Douglas C. Engelbart. Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. Summary Report AFOSR-3223 under Contract AF 49(638)-1024, SRI Project 3578 for Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Stanford Research Institute, Menlo Park, Ca., October 1962.

V SUMMARY

This report has treated one over-all view of the augmentation of human intellect. In the report the following things have been done: (1) An hypothesis has been presented. (2) A conceptual framework has been constructed. (3) A "picture" of augmented man has been described. (4) A research approach has been outlined. These aspects will be re viewed here briefly:

..

1. An hypothesis has been stated that the intellectual effectiveness of a human can be significantly improved by an engineering-like approach toward redesigning changeable components of a system.
   ..
   
2. A conceptual framework has been constructed that helps provide a way of looking at the implications and possibilities surrounding and stemming from this hypothesis. Briefly, this framework provides the realization that our intellects are already augmented by means which appear to have the following characteristics:
   
   ..
   
   1. The principal elements are the language artifacts, and methodology that a human has learned to use.
      ..
      
   2. The elements are dynamically interdependent within an operating system.
      ..
      
   3. The structure of the system seems to be hierarchical, and to be best considered as a hierarchy of process capabilities whose primitive components are the basic human capabilities and the functional capabilities of the artifacts--which are organized successively into ever-more-sophisticated capabilities.
      ..
      
   4. The capabilities of prime interest are those associated with manipulating symbols and concepts in support of organizing and executing processes from which are ultimately derived human compre hension and problem solutions.
      ..
      
   5. The automatlon of the symbol manipulation associated with the minute-by-minute mental processes seems to offer a logical next step in the evolution of our intellectual capability.
   
   ..
   
3. A picture of the implications and promise of this framework has been described, based upon direct human communication with a computer. Here the many ways in which the computer could be of service, at successive levels of augmented capability, have been brought out. This picture is fanciful, but we believe it to be conservative and representative of the sort of rich and significant gains that are there to be pursued.
   ..
   
4. An approach has been outlined for testing the hypothesis of Item (1) and for pursuing the "rich and significant gains" which we feel are promised. This approach is designed to treat the redesign of a capability hierarchy by reworking from the bottom up, and yet to make the research on augmentation means progress as fast as possible by deriving practically usable augmentation systems for real-world problem solvers at a maximum rate. This goal is fostered by the recommendation of incorporating positive feedback into the research development--i.e., concentrating a good share of the basic-research attention upon augmenting those capabilities in a human that are needed in the augmentation-research workers The real-world applications would be pursued by designing a succession of systems for specialists, whose progression corresponds to the increasing generality of the capabilities for which coordinated augmentation means have been evolved. Consideration is given in this rather global approach to providing potential users in different domains of intellectualactivity with the basic general-purpose augmentation system from which they themselves can construct the special featuresof a system to match their job, and their ways of working--or it could be used on the other hand by researchers who want to pursue the development of sepcial augmentation systems for special fields.