> "Augmentation Principle" `Mind-> Hand-> Software-> NextThing`
! Warning - excessive bullet points and wandering philosophy ahead !
## Mind -> Hand
- The above image source was of famous hand prints in caves.
- Early cave dwellers doing early art blew early pigments around their hand, onto the cave wall.
- I like to think that they knew their hand was something special - look at that glorious opposable thumb!
- It was the physical **manifestation** of their awareness and problem solving.
- Don't like that bug? Hand smash!
- Hungry? Hand put bugs in mouth until hunger = False.
- It was the primary problem solving **tool**, augmenting the mind, limited by physical realities of a hand (ie scale).
- We are comfortable measuring by an abundance or an absence.
- Problems are typically defined as extremes of either.
## Software
- Software (of mind via hand)
- Augments mind, transcends hand-tool, has limitations.
- Bugs reference from above here :)
- We technologists of 2018 CE live in this current-generation manifestation of our _awareness and problem solving_.
- We continually refine this ever-less crude tool.
- We model our world and our problems with software, crudely, via creation of software **tools**.
## NextThing
- The NextThing (aka next-generation manifestation past software, of software) would seemingly involve:
- Fundamental change to problem modeling
- Fundmentally different looking output/tools created
- We might be seeing some early slivers of this.
- Example: Concerns over the opaqueness and lack of auditability of narrow AI decision making
- Example: Self-training AI, ie [AlphaGo](https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/18/16495548/deepmind-ai-go-alphago-zero-self-taught)
- Example: Discussions on the impact of total automation and our concept of self-worth through employment
- I think it might have parallels to the ending of the movie [Arrival](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/).
## Summary (finally The WHY)
- The radical rate of technology change I've seen excites me, and is a core reason I choose software for my life's work.
- I feel lucky to participate in the "NextThing".