Engelbart's Law

Engelbart's Law is the observation that the intrinsic rate of human performance is exponential. The law is named after Douglas Engelbart, whose work in augmenting human performance was explicitly based on the realization that although we make use of technology, the ability to improve on improvements (Bootstrapping, "getting better at getting better") resides entirely within the human sphere.

Engelbart's Bootstrapping concept identifies the general, and particular, meaning of the observation with regards to rate and performance: a quantity, amount, or degree of something measured per unit of something else. That is, Engelbart's Law is not limited to an increase in the acquisition, or use of, or quantity of knowledge, nor of the extent or depth of participation among individuals or teams, nor of the period-to-period change. The law is independent of the domain of performance and the quantity, amount, or degree on which one chooses a measure.

Humans have long performed at exponential levels, and in widely varying contexts and domains.

As with other phenomenon, when we notice similar results when applying a reagent or catalyst across many contexts and domains, we associate the power to produce or induce those results with the reagent, here the human animal.

Stephen Jay Kline presented an interesting visualization of this exponential phenomenon in his 1995 book. See page 173, figure 14-1. The Growth of Human Powers Over the Past 100,000 Years Plotted as Technoextension Factors (TEFs). The log-log chart (time, TEF) illustrates exponential performance extending over many domains and over hundreds of years.

On this topic Kline's work made heavy use of the work of John H. Lienhard. Kline specifically references Linehard's The Rate of Technological Improvement before and after the 1830s. Lienhard explored this topic several times at Engines of Our Ingenuity. See specifically Double in a Lifetime. Other relevant episodes include Influence of War, and Influence of War, Updated . In these latter two references Linehard explores, and discards, the influence of an urgent necessity as a necessary driver to such performance.

In discussing the exponential nature of Moore's law , Gordon Moore locates the roots of his inspiration in Engelbart's observations on the propensity of humans to envision and achieve scale, and its non-linear effects.

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