CS 575 Spring 2010

Class Meeting 3

Bapa Rao

Outline

• administrative• Review of previous week• Douglas Engelbart’s demo• Student Presentations• Agenda for next week

Administrative

• Comments / questions

Review of previous meeting

• 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• Social / human aspect of R&D cycle• Macroscopic human effects• Scientific analysis phase• Emergence or “magic”• Process of web science• Email webgoogleweb 2.0semantic 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– 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

– 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)• Conceptual framework is needed to know

– What to augment• artifacts• language• methodology• Training

– Goal: problem solving process• Process is what we actually do, and are trying to do more effectively

– Structure or organization across the board• Little steps, organized as a process hierarchy

– Versus objects?• Process repertoire or toolkit• Basic capabilities (‘hardware’) to higher-level capabilities

– Synergy, emergent capabilities, …• Which subprocess to choose?

– Executive Capability: planning, selecting, and supervising – Augmentation impact

• Suppose you had a better writing tool…– 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 (neo-

whorfian: 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)– 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

– User– Inventor / researcher– Visionary– Content creator– Hacker– Criminal– Business person– Wealth generator– …

• 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 man-machine symbiosis

• We will discuss more about man/machine symbiosis according to Licklider

• Where do today’s presentations fit in?

Agenda for next week

• Yuri Muradiyan: Human Enhancement Ethics• Gaurang Jadia: Crowdsourcing• Abhishek Sharma: Security, privacy, crime• Armen Galstyan: Entertainment / gaming