J. C. R. Licklider: Quotes about thinking

“It is probably dangerous to use this theory of information in ﬁelds for which it was not designed, but I think the danger will not keep people from using it.”

J. C. R. Licklider

Licklider (1950) quotes in: Claude E. Shannon " The redundancy of English http://www.uni-due.de/~bj0063/doc/shannon_redundancy.pdf". In: Claus Pias, Heinz von Foerster eds. (2003) Cybernetics: Transactions. p. 270.
Context: It is probably dangerous to use this theory of information in ﬁelds for which it was not designed, but I think the danger will not keep people from using it. In psychology, at least in the psychology of communication, it seems to ﬁt with a fair approximation. When it occurs that the learnability of material is roughly proportional to the information content calculated | by the theory, I think it looks interesting. There may have to be modiﬁcations, of course. For example, I think that the human receiver of information gets more out of a message that is encoded into a broad vocabulary (an extensive set of symbols) and presented at a slow pace, than from a message, equal in information content, that is encoded into a restricted set of symbols and presented at a faster pace. Nevertheless, the elementary parts of the theory appear to be very useful. I say it may be dangerous to use them, but I don’t think the danger will scare us off.

People , Thinking

“Present-day computers are designed primarily to solve preformulated problems or to process data according to predetermined procedures. The course of the computation may be conditional upon results obtained during the computation, but all the alternatives must be foreseen in advance. … The requirement for preformulation or predetermination is sometimes no great disadvantage. It is often said that programming for a computing machine forces one to think clearly, that it disciplines the thought process. If the user can think his problem through in advance, symbiotic association with a computing machine is not necessary.
However, many problems that can be thought through in advance are very difficult to think through in advance. They would be easier to solve, and they could be solved faster, through an intuitively guided trial-and-error procedure in which the computer cooperated, turning up flaws in the reasoning or revealing unexpected turns in the solution. Other problems simply cannot be formulated without computing-machine aid. … One of the main aims of man-computer symbiosis is to bring the computing machine effectively into the formulative parts of technical problems.
The other main aim is closely related. It is to bring computing machines effectively into processes of thinking that must go on in "real time," time that moves too fast to permit using computers in conventional ways. Imagine trying, for example, to direct a battle with the aid of a computer on such a schedule as this. You formulate your problem today. Tomorrow you spend with a programmer. Next week the computer devotes 5 minutes to assembling your program and 47 seconds to calculating the answer to your problem. You get a sheet of paper 20 feet long, full of numbers that, instead of providing a final solution, only suggest a tactic that should be explored by simulation. Obviously, the battle would be over before the second step in its planning was begun. To think in interaction with a computer in the same way that you think with a colleague whose competence supplements your own will require much tighter coupling between man and machine than is suggested by the example and than is possible today.”

J. C. R. Licklider Man-Computer Symbiosis

Man-Computer Symbiosis, 1960

Way , Error , Imagination , Problem

“It seems reasonable to envision, for a time 10 or 15 years hence, a 'thinking center' that will incorporate the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval.
The picture readily enlarges itself into a network of such centers, connected to one another by wide-band communication lines and to individual users by leased-wire services. In such a system, the speed of the computers would be balanced, and the cost of the gigantic memories and the sophisticated programs would be divided by the number of users.”

J. C. R. Licklider Man-Computer Symbiosis

Cited in: Jacques Berleur, Markku I. Nurminen, John Impagliazzo (2006) Social Informatics: An Information Society for All? p. 436.
Man-Computer Symbiosis, 1960

Communication , Thinking , Memory , Time