Rangey stuff today. I hope it cohered. A partial list of what we discussed:

Several books–What the Dormouse Said, The Dream Machine, Dealers of Lightning, Tools for Thought.

The Engelbart Demo–GUI’s, alternate keyboarding devices (the five-key “chord”), display technologies, the various diegetic worlds inhabited by Engelbart during the demo (the text he was working on, the display showing him, the text, and the team supporting him), the mouse as a pointing device, alternate pointing devices (in particular, the light pen), the reception and influence of the demo.

The “Ease of Use” problem (aka, “did you ride your tricycle to work today,” as Engelbart likes to ask). Do we miss our best augmentation opportunities by concentrating on ease of use?

Categories and ontologies: is Engelbart more associative (a la V. Bush), or more hierarchical (a la J. C. R. Licklider)?

Fractals, microcosms/macrocosms, and the tripartite information architecture Engelbart imagines: Specification, Organization, and Content (each stage of which has its own similar tripartite structure–i.e., Specification has within it elements of Specification, Organization, and Content, etc.)

Alternate text-entry devices, which led us to a discussion of haptics (one student’s blogged about this already–found an interesting paper on the topic, too–very cool).

Collective IQ vs. Hive Mind (I desperately wanted to bring up the discussion at ELI 2008, especially Lanny’s very thoughtful blog post, but we ran out of time–maybe Thursday).

All of these topics grew out of their continued reading of Engelbart’s “Augmenting Human Intellect” and their watching the Demo (included on The New Media Reader‘s supplemental CD-ROM).

By the end, my mind was completely abuzz, all lobes singing.

Then came the afternoon class, Rock/Soul/Progressive, and a most surprising turn of events. To speak truth, it was overwhelming, deeply moving. It will take more time than I have tonight to tell this story, and I need to make sure the student involved is okay with my sharing the story–but I hope to be able to share it soon.