Conversation

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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Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Mar 8

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!

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Mar 8

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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Brandel Zachernuk

@zachernuk

Mar 10

I totally agree - Licklider's characterization of 'knowledge work' in 1960 sounds surprisingly alien to me, and I'm glad for how unimportant all the preparation work is these days: groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/ps

Despite the fact that there is a voluminous literature on thinking and problem solving, including intensive case-history studies of the process of invention, I could find nothing comparable to a time-and-motion-study analysis of the mental work of a person engaged in a scientific or technical enterprise. In the spring and summer of 1957, therefore, I tried to keep track of what one moderately technical person actually did during the hours he regarded as devoted to work. Although I was aware of the inadequacy of the sampling, I served as my own subject.

It soon became apparent that the main thing I did was to keep records, and the project would have become an infinite regress if the keeping of records had been carried through in the detail envisaged in the initial plan. It was not. Nevertheless, I obtained a picture of my activities that gave me pause. Perhaps my spectrum is not typical--I hope it is not, but I fear it is.

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This is a great point. Lick's example is much more successful. For similar reasons, DE's first example in AHI (of an architect drafting on a hillside, doing stress analyses, etc) works quite well.

6:58 PM · Mar 10, 2022TweetDeck