on the engineer side of that partnership, but finding the right expert collaborator seems challenging (maybe you make the right software and they find you).
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