ELT notes

As part of week two of the annotation project on Doug Engelbart's 1962 report - manifesto- Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework, I was interviewed by Gardner Campbell, the project leader.

This open project has aimed at going back to the the dream of the pioneers of the Internet, to review the vision they had of where we are today in our fast paced connected existence. Amid the foreshadowing of the then imaginary future, the flashback of trying to imagine how a man could accurately describe the way I can read him and write annotations more than half a century later, annotators from diverse backgrounds have been expanding the scope of our understanding about a distant 1962 mirror showing what interconnectedness could have been. Engelbart's image remains intact, as a young portrait of a visionary artist.

To make this project/expedition go further, a set of 14 featured annotators have been chosen to explore another level of reflection, a meta-annotation context of sorts where people can voice their connections to the work of Engelbart as well as their choices of paragraphs for their annotations. To reflect on how you reach those reflections while recording emerging ideas adds a layer of interestingness I have not experienced online before.

Following the meta-nature of this project, I would like to write a couple of backstage comments around this interview, actually my first video appearance online.

Allow me to express that when Gardner asked me to be part of this, I felt challenged, honoured and intrigued. I went why-me mode for a whole day or two before accepting. My educational background is far from engineering or computer systems. How could my own teaching English as a foreign language intermingle with Engelbart's framework? Yet one thing was certain: Gardner trusted I could make a valuable contribution. Trust does it. It dissolves doubts.

Gardner and I have been reading each other on our blogs for about a decade. As we recall at the start of our conversation, it was probably a brief twitter exchange followed by curiosity and reflection that made us stay on each other's radar.  That was back in 2007. We had never had a synchronous talk until February 2019.

It was such a treat. I hardly felt it was a first conversation. It was the closest thing to collaboratively blogging out loud. It just flowed and I personally lost track of time. Time travelling towards Engelbart's context in writing, Gardner pointed out the links between my ideas and the research framework of 1962; at the same time, I think we also resumed a conversation paused a decade ago, with our blogging spirit unmarred by the present disbelief which pervades in teachers' staffroon around us these days. We have managed to maximize the window where our visions were projected back in 2007. Luckily, that link has not been broken. It is still well worth a bookmark to revisit.

And now I choose to think we have had a much delayed first meeting of old friends. What you will find in that video is two people enjoying the chance of synchronous thinking together, intensely exploring our layered minds with our ideas and accelerating augmentation. It definitely went beyond my expectations.

It has certainly been one of those amazing stories of connectedness, not remembered, but recorded as it developed. It makes me grateful to live at a time when the Internet can unite Virginia and Buenos Aires with a click. Such an everyday thing, you say? But for those of us who started writing with a lonely typewriter, we still recognize Internet is magic.

All I can add to end this post is a deep heartfelt thank you, Gardner. I look forward to more conversations.

Special thanks to my blogger friend Gabriela, who hosted the web meeting in her home and shared thoughts and lunch with me afterwords.

Hope you enjoy the interview.

Labels: annotations, augmentintellect, Doug Engelbart, Gardner Campbell

Posted by Claudia Ceraso at 8:07 PM | Permalink | Comments View blog reactions

Labels: annotations, augmentintellect, Doug Engelbart, memory, neuroscience, photos

Posted by Claudia Ceraso at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments View blog reactions

I have been invited by Gardner Campbell to join him in an annotating project which will bring together students, scholars and scientists to look deeper into Doug Engelbart's research report Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework (1962). I am humbled and honoured to join them. I am also curious and excited about this open-ended learning experience.

As I try to learn more about the project, I thought it would be a good start to drop some notes here about my questions, fledgeling thoughts and links as I embark in a new inspiring online journey. Mind you, I am not planning to be organised. I just attempt to gather enough stepping stones to cross a river into an unknown text for me. In my years as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language and a Translator trainee, I had not heard of Doug Engelbart.

So the questions come along: Who is he? Why is he so important? Why does it matter to go back to a text written in 1962? How does his research relate to languages? How can I relate to this study field and work?

According to Wikipedia, Douglas Engelbart (1925-2013) was an internet pioneer who studied in the field of human computer interaction (HCI). He engineered his way to invent the computer mouse and hypertext. In 1968,  while working for the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), he made a demonstration of visionary impact, which came to be known as The Mother of All Demos.

At this point of hyperlinked, fragmentary reading, I get the feeling Doug was probably a born-teacher.

Prior to exploring links, the first thing I did before accepting the invitation was to plunge directly into Doug's original 1962 text. I had to go down several paragraphs before I sensed the text had something old in it. It was the mention of a typewriter that had a sudden time travelling effect. For the most part, you would not guess it was written over half a century ago.

My first impression was that it is kind of difficult to read. Or perhaps it is the way Doug tries to address an audience and guide them into his matrix. I do not think there were EFL teachers there. They were probably busy getting organised as TESOL in 1966.

I learn from Gardner's conversation with Christina, Doug's daughter, that his father wrote in isolation:

"It’s never easy to sum up a decade’s worth of thought, especially when that thought has seemed dangerous to utter."

Reading on, Gardner reflects on the nature of the text's difficulty:

"But now it’s time for a confession. When folks ask me if I, too, find the essay difficult, I usually mumble some kind of assent out of fellow feeling. Yes, I do find it a challenging piece of writing—but no more so than Milton, or Shakespeare, or Woolf, or Faulkner, or Joyce. In fact, in its complexity and playfulness, “Augmenting Human Intellect” resonates with me very strongly as a work of art, even a work of philosophy. I can’t claim to have gotten to the bottom of it. Perhaps I never will. Art is like that."

Beautifully expressed. It rules out any giving up on reading on.

I know Gardner expects my educator's insights in my annotating contributions. Yet, at this first stage to approach Doug Engelbart's voice, I rely solely on my translation instrumental reading skills. I remember my Scientific Translation teacher now. Many times you must translate a couple of paragraphs from a field you know nothing about and must achieve understanding and accurate expression in another language in a limited time. You needn't be a medical doctor to translate one, but you must interpret and speak at the same level. We complained about difficulty, of course. How could we decipher the original written by an expert not even writing in his mother tongue? She always answered:

"It is just text."

You grab that flag and march on.

Labels: augmentintellect, Doug Engelbart, Gardner Campbell, reading, translation

Posted by Claudia Ceraso at 9:50 AM | Permalink | Comments View blog reactions

Sometimes you get a feeling that things come out nothing. They do not. They are the result of our perpetual motion and it could be a great start to ackowledge that.

Every word read, heard in a bed-night story or lovingly uttered to us leaves a mark, a trace, a foundation to build upon. I have blogged about identity as we shape it with our online footsteps coupled with remote interactions, but it is just a few days ago after an unexpected line up of planets, namely, a deep wish to come back to writing here, an out-of-the blue meet up with a friend to see Turner's watercolours exhibition in Buenos Aires and a Twitter DM from a blogger friend, that I came to a realisation, an obvious one: that my whole world of identity and connections is one made up of language with carefully scaffolded words.

"A mouthful of air" in Anthony Burgess' poetic mode. Silently breathed keystrokes would do as a translation into our present business.

Back to the post.

There is something about the writing mode or silent voice that dictates blog posts in your head that requires a peace of mind not easily found amid day-to-day obligations. Caring for a sick parent, losing part of your job, living in a country with 47% inflation (yeah, read that again), studying (successfully!) six subjects to become a translator, a tenant leaving grandma's home in a state that will demand months of work, work, work...and -I almost forget- my cat gets sick quite frequently...all at once requiring portions of my attention...well, it all gradually silenced my inner bloggers' voice.

When people argue they have no time to blog, I suspect something else, not easy to succintly explain is the real reason. Life happens.

I miss my voice. Luckily, I have this diary to make close contact again with that essential part of myself. It is quite shocking to see where my mind was then. Rereading provokes a strange sense of wonder. Was that me?

With a Turner's stroke.
Sunday was a sweltering summer day in Buenos Aires. I went to the MNBA museum with a friend to see over 80 dimly lit watercolors portraying a lifetime of changes in Turner's style. A visual diary. From academic, traditional, controlled strokes compositions to a free, far and wide spots of a totally personal direction. Observing in silence and awe, my friend suddenly laughed and concluded that, in the end, Turner came to paint and express whatever he wanted. Even when he was paid to paint.

You want to be Turner. Especially as a writer.

Then we went for a long conversation over lunch. As my closest friends know about my online life with its line-up of thought-shaping companions, it was easy for her to understand me. I told her I got a Twitter DM from Gardner to invite me to take part in an annotating project of Doug Engelbart's 1962 paper.

"But why didn't you tell me this hours ago as soon as we met? This is great news!", she said.
"Yeah, yeah, I know.", I answered. Then I went on to explain some sort of meta-reflection on how timely this invitation was for one thing, but also my amazement -it will never cease to amaze me- how people remember what I have written or the impression those words made on them years ago. The power of it all making its way to this present day after such a long blog pause. So long that I almost forget myself, my own inner voice and I wonder aloud, wrongly believing this invitation comes undeserved to someone who has stopped reflecting online, as if that meant a kind of extinction of rights..."Why me?"

"Because of all the road you've made by years of writing," she said.

At this point I not only know, but feel these conversations are such powerful stuff. I am blessed to have friends who through life-savers to me like that.

I answered Gardner "yes".

So, here we go!

Labels: Doug Engelbart, language, Turner

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