Response to Englebart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect”

    As I have been working on my project, Englebart’s essay has been helpful because it discusses aritecture and design, and how those elements will factor into something’s creativity.  In order for the Internet to become some sort of extension of ourself we must change what is already available online, calling upon a person to become more creative.  When Englebart references to how we must conceptualize a framework to adjust to our needs, I thought that idea had a lot to do with what we are working on in our rhetorical analysis projects.  Conceptualizing a change is what we Internet agents do on a daily basis, and the Internet is constantly being “augmented” to suit growing needs.

    The big deal about Englebart and the rhetorical relationship between Internet users and the agency of the Internet is that changes such as creating social networks, digitalizing school work, or blogging are fluid changes and they do not occur on their own. Changes occur based on the relationship of outside pressure. For example, you don’t design a building just to build it, you build it because people need a place to be or a venue in which to do things.  Along with the change of our uses for the Internet comes the alteration of Internet design, which Englebarts preaches so much about using the example about an architect designing a building for a certain purpose. The relationship between ” a human problem solver and a computer “clerk” is the rhetorical relationship examined in this reading because this relationship enables people to observe that extending yourself through the Internet does effect the way a person thinks and conceptualizes information in some way.  The effect is greater or less on some individuals, but the change is present because technological design has changed the manner which we do things. The list of the ways technology has changed life would be an endless one, but Englebart reduces all the different ways with information regarding a personal relationship with the Internet.  

    For example, Epinions.com the site I am doing my project on has changed the way a person would think about and conceptualize a shopping experience because of its design. The site’s design has afforded a person to use technology to shop. As simple as that may sound, its pretty cool because the site affords personal extension; it allows you to write yourself in terms of goods and services.  Writing on the web is a form of augmenting a person’s intellect because we can re-write how we think about ideas because of the information available to someone online. The Internet has an instructional design, which allows anyone with a computer to participate in being instructed.

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