Whatever Happened to “Augmenting Human Intellect”?

The fundamental role of data visualization is to express information in a form more palatable to human perception than rows and columns of raw values. We are visual creatures, and visualization is a necessary tool for our brains to acquire, explore, analyze, and reason with data. Douglas Engelbart’s recent passing has me reflecting on why we do what we do, and whether or not we are fulfilling Engelbart’s goal of “augmenting human intellect.” On one hand, visualization is a technology perfectly suited to support this goal. Yet, too often, we see graphics whose inaccuracy and oversimplification is fundamentally misleading, effectively dumbing us down — the opposite of what we need. This is not just a gripe about poorly designed visuals; this is an opportunity to reevaluate the values that inform our work. How can we reframe and refocus our work on the worthy goals of visionaries like Engelbart and Vannevar Bush? With some adjustments, visualization can play a less trivial, more fundamental role within the larger domains of technology and society.

Transcript

1. Scott Murray
   Assistant Professor, Design
   University of San Francisco
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   Whatever Happened to
   “Augmenting Human Intellect”?
   

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5. Douglas Engelbart
   1925 – 2013
   

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6. AFIPS
   CONFERENCE
   PROCEEDINGS
   VOLUME 33
   PART ONE
   1968
   FALL JOINT
   COMPUTER
   CONFERENCE
   THE THOMPSON BOOK COMPANY
   National Press Building
   Washington, D.C. 2 0 0 0 4
   December 9-11, 1968
   San Francisco, California
   

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7. Brooks Hall,
   Civic Center,
   San Francisco
   

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10. Vannevar Bush
    1890 – 1974
    

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13. Charles Babbage
    1791 – 1871
    

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19. 608-283-xxxx
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    Babbage
    Bush
    Engelbart
    Calculation
    Memory
    Collaboration
    Visualization Pattern discovery and reasoning
    

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26. by setting the values of the sliders and buttons in the control panel to
    the right. The query result is determined by ANDing all sliders and
    buttons.
    husband will be working. downtown, near the capitol, by dragging
    the ‘B’. Figure 2 shows the interface after Dr. Jones has dragged the
    ‘A’ and ‘B’ indicators to her desired locations (the indicators are
    more visible in Figure 4).
    Dynamic HomeFinder
    Williamson and Schneiderman, 1992
    

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30. Map of APRANET in December 1969 from ARPANET Completion
    Report. Bolt, Beranek and Newman. Burlington, MA, January 4, 1978.
    Photo of Douglas Engelbart from SRI, http://www.sri.com/
    newsroom/press-releases/douglas-engelbart-passed-away-
    july-2-2013
    AFIPS
    CONFERENCE
    PROCEEDINGS
    VOLUME 33
    PART ONE
    1968
    FALL JOINT
    COMPUTER
    CONFERENCE
    THE THOMPSON BOOK COMPANY
    National Press Building
    Washington, D.C. 2 0 0 0 4
    December 9-11, 1968
    San Francisco, California
    AFIPS Conference Proceedings, 1968, http://portalparts.acm.org/
    1480000/1476589/fm/frontmatter.pdf#page=5pagemode=thumbs
    “San Francisco's Brooks Hall all set for the 1968 Fall Joint Computer
    Conference,” 1968, provided by the Doug Engelbart Institute, http://
    www.dougengelbart.org/history/pix.html#FJCC-1968
    Still images from video recording of Engelbart’s presentation “A
    Research Center for Augmenting Human Intellect,” 1968, provided by
    the Doug Engelbart Institute, http://www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/
    dougs-1968-demo.html
    Video recording of Engelbart’s presentation “A Research Center for
    Augmenting Human Intellect,” 1968, provided by the Doug Engelbart
    Institute, http://www.dougengelbart.org/firsts/dougs-1968-
    demo.html
    Photo of Vannevar Bush, originally from Pieces of the Action (New
    York, William Morrow, 1970, p. 161) by Vannevar Bush. Reproduced
    and photographed from A Computer Perspective (Harvard Univ. Press,
    Cambridge, 1990 ed., p. 113) by the office of Charles and Ray Eames.
    Photo originally from “As We May Think” (Life, September 1945, p.
    112–124) by Vannevar Bush. Reproduced and photographed from The
    New Media Reader (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003, p. 113), Noah
    Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, eds.
    Photo originally from “As We May Think” (Life, September 1945, p.
    112–124) by Vannevar Bush. Reproduced and photographed from The
    New Media Reader (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003, p. 113), Noah
    Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort, eds.
    Photo of Charles Babbage, 1860, photographer unknown, http://
    commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Babbage_-_1860.jpg
    Photo of the Babbage Difference Engine, 2009, Allan J. Cronin,
    http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Difference_engine.JPG
    “Instagram and Other Social Media Apps,” 2012, Jason A. Howie,
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonahowie/7910370882/sizes/l/
    “A Google Glass Wearer,” 2013, Loic Le Meur, http://
    commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Google_Glass_wearer.jpg
    “Google Glass Detail,” 2012, Antonio Zugaldia, http://
    commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Google_Glass_detail.jpg
    “Stephen Balaban wearing Google Glass on July 16th, 2013,” 2013,
    Stephen Balaban, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
    File:Stephen_Balaban_wearing_Google_Glass_on_July_16th,
    2013.png
    608-283-xxxx
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    Still image from Relationship Visualizer by Scott Murray, http://
    alignedleft.com/work/relationship-visualizer
    Dynamic Queries 3
    The dynamic queries interface (Figure 2) provides a
    visualization of both the query formulation and corresponding
    results. This application was built using the C programming language.
    A map of the District of Columbia area is displayed on the left. The
    homes that fulfill the criteria set by the user’s current query are shown
    as yellow dots on the map. Users perform queries, using the mouse,
    by setting the values of the sliders and buttons in the control panel to
    the right. The query result is determined by ANDing all sliders and
    buttons.
    The dynamic homefinder interface is best explained through
    an example. Take a hypothetical situation where a new professor,
    Dr. Jones, has just been hired by the Umversity of Maryland. She
    might encounter this tool in a touchscreen kiosk at a real-estate office
    or at the student union. She selects the location where she will be
    working by dragging the ‘A’ on the map. Next. she selects where her
    husband will be working. downtown, near the capitol, by dragging
    the ‘B’. Figure 2 shows the interface after Dr. Jones has dragged the
    ‘A’ and ‘B’ indicators to her desired locations (the indicators are
    more visible in Figure 4).
    340
    “The Dynamic HomeFinder: Evaluating dynamic queries in a real-
    estate information exploration system.” Christopher Williamson and
    Ben Shneiderman. ACM, 1992.
    Visual Thinking by Rudolf Arnheim, University of California Press,
    Berkeley, 1969.
    Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas by Seymour
    Papert, Basic Books, New York, 1980.
    Photo of Douglas Engelbart from SRI, http://www.sri.com/
    newsroom/press-releases/douglas-engelbart-passed-away-
    july-2-2013
    

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