The Communications Web site, http://cacm.acm.org,
features more than a dozen bloggers in the BLOG@CACM
community. In each issue of Communications, we’ll publish
selected posts or excerpts.
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DOI: 10.1145/2133806.2133809
http://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm
the Power of
computing;
Design Guidelines
in cS education
Daniel Reed writes about how computing systems increase
human intellect and abilities. Mark Guzdial discusses the need
to avoid polarized and extreme positions in education and
the trend toward design-based research.
Daniel Reed
“intellectual
amplification via
computing”
http://cacm.acm.org/
blogs/blog-cacm/106540
february 18, 2011
Many years ago, Fred Brooks relayed a
tale about how he chose the first application target domain for his computer
graphics research. It was not long after he had left IBM and completed his
work on the IBM System/360. He had
just moved to Chapel Hill and taken
a faculty position at the University of
North Carolina.
As I remember Fred telling the story, with a bit of a twinkle in his eye, he
went to see one of the senior university
administrators. He told the administrator that, as a computer scientist, he was
in the intelligence amplification business. Who on the campus, Fred wanted
Daniel ReeD
“Success accrues
to the talented
with access to
the most effective
and powerful tools.”
to know, might most benefit from having their intelligence amplified?
I have recalled this story many
times, always with a smile, as I have reflected on the nature of computing and
its power.
amplification and universality
Computing systems share many fea-
tures with other instruments and ma-
chines in amplifying human abilities.
However, one aspect distinguishes
them—namely, their general util-
ity as an intellectual amplifier. Like a
universal Turing machine, which can
simulate any other Turing machine
with arbitrary inputs, computing is
broadly—dare I say universally—appli-
cable to human intellectual endeavors,
much as all the variants of the inclined
plane and lever are applicable to hu-
man physical endeavors.
