The ARPA community was about, "Hey, we're in deep trouble and we're getting in deeper trouble. We need to get more enlightened and we need to do what Doug Engelbart called... we need to not just augment human beings, augment human intellect, but we have to augment the collective IQ of groups." Because most important things are done by groups of people. And so we have to think about what it means to have a group that's smarter than any member rather than a group that is less than the stupidest members.

It is better if we seek to augment our intellect rather than trying to re-invent man in the hope that a mind will emerge.

as it is in reality.

For example, sheep could be accounted independently of their actual location.

At the first stage, the token system antecedent of writing, already abstracted information in several ways. First, it translated daily-life commodities into arbitrary, often geometric forms.

while preserving its integrity

With a repertory of about 400 signs, the script could express any topic of human endeavor.

These inscriptions introduced syntax, thus bringing writing yet one step closer to speech.

It shifted from the visual to the aural world.

This was also the case when a stylus, made of a reed with a triangular end, gave to the signs the wedge-shaped ‘cuneiform’ appearance (Fig. 4).

The invention of numerals meant a considerable economy of signs since 33 jars of oil could be written with 7 rather then 33 markings.

Some accountants, therefore, impressed the tokens on the surface of the envelope before enclosing them inside, so that the shape and number of counters held inside could be verified at all times (Fig. 1). These markings were the first signs of writing.

the ultimate abstraction of sound

Writing is humankind’s principal technology for collecting, manipulating, storing, retrieving, communicating and disseminating information.