Question

Compare the vision of the multimedia pioneers among Alen Turing, Vannevar Bush, and Douglas Engelbart in their approaches to meet human needs.

Answer 1

Comparison between the visions of the multimedia pioneers Alan Turing, Vannevar Bush, and Douglas Engelbart in their approaches to meet human needs:

* Alan Turing's vision in his approach to meet human needs:
His vision was on his groundbreaking and powerful "theory of computation", with a layout on the ideas underlying all modern computers, making his theory the basis of computer science. His "theory of computation" is based on his Turing machines. It was also called "the theory of digital computing". He envisioned the combined fields of theoretical computer science and mathematics on how a problem using "model of computation" can be efficiently solved using algorithms. The statement derived was, any problem that can be solved by a Turing machine can also be solved by a computer with a finite amount of memory. He augmented human intellect through a conceptual approach. He envisioned the creation of multisensory experience would be possible for Turing’s machines in the future, the creations would move about, would gain their experience directly from the interaction with the world, and would learn almost the same as humans learn. His vision was if we as humans could think of ways to do things, so could computers.

* Vannevar Bush's vision in his approach to meet human needs:
Vannevar Bush's vision was the base for Douglas Engelbart's inventions. "As We May Think" was an essay he wrote which is a visionary and influential one. He had a core vision of the significance of information to an industrial or scientific society, leading to an information explosion. His vision was about surrounding the information overload problems and the requirement for devising efficient mechanisms for controlling and channeling information to be used. His vision was for the information age, the power of "curation", and the need for open access Science. He envisioned "memex". Memex was a kind of personal hard drive or new media, used as a common way to organize information, which is now used and called as hyperlinks and metadata, which is called the information about the information, based on associations. He envisioned the machine to be invented and developed in the future called digital computer. His vision was about associational indexing in the form of hypertext and hypermedia. His other visions were developing and inventing links, associational searches, mice, and GUIs.

His visions were the possibilities of the elements of scientific knowledge to be linked and shared; and in the multimedia communications revolution, individuals would be linked and multiple media would become tools or platforms of individual expression.

His vision was also about the ability to retrieve and display several articles, texts with information, or pictures on one screen along with the possibility of having the capability to write comments, storing the same, and later recalled together. He envisioned people would create links between related articles, mapping the thought process and each user's path, and saving it for others for the experience it. As a result of this vision, we now have Wikipedia that has been realized.

* Douglas Engelbart's vision in his approach to meet human needs:
His vision was intellectual workers sitting seated before the display (then), working stations (now), flying through information space, and exploiting their collective intellectual capacity and utilizing it for solving important problems together in a better and in a way too powerful ways. His vision from a broad perspective was into Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) leading to the augmentation inventing computer mouse, hypertext development, networked computers, and precursors to Graphical User Interfaces (GUI).

His vision thus was, augmenting human intellect and collective intelligence. His vision made him invent a computer mouse. The vision was to augmenting society's collective Intelligence Quotient (IQ)- a special set of capabilities built based on our innate human capabilities, such as sensory, perceptual, cognitive, motor, etc. The vision was augmenting these basic human capabilities with training, enculturation, etc., to use them in coordinated systems built with tools and artifacts, and the Human System with vocabulary, conventions, roles, organizational structures, values, paradigms, rules of conduct, methods of cooperation, education, etc.

Thus, the overall vision was to make us capable of developing an Augmentation System with the Tool and Human Systems, both working together from the operational use perspective.

All three inventors, computer engineers, and computer scientists worked on and had a vision in the computer science field, especially in computation, Information Technology (IT) devices or peripherals, IT systems, and "data".