[4] The work describes something of Licklider's vision for a complementary ("symbiotic") relationship between humans and computers at a potential time in the future.
[5] Jacucci et al. describe Licklider's vision as being the very tight coupling of human brains and computing machines.
[4] Foster states Licklider sought to promote computer use in order to "augment human intellect by freeing it from mundane tasks".
[8] Streeter considers Licklider to be positing an escape from the limitations of the mode of computer use during his time, which was batch processing.
Part 1.1 begins by showing a definition of the term symbiosis using the illustration of the relationship between two organisms, a fig-tree, and its pollinator, a type of fig-wasp.
Licklider closes with the statement of, in order to reach comparable human-computer interaction to that between two colleagues, far greater coupling between machine and man will be required than is currently technologically feasible.
This discussion includes a statement on the currently understood definition of the term computer, as "a wide class of calculating, data-processing, and information-storage-and-retrieval machines".
As part of their paper, the authors (Lesh et al.) mention a discussion of prototypes under development by the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories.