Man-Computer Symbiosis (1960) | Hacker News Reader

Man-Computer Symbiosis (1960)

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42 pointsthrow0101a8 comments

Several past threads but precious few comments:

Man-Computer Symbiosis by J. C. R. LICKLIDER (1960) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20642783 - Aug 2019 (1 comment)

Man-Computer Symbiosis (1960) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18950590 - Jan 2019 (2 comments)

Man-Computer Symbiosis (1960) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14302515 - May 2017 (2 comments)

Man-Computer Symbiosis (1960) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673917 - May 2016 (1 comment)

Man-Computer Symbiosis [J.C.R. Licklider] (1960) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11534637 - April 2016 (1 comment)

Man-Computer Symbiosis (1960) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8418654 - Oct 2014 (6 comments)

Internet Antichrist [J.C.R. Licklider's Man-Computer Symbiosis] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=920121 - Nov 2009 (1 comment) - article by David Byrne of all people

One of the things they "got" back then with ideas around symbiosis, cybernetics, etc. is how computers have the capacity to move humanity to a sort of superhuman state -- with computers augmenting and even replacing the things that humans are quite terrible at.

In many ways we've achieved that -- the internet forms a kind of collective super memory for example.

But in other ways we've failed very hard -- computers are mostly used for consumption and interfaces and tools are dumbed down now that expert users often don't have a way of really advancing beyond themselves into superhuman levels of virtuosic domains.

At the level of the individual human, there is little to be considered by way of "symbiosis". All productivity gains can be reduced to the efficient production and consumption of digital content.

But at the societal level, a definite creeping parasitism born of computerization has entered us. We can see it in the surveillance apparatus in HK, post-Umbrella Revolution. It arrives under the guise of the "smart city". If anyone caught the NVidia Omniverse "smart factory" demo from GTC21, the capability is already productized. Ready to be deployed at trans-national scale.

I think what would be most shocking to Licklider's generation is how willingly we trade "free culture" for convenience and security. And as the system becomes more benevolent, as our dependence more all-encompassing. How we begin to supplant all independence to a worship of the machine!

I think what would be most shocking to Licklider's generation is how willingly we trade "free culture" for convenience and security.

I think it's even worse than this. Many populer "smart lightbulbs" are less convenient than a lightswitch and create network security holes. Alot of cloud based software is worse than locally run applications for most people's use cases. Maybe fashion is the key driver of change?

I recently read, and recommend, The Dream Machine - great walk throught this and many related topics and events. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1732265119

Yes it is great, listening to audiobook now.

Also recommend ‘where wizards stay up late: the origins of the internet’ ‘Hackers’ ‘Masters of Doom’

Do the true implications of cybernetics escape us?

It's encouraging to see how far we've come. Software like octave/jupyter/mathematica have gone similar routes as far as memory and presentation. It seems that interfaces making use of people's physical intuition (page style layouts with a natural ordering) continue to be popular.

Though not mentioned explicitly in the article, manual spreadsheets existed at the time of writing. Modern spreadsheet tools havent changed substantially for decades, so i would argue this is a fascet of computational symbiosis that may already have been perfected.

Mantat would disagree this vision and claim that vision is only left for the human brain.

-- Dune inspired

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