At a deep level, the argument over technology, employment, the workforce, and robots requires that we understand how our tools for thought—for augmenting human intellect—have worked, do work, and will work. And this requires that we have good answers to que44stions like this one. And we do not: Michael Nielsen: On Engelbart: "Augmenting Human Intellect" http://mnielsen.github.io/notes/engelbart/engelbart.html#slide-6: 'Augmenting intellect with paper and pencil: What is 427 x 784? Hard for an unaided human. Even harder: what is 721,269,127 x 422,599,421? Both problems become easy with paper and pencil. This is strange, a priori: wood pulp + wood + graphite = more intellectual capability! We're used to this, but that doesn't mean we understand it. What's actually going on? For what class of problems does paper and pencil help? For what class of problems does it not help (or hinder)? How much can it help?...
#noted #2020-01-31
