CS 575
Spring 2010
Class Meeting 3
Bapa Rao
Outline
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administrative
Review of previous week
Douglas Engelbart’s demo
Student Presentations
Agenda for next week
Administrative
• Comments / questions
Review of previous meeting
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Berners-Lee videos
“semantic web”
Data, data, data
Links between Data
Web R & D as a collective social-scientific
process
• Web science
More Berners-Lee
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Social / human aspect of R&D cycle
Macroscopic human effects
Scientific analysis phase
Emergence or “magic”
Process of web science
Email webgoogleweb 2.0semantic web
Technical aspects of semantic web
Conceptual aspects
Pragmatic aspects
Challenges of web science
Engelbart “mother of all demos”
Engelbart and “augmenting the human
intellect”
Engelbart Paper Overview
• Capability to obtain better solutions to complex
problems
• Benefit ‘information workers’
• New conceptual framework
• What to augment
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Artifacts, language, methodology, training
Whorf’s hypothesis & the weighted pencil expt
Problem-solving process
Structure: bureaucratic to more distributed
Executive capability—choosing from repertoire
• What is the impact of augmentation?
Engelbart: Two-domain system
• H-LAM/T
Last week’s presentations
• Cloud computing—Tam Nguyen
• Human interaction in Internet communities—
Jerry Chang
• HCC and HCM—Ashok Sahu
• Artificial Life—Saeid Mousavi
Engelbart (contd)
• Capability repertoire hierarchy
– Basic capabilities (human and artifact) are the raw
materials
– Mental structuring (cognitive structures)
• Development Models: garden, basketball team, machine building
– Concept structuring
– Symbol structuring
– Process structuring
• ‘M’ in H-LAM/T
– Physical structuring
• A in H-LAM/T
– Interdependence among all these structures
Engelbart (contd)
• Concept structuring
– concepts are tools
– concepts have handles--representations
– concept structures map to mental structures
– some concept structures are better than others
– language (natural lang esp) is the grand concept
structuring tool
Engelbart (contd)
• Symbol structuring
– some symbols work better than others
• depends on the purpose
– need flexibility, translatability
– view generation capability (rather than physical
linear ordering)
Engelbart (contd)
• Interdependence among hierarchies
– Cyclic
– Regenerative
• Improvement in one category feeds improvement in
other categories
Augmenting the Human Intellect
• 1962 report/proposal to Air Force Ofc. Of Scientific Research
• Capability to obtain better solutions to complex problems
• New conceptual framework
– Not small tricks
• Example scenario: an architect’s workday
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Design alternatives
Operational environments
Functional specifications
Detailed design
Tools
• Synthesis, analysis, verification, debugging
Engelbart (contd)
• Who will benefit
– Every person who does his thinking with
symbolized concepts
• Human language, pictographs, formal logic,
mathematics, …
– Architects, engineers, lawyers, writers, …
– ‘information workers’
Engelbart (contd)
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Conceptual framework is needed to know
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What to augment
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Goal: problem solving process
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artifacts
language
methodology
Training
Process is what we actually do, and are trying to do more effectively
Structure or organization across the board
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Little steps, organized as a process hierarchy
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Process repertoire or toolkit
Basic capabilities (‘hardware’) to higher-level capabilities
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Which subprocess to choose?
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Versus objects?
Synergy, emergent capabilities, …
Executive Capability: planning, selecting, and supervising
Augmentation impact
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Suppose you had a better writing tool…
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Hardware, software, dictionary, spell checker, fact researcher, …
Pencil to word processor
» Benefits?
» Break down old process, come up with new process
» New capabilities!
Engelbart: Two-domain system
• H-LAM/T
Engelbart (contd)
• How did humans get ‘augmented’ during our
development?
– 1. concept manipulation
– 2. symbol manipulation
– 3. Manual, External, Symbol Manipulation
• Whorf’s hypothesis: Language affects our thinking
and capabilities
– 4. Automated external symbol manipulation (neowhorfian: technology affects language and capabilities)
• Language can also evolve to meet conceptual and task needs
(counterargument to whorfian hypothesis)
Engelbart (contd)
• Brick-pencil experiment
Engelbart (contd)
• Brick-pencil expt (de-augmentation)
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Typewriter: 7 sec
Pencil: 20 secs
Brick, small letters: 65+ secs
Brick, large letters: 42 secs
• Impacts on effectiveness of culture
– Too hard too few people doing it
– Different concepts for work, record-keeping, etc.
• What about known impacts of actual augmentation,
46 years after Engelbart wrote this proposal?
Engelbart (contd)
• Capability repertoire hierarchy
– Basic capabilities (human and artifact) are the raw
materials
– Mental structuring (cognitive structures)
• Development Models: garden, basketball team, machine building
– Concept structuring
– Symbol structuring
– Process structuring
• ‘M’ in H-LAM/T
– Physical structuring
• A in H-LAM/T
– Interdependence among all these structures
Engelbart (contd)
• Concept structuring
– concepts are tools
– concepts have handles--representations
– concept structures map to mental structures
– some concept structures are better than others
– language (natural lang esp) is the grand concept
structuring tool
Engelbart (contd)
• Symbol structuring
– some symbols work better than others
• depends on the purpose
– need flexibility, translatability
– view generation capability (rather than physical
linear ordering)
Engelbart (contd)
• Interdependence among hierarchies
– Cyclic
– Regenerative
• Improvement in one category feeds improvement in
other categories
Engelbart (contd)
• Roles and levels
– executive
– direct-contributive
• model of executive superstructure
– Bureaucratic hierarchy is onerous
– contractor-subcontractor model
• Flexibility in the Executive Role
– executive tasks are complex
– orderly flexibility requirement on symbol etc. structures is
costly
– disorderly process of change must be supported
• ‘agile methodologies’
Berners-Lee’s view in context
• Social = Human
• Concept augmentation is an emergent
phenomenon
Student Presentations
• Jigar Patel: programming paradigms
• Manthan Katharotiya: Web mining
REMINDER: A [flexible] structure for our
study
• ‘Human issues’ is all-encompassing
• Many interlocking dimensions
• Human roles vis-à-vis the computer
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User
Inventor / researcher
Visionary
Content creator
Hacker
Criminal
Business person
Wealth generator
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• Human-computer coupling
– Symbiosis, tool, …
A [flexible] structure for our study (contd)
• Domains of human activity
– Education, Entertainment, Play, Family, Reproduction, Art ,Wealth generation,
Government, consumption, religion, philosophy, …
• Values
– Many values depend on role, domain, …
– Absolute values?
– Creativity, aesthetics, access, opportunity, freedom, spirituality, rationality,
peace, brotherhood, prosperity, …
• Vision, potentials, realities
– Babbage’s Analytical Engine, Bush’s Memex, …
• Pragmatics
– Is it possible? How to get there?
– Techniques, Design, Technology,
• Scaling and emergent phenomena
– Will a whole new thing emerge if huge numbers of humans interact with
computers in a certain way? How do we understand that ‘thing’?
• Other aspects, dimensions?
A [flexible] structure for our study (contd)
• Use readings and videos of pioneering thinkers and inventors
to elicit a concrete jumping-off point for discussion and
analysis
• Use presentations and discussions to ‘tag’ current thoughts,
activities, developments, .. along these dimensions
• Preparation
– Review Resources and Additional Resources
– Research and read pioneering articles (like the Memex article,
Berners-lee’s articles
• What should emerge at the end?
– Open
– Predictions, critiques, lessons, techniques, new visions, new ideas,
stimuli to thought, …
Summary
• Berners-lee’s push for a collectivized,
participatory semantic web science
• Engelbart’s early technical achievements laid the
foundation
• Engelbart laid a rigorous conceptual foundation
that might be called the architecture of manmachine symbiosis
• We will discuss more about man/machine
symbiosis according to Licklider
• Where do today’s presentations fit in?
Agenda for next week
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Yuri Muradiyan: Human Enhancement Ethics
Gaurang Jadia: Crowdsourcing
Abhishek Sharma: Security, privacy, crime
Armen Galstyan: Entertainment / gaming