Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
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Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#382Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#383Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, this idea was originally Nicholas Negroponte's in the 70s. The Parc version was called "Ubiquitous Computing" and was led by Mark Wieser in the 80s ...
Thanks! This research was my first thought when I saw big companies starting to come out with things like smart watches, hyper-local beacons, and home automation products. But strangely, it seems like companies are still treating those all as separate lines. For example, Apple markets their home and watch projects totally independently of one another. But I have to think that they are working toward ubiquitous comput…
The people working in R&D at these companies (i.e. Apple) are to varying extents aware of this history. Indeed there are different "brands" for a set of concepts that have be evolving since the 70s, IoT being the most popular term in public discourse as of the past few years, and "ubiquitous computing" having fallen almost completely out of favor except in academic circles.
Genevieve Bell and Paul Dourish wrote an interesting book few years ago that argued that Nicholas Negroponte's and Mark Wiser's visions had indeed come to pass, as predicted over and over again, just by different names and under guises we that we didn't recognize: https://www.amazon.com/Divining-Digital-Future-Mythology-Ubi.... The story continues!
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#385How satisfied are you with the tablets that finally satisfied your vision (did they?) of a personal computer? How much were you able to infer about how they would work? Any lessons from this?
I don't believe the current crop satisfies much of Kay's Dynabook vision.
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think "pop culture" approaches are the best way to do most things (though "every once in a while" something good does happen). The real question is "does a hack reset 'normal'?" For most people it tends to, and this makes it very difficult for them to think about the actual issues. A quote I made up some years ago is "Better and Perfect are the enemies of What-Is-Actually-Needed". The big sin so many people c…
I fear this is because "What-Is-Actually-Needed" is non-trivial to figure out. Related: "scratch your own itch", "bikeshedding", "yak shaving".
Exactly -- this is why people are tempted to choose an increment, and will say "at least it's a little better" -- but if the threshold isn't actually reached, then it is the opposite of a little better, it's an illusion.
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you are not blind then you can see pictures. So this would be interesting to follow up ...
Not sure I understand what you're implying, I'm not blind, and only recently realized other people actually see pictures in their mind while awake. But dreaming while awake would be awesome if achievable.
I'm saying that you don't see what is on your retina, but something that is manifested by your brain (and this is why you can see images when you dream).
So I'm guessing that there is a path for you to imagine images. It could be very similar to how most people who think they are tone deaf can be helped to hear pitches quite accurately.
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#388[deleted]
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a tough one to try to produce "through the keyhole" of this very non-WYSIWYG poorly thought through artifact of the WWW people not understanding what either the Internet or computer media are all about. Let me just say that it's worth trying to understand what might be a "really good" balance between traditional oral culture learning and thinking, what literacy brings to the party, especially via mass media,…
In seeking to consider what form this “‘really good’ balance” might take, can you recommend any favored resources/implementations to illustrate what “real positive additions” computers and networking can bring to the table? I’m familiar with the influence of Piaget/Papert - but I would love to gain some additional depth on the media/networking side of the conversation. Thank you for your thoughts. I feel similarly ab…
With a good programming language and interface, one -- even children -- can create from scratch important simulations of complex non-linear systems that can help one's thinking about them.
Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
#390i need help because i do not know how to hack so can you help me?