Skagestad, P. (1993). Thinking With Machines. The Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 16(2). pp 157-180. Published to WWW 1998 http://www.door.net/arisbe/menu/library/aboutcsp/skagesta/thinking.htm.

Article which draws together some of the thinking of Engelbart with Karl Popper and Charles Peirce. Pulls attention away from computer technology as striving for the creation of human intelligence to the creation of tools.

In the above we have examined and documented a coherent set of ideas common to Engelbart's augmentationism, Popper's evolutionary epistemology, and Peirce's pragmatistic semiotic. Let us summarize these ideas in eight theses, not all of them explicitly shared by all three thinkers:

1. Human evolution proceeds exosomatically, through the evolution of external artifacts.
2. Human knowledge does not reside in the head, but in a subclass of our evolved artifacts: Engelbart's "external symbols", Popper's "World 3", Peirce's "signs".
3. The Whorfian hypothesis: Our fundamental world view is shaped by one of our evolved exosomatic organs, namely our language.
4. The Neo-Whorfian hypothesis: Our thinking is also shaped in a variety of ways by other exosomatic organs, specifically the tools by which we manipulate external symbols.(84)
5. Abstract, critical thought is made possible only by the existence of written language. This thesis is also embraced by Buehler and Havelock.
6. The possible degrees of abstraction (as well as the possible kinds of intellectual projects) available to us depend on the logical or effective features of the symbols by which we represent abstractions -- Arabic numerals, parentheses, and the like -- i.e. not what the symbols look like, but what they can and cannot do.
7. The possible degrees of abstraction available to us depend on the physical features of the tools with which we produce and manipulate symbols -- pencils, computers, and the like.
8. The digital computer is most fruitfully regarded as a means for augmenting human intelligent activity by automating and accelerating the production and manipulation of symbols, rather than as an independent source of intelligent behavior.