Augmenting Intelligence

• Original writing here - since supplanted:
  • But there is another use for technology, wherein it functions with the sense of the word as it predates the digital age *. Technologies are tools, affording humans a way to deal with information /complex data, or with physical tasks, or with ideas that are still imprecise and nascent. Technologies as tools give us better ways of doing things, or even enable new capabilities not previously possible. Technologies in this sense have been with us every time we invented a new medium that gave birth to new capabilities. Paper and writing was a technology, giving us an external memory whereby we could store more information than we could memorize, and share it with future others that did not live nearby. Arabic numbers replaced Roman numerals, easing the use of math and paving the way for future mathematicians and their discoveries. Need to find a good third example.
    • update - Seely's pieces of facilitation, expansion, etc are probably not limited to just augmented intelligence. This should fit with AI and communication richness as well. So maybe it's part of how we overlay these 3 dimensions onto the taxonomy of team/mts processes. Of course, these examples are tools that were not merely useful, they were transformative. Most technologies that are useful tools help us improve existing processes, in process facilitation (Seely, 2015). Others are more useful, expanding the boundaries of what is possible and opening up new ways we can work, in process expansion (Seely, 2015). Simultaneous live document editing is one such technology, changing the way a team can draft documents, allowing them to view thinking of the other and providing context to every comment. And a few technologies have the power to be truly transformative. It is difficult to predict what these technologies will look like, and sometimes it is difficult to perceive how an emerging technology might be the next truly transformative tool. Perhaps augmented reality, where we can introduce spatial and visual elements into our world and pin them in places we can return to, is this next tool. But the difficulty of prediction is part of the point: At the highest levels, technology as a tool is not merely useful. At the highest levels, a technology gives rise to an emergent phenomenon, and truly transforms our thought. If we could predict this, if we could articulate the paradigm change we desired, the tool would not truly be transformative, for we would already think that way (Matuschak & Nielsen, 2019).
    • Note - had thought to include a definition here, but it talks about using to accomplish a task - I don't know that I want to do that.
      • (...with the sense of the word as it predates the digital age): technology (noun): a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge (Webster online dictionary).
  • Footnote:
    • The idea that tools and technologies can both be used to refer, in a broad sense, to environmental objects that can increase our sensorimotor or cognitive capacities may come from the following source (cited in @Osiurak.Navarro.ea2018):
      • Osiurak, F., Jarry, C., and Le Gall, D. (2010). Grasping the affordances, understanding the reasoning: toward a dialectical theory of human tool use. Psychol. Rev. 117, 517–540. doi: 10.1037/a0019004
• But there is another dimension of technology, wherein it functions with the sense of the word as it predates the digital age. Technologies are tools, affording humans a way to deal with complex data, or with physical tasks, or with ideas that are still imprecise and nascent. This third dimension sees computers not as independently intelligent creatures of artificial origin, but as tools crafted by humans, for humans, as leverages of our own rich intelligence [@Engelbart1962].
• Technologies in this sense have been with us every time we invented a medium that gave birth to new capabilities. Paper and writing was a technology, giving us an external memory whereby we could store more information than we could memorize, and share it with future others. Arabic numbers replaced Roman numerals, easing the use of math and paving the way for future mathematicians and their discoveries. Language itself was a technology, laying the groundwork for the rich social structure of humanity. And computers are both a technology and a medium for new technologies, being a tool in their simplest forms that computed firing tables in World War II, and allowing for the creation of many new tools to augment our intelligence.
• rewrite_this In examining the pathways through which technology augments our intelligence, there are three key components to consider. First, technology serves as a tool for thought, providing leverage for our intelligences. Second, technology can tap into one or more modalities? types of human intelligence, potentially engaging humans with ideas through more channels than has traditionally been possible. might combine these 1st two into one And third, the ease and richness of the interface between human and computer affects our ability to use it as a tool.
  • Computers as a Tool for thought:
    • Early computers worked with existing paradigms, mimicking existing modes of thinking. Computers wrote linear documents, just as had been written by hand and then by typewriter, albeit computers added richer editing capabilities.
      • Some trace many modern computing schemas to thinking that is still rooted in the printing press, and fault this way of thinking for the limited ways in which computers currently augment our intelligence. (Personal conversations * - need to see if this was an idea they had found/written in the lit somewhere.) - edit, this is more relevant to types of human intelligence
    • But the power of computers as levers for our use is richer than being fancy printing machines. Computers are a tool that allows us to interface with symbols, with representations of ideas, in new ways.
    • Picture a computer taking a complex set of paragraphs, each paragraph representing an atomic thought or idea, that might be explicitly linked to some other related paragraphs. Some of those paragraphs are related hierarchically to other paragraphs, with those higher up more abstract and those farther down, more nuanced. For a computer to allow those paragraphs to be shown in multiple places, where an edit in one place propagates across all instances; to further place those paragraphs onto a two or three dimensional spatial plane that allows for rearranging and playing around; to allow the saving of multiple instances of those spatial planes; to offer visual libraries of drawings or icons to give representational anchors to ideas such that the human sees the icon and recalls the idea without reading; to seamlessly switch back and forth between spatial and more purely textual representations of ideas; to, in short, allow a human to play with and rearrange ideas in looking to compare, contrast, and find patterns across a large repository of thoughts - for a computer to do this is nothing. Nothing, in that it requires little effort on the part of the computer, but nothing too, in that it means nothing to the computer. No additional insight can be obtained by a computer by changing the abstraction, the representation of an idea. But a human that is given the power of such a computer sees a tool that allows for the generation of new ideas, insights that come from multiple representations of thought and the ready recall of information at unprecedented scale. This is the computer functioning as a tool for thought, as a tool that allows for more innovative and insightful human thought. Computers and humans each have powerful and unique sets of capabilities, and the computer as a tool for thought allows for a complementary synergy.
    • A computer can easily take a complex set of information or ideas and display it from multiple perspectives, including or excluding specific sources or types of data, and shift back and forth between any of these perspectives on demand. This is something that is difficult to replicate with analogue tools- and computers can do this at a scale that the pre-computer world could not dream of. Insights drawn from these representations are generated by the human rather than a computer; the computer here serves as a tool rather than as an Artificial Intelligence (to the extent that the computer generates insight, it displays a higher level of the Artificial Intelligence dimension).
    • Computers allow us to manipulate information in ways we could not otherwise do easily, or at all. Computers can present the same information in multiple perspectives, such that the human can examine ideas and data from multiple views, and ask the computer to include or exclude sources of date or ideas. Computers in this way allow for a dynamic manipulation of data and ideas, crafting a medium that could not be represented using analogue methods. New representations of thought allow us to tap into latent capabilities that we already have, where humans rather than computers are the ones generating insight (as opposed to when technology functions as Artificial Intelligence), but it is the representation of ideas or data, through the capabilities of the computer as a tool, that makes this insight possible.
      • Many great ideas in history have been realizations that data could be represented in different ways: maps of the world, algebraic notation, data visualization.
  • Related to the computer as a tool for thought, is the dimension of the types of human intelligence that the computer taps into. just laying out thoughts for now - will make the writing pretty later
    • Picture knowledge work, often picture working over books and paper, or a computer. The medium shapes how we envision it. @Victor2014HumaneRepresentThought
      • Reading, writing, talking about ideas with others - taps into visual, aural modes of understanding.
        • According to Jerome Bruner, taps into symbolic, but not enactive or iconic.
      • If can add ability to diagram in 2D add spatial; for Jerome Bruner, add iconic
      • If can move into 3D space and allow for dynamic manipulation, tap into kinesthetic, maybe even tactile; for Jerome Bruner, maybe add enactive
    • Technology today largely taps into the same types of human intelligence that knowledge work tapped into when we worked with pen and paper. Read and think, put your ideas into words and 2D diagrams, dialogue with others. But human intelligence is broader than this.
      • When we ride a bike, we understand how it works kinesthetically (understanding lives in performing of it), iconically (graphic understanding of how gear ratios work, wordless way of understanding), symbolically (language). need to show an example that is more clearly the realm of knowledge workers but still has non-language representations. Maybe understanding of something in astronomy? Or engineering. Bike could still work, but have to talk from engineering perspective.
      • Bret Victor goes so far as to call this style of knowledge work "inhumane," in that it forces someone to live in a way that severely constrains them - our method of knowledge work limits how we think, and takes away from our full range of intellectual capabilities @Victor2014HumaneRepresentThought.
    • Technology can enable multiple types of intelligence. Spatial representation of thought, possible today. Picture a simple technology that draws upon a visual library to offer icons to anchor to ideas - allows easy adding of visual elements - possible today. Allow humans to explore complex dynamic systems, in 3D, that are accurate and explorable models that draw on real data - maybe not quite possible today, maybe beginnings of this with AR/VR.
  • While the capabilities of the computer as a tool for thought form the foundation for its augmentation of intelligence, equally important is our ability to use that tool - to give instruction to the computer.
    • In early days of computing, all instructions had to be input via punch cards, and visual displays were largely text-based [@Rheingold1985]. Even the addition of some basic graphics required a supplementary screen with a dedicated technology. Communication between human and machine was very rudimentary. With the introduction of successively more sophisticated programming languages, programmers were able to give richer instructions to computers, and with time, create interfaces such that non-programmers could talk to computers in specific ways [@Rheingold1985]. This last step was an important one, as it finally presented some of the power of computing to those who did not program - in other words, to those who did not speak computer. Computers were finally learning to speak our language, rather than we, theirs. Recent advances in natural language recognition have improved further the ability of computers to understand our language, and the field of Brain-Computer Interfacing [BCI; @Wolpaw.Birbaumer.ea2002] is exploring how in the future we might interface more symbiotically with computers and realize early visions of the computer as a symbiotic tool [@Licklider1960a].