Douglas Carl Engelbart would have been 100 years old today. One of the towering giants of computer science, he was, essentially, the father of user interface research.
But more than that, Engelbart believed in humans as toolmakers. Specifically, he said that as we continue to evolve our computer technology, we are in essence evolving ourselves.
Since computational capability evolves exponentially, this means that in this modern era, we possess the opportunity to evolve exponentially as a species. And he personally invented many of the new computer tools that could make that possible.
After witnessing so much recent stupidity on our national stage, it’s nice, for a change, to think about somebody who was actually intelligent.
Not to take anything from the well deserved celebration but I wonder if there may be an inverse devolution under way.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/06/26/is-artificial-intelligence-making-us-really-dumb/