Tools for Thought

Published in 1985 by Howard Rheingold, “Tools for thought : The History And Future Of Mind-Expanding Technology” traces the development of the personal computer through biographies of key figures, starting with Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace and ending at a pivotal moment in computing history, the development of the personal computer. His stories provide a tremendous insight into the culture of early computing from the 60s into the 80s: the research labs on the West Coast, the development of hacker culture, and the early moments of the proto-internet.

The subjects of his book are tremendously optimistic about what humans and computers will achieve together in the near future. As computers inevitably shrank in size and grew in power, personal computers would transform from machines to process numbers into a more general purpose tool to augment the human mind.

By “augmenting man’s intellect” we mean increasing the capability of a man to approach a complex problem situation, gain comprehension to save his particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems. Increased capability in this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following: that comprehension can be gained more quickly; that better comprehension can be gained; that a useful degree of comprehension can be gained where previously the situation was too complex; that solutions can be produced more quickly; that better solutions can be produced; that solutions can be found were previously the human could find none. And by “complex situations” we include the professional problems of diplomats, executives, social scientists, life scientists, physical scientists, attorneys, designers – whether the problem situation exists for twenty minutes or twenty years. We do not speak of isolated clever tricks that help in particular situations. We refer to a way of life in an integrated domain where hunches, cut-and-try, intangibles, and the human “feel for a situation” usefully coexist with powerful concepts, streamlined technology and notation, sophisticated methods, and high-powered electronic aids.

– “A Conceptual Framework for the Augmentation of Man’s intellect” Douglas Engelbart (1963)

Raymond Kasser, then CEO of Atari, described the computer’s ability to empower the mind as an evolutionary step: “the new equivalents to opposable thumbs” Others were taking a more mystical approach, describing this augmentation as akin to consciousness expansion: informational LSD without the chemicals.

In 1966, J. C. R. Licklider and others developed ARPANET, laying the foundations for the modern internet. They immediately saw the power of the computer as a tool for communication and envisioned a better society as a result.

First, life be happier for the on-line individual because the people with whom one interacts most strongly will be selected more by commonality of interests and goals that by accidents of proximity. Second, communication will be more effective, and therefore more enjoyable. Third, much communication will be with programs and programmed models, which will be (a) highly responsive, (b) supplementary to one’s own capabilities, rather than competitive, and (c) capable of representing progressively more complex ideas without necessarily displaying all the levels of their structure at the same time - and which will therefore be both challenging and rewarding. And fourth, there will be plenty of opportunity for everyone (who can afford a console) to find his calling, for the whole world of information, with all its fields and disciplines, will be open to him - with programs ready to guide him or to help him explore.

– “The Computer as a Communication Device” J.C.R Licklider, Robert Taylor, and E. Herbert (1968)

The second edition was published in 2000 and contains an afterward where Rheingold and several of his contemporary subjects reflect on the future they envisioned and how it had realized itself. Despite raw technologic progress of power and miniaturization which exceeded even their wildest predictions, some things were not quite as easy to make as they had anticipated. Ted Nelson started work on a hypertext media system called Xanadu in the 1960s which he was still working on over 20 years later “It seemed to simple and clear to me then. It still does. But like many beginning computerists, I mistook a clear view for a short distance” The internet had been built, and the web was already starting to disappoint. Computers were becoming increasingly ubiquitous, but they lacked the capabilities to extend humans thinking in the ways that some had hoped. The pervasive optimism of the previous era had started to fade.

Now, 25 years later, it is truly astonishing to see how many of the ideas laid out by the visionaries in Rheingold’s books have been realized. However, like wishes made to a genie, their predictions failed to anticipate the full ramifications of those outcomes. From the perspective of those original visionaries, 2024 would perhaps look rather dystopian.

They imagined a future of thinking through computers where data and ideas were fundamentally interlinked. They failed to anticipate the practical complexities of exchanging information between disparate systems and the more malicious efforts to build walled gardens built by mega-corporations. In the networked computer research labs of 1986, there were no bad actors. Who might have bothered to imagine the extent to which computer systems would be locked down for the purposes of security and the nightmare of the modern login process. We sift through spam, “fake news”, and AI slop, struggling uphill to discern what information that is delivered to us from the internet is actually real, to say nothing of useful.

The rise of AI puts us on the precipice of dramatic change similar in scope to the development of the personal computer. The language around human computer partnerships or augmentation has fallen away because we’ve read or seen enough science fiction to understand where that might lead. Even the rather poetic concept of the Bicycle of the Mind has passed into an earlier era. Instead, we use the word “assistant,” which has a much clearer power dynamic, one where it’s clear we get to tell the computer what to do. We need assistants because we are overwhelmed, and we are overwhelmed because technology delivers more information to manage, and less time to spend doing it. Assistants are not a tool for thought but instead for delegation. Somewhere along the way, personal computers became labor saving devices, tools for automation and not augmentation. Licklider and others envisioned a future of computers as communication devices, but our pocket sized computers have grown in scope to encompass every moment of our waking lives. At work, we ask the computers to do the work that we don’t want or are incapable of doing. At home, we use computers to entertain us, distract us, and provide emotional regulation. In short, the assistance on offer is one where we have to think and feel less, not more.

If we are going to return to a more positive and useful relationship with our computers, I think we need to return our focus to “tools for thought.” The blueprint for the project of human augmentation was laid down by these visionaries a long time ago, but I think it is a mistake to dismiss them as ancient history. There are still many ideas to fully realize and entirely new ideas to explore and implement, and there are many people who have been working on these efforts all along who need our support.