“Clerical feasibility, not intellectual capability.”

In 1957, Licklider timed himself working. About 85 percent of his time went to “getting into a position to think,” and what he chose to attempt at all came down to “clerical feasibility, not intellectual capability.”

As we move into a world where the costs of research or simulation or experiment fall down, what is our negative space of what we’re not exploring today that we now otherwise could?

Me, on a walk, 3 August 2026

Six days later I was listening (ElevenReader) to Bush’s Memex Revisited (1967). His organic chemist is “in a tough spot,” memory taxed, time eaten by clerical labor and lab work instead of chemistry. But Bush imagines a machine the chemist could just ask about a mutation instead of having to perform it themselves (laboriously).

Over half a century later, Anthropic comes to the same conclusion. Scientists still spend too much of their time setting up and managing the instruments and not enough time asking questions. But that might finally be changing.

https://postnobills.dev/2026/08/unencumbered-by-unworthy-tasks/