This post is part of the ongoing series of reading reflections on HCI papers and articles. You can find the other posts ‘here.’
Man-Computer Symbiosis. J. C. R. Licklider 1960
Digital Object Identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1109/THFE2.1960.4503259
Summary
This article shows early ideas and discussions on how humans and computers could work together to leverage both strengths. This article from the 1960s argues that computers could be much more than a “mechanically extended man” and could instead play a more active role in interactions between them.
Prompts
Why is this article important?
I believe this article shows the various ideas and future that the people of the 1960s envisioned and hoped they could achieve. It starts by presenting the more prevalent view of the time: The machine is just a tool to be used by humans. The author then detracts from shared wisdom and discusses the concept of the machine as a partner in the work.
This article also lists how we can achieve this human-machine partnership by clearly defining the roles each will have to fill for a symbiotic association. The author also discusses the various problems that humanity must solve to make this partnership a reality. This article is an excellent read for anyone interested in the history of computing and how the ideas of the time have changed.
What do the authors seem to be assuming about the future of A.I. and Human Interaction?
The author’s times were vastly different from ours. It is evident clearly from how he states that in his version of the future, there will be ‘thinking centers’ similar to the libraries of their times, where people can satisfy their computing needs. We have surpassed those expectations as we now have powerful, capable computers within our pockets. The author is also rightly hopeful that the ALGOL family of programming languages will bridge the ‘Language Problem,’ now, in hindsight, we can see that the ALGOL family of languages that spawned C and C++ are still among the most influential. They have even been used to inspire new languages, such as Java and Python, that have truly minimized the language problem.
The author has also envisioned a future where speech is a proper mode of communication between humans and computers. This is also a reality today, thanks to the advancements in Natural Language Processing and Speech Recognition, with the advent of voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa.
How might you integrate the reading into your academic/professional work?
I believe this article is a good read for an academic background in computer science, as it offers a glimpse into the ideas and expectations of the 1960s, right before the explosion in the popularity of computers. The main takeaways from this article are that the future is hard to predict. The author has tried to predict multiple aspects of the future, but only a select few have been realized the way he had envisioned it; the rest have been accomplished but in a vastly different way than imagined.