Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Augmenting Human Intellect (1962)

dougengelbart.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–45 of 45 posts

Re: Augmenting Human Intellect (1962)

#41

Post by waterhouse »

082349872349872 wrote: post #22
RivieraKid wrote: post #7

Is there a TL;DR version? Before you downvote, I don't want to invest hours into reading something when 80% of the value can probably be summarized into one paragraph. BTW, I wonder how many of the people who upvoted this have actually read it.

Hours should suffice for hundreds of pages. TFA is much shorter. If you insist upon having a tl;dr, it has its own: https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/138/#5a2

For what it's worth, wc tells me that the main text of the OP is about 44,500 words, and a web search suggests that the average adult reads 250-300 words per minute, which yields about 2.5-3.0 hours of reading time.

Re: Augmenting Human Intellect (1962)

#42

Post by 082349872349872 »

waterhouse wrote: post #41
082349872349872 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hours should suffice for hundreds of pages. TFA is much shorter. If you insist upon having a tl;dr, it has its own: https://www.dougengelbart.org/content/view/138/#5a2

For what it's worth, wc tells me that the main text of the OP is about 44,500 words, and a web search suggests that the average adult reads 250-300 words per minute, which yields about 2.5-3.0 hours of reading time.

Good point! I don't think HN is catering for the average adult, however. A college student 500+ wpm is what I'd had in mind, and that along with the 131 pdf pages both suggest something around an hour to me.

(I didn't remember it being that long from both times I've read it, but I guess I found the thesis interesting enough that the time passed quickly?)

(Something else that I haven't seen pointed in this thread is that people with whose english is an L2 may legitimately be slower than in their L1.)

Re: Augmenting Human Intellect (1962)

#43

Post by hinkley »

tux3 wrote: post #24
hinkley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I can never quite explain to people is that when I can navigate the information faster, I can see deeper problems. Every time someone decided that this is good enough and that I “should be able to figure it out, what’s the big deal?” I am stymied. Which would sound like someone whining about how the bigger kids are running too fast, but when I finally get fed up and fix the code, half the time I’m the one w…

I'm very sympathetic to this, but I think you go too far with the conclusion! If we did figure out drawing or writing without hands, I think that would be a noticeable, but still small improvement. Much like with coding, the insight/information /s rate is very rarely keyboard limited. A good programmer switching to Vim may help them a bit, and it can be a strong enough effect that lots of people will want to switch t…

I don't actually have to draw pictures in my mind. It's more akin to remembering in the dark where the coffee table is so I don't bark my shin.

But I know that other people do not work this way, so 'draw myself a picture' is still a gating condition on writing the code.

Re: Augmenting Human Intellect (1962)

#44

Post by kgarten »

kgarten wrote: post #16

So happy to see this pop up on hacker news again. An anecdote (as far as I can remember it correctly), during one of his award lectures (after the 1997 Turing award), he was asked why he thinks that some of his tech was easily adapted (mouse etc.) and some others weren't (hyperlinks). He answered "Maybe the time is not right yet." ;) Shameless self plug: I'm part of a couple of crazy scientists and enthusiasts follow…

just in case: here's the youtube live link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yGuP6T-7zE

Re: Augmenting Human Intellect (1962)

#45

Post by statstutor »

The "Table of Contents" attempts to hold its original place on the page, even if its original place is below the fold. (My screen is not tall enough to access the table of contents at all)

I find this an ironic bit of User Interface failure.

Post reply on HN