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The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018)

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Re: The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018)

#51

Post by lioeters »

DonHopkins wrote: post #33

I posted this about Bill Atkinson and links to other sources in an earlier discussion (but he's since shot down PhotoCard): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21726302 DonHopkins on Dec 6, 2019 | parent | context | favorite | on: Dented Reality: Magic Leap Sees Slow Sales, Steep ... Bill Atkinson is the humblest, sweetest, most astronomically talented guy -- practically the opposite of Rony Abovitz! I think they're…

Apparently Bill Atkinson's site is no longer accessible due to a server error. Here's an archived version of the PhotoCard page.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210117035136/http://www.billat...

And his whole site: https://web.archive.org/web/20210117035136/http://www.billat...

It's lovely how he shifted focus in the latter part of his career to high-resolution nature photography. Some of them are suitably "psychedelic" - though sadly it seems only the thumbnails were archived, so I couldn't view the full-size images.

Re: The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018)

#52

Post by eggy »

If you want to play with a modern Hypercard, I recommend John Earnest's Decker[1]. It even has the Mac look. John created Lil, a scripting language from it that is declarative, functional, and vector oriented. He is also the creator of oK[2] an interpreter for a K-type programming language with a web interface and graphics and sound primitives. Amazing and fun stuff!

[1] https://beyondloom.com/decker/

[2] https://github.com/JohnEarnest/ok

Re: The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018)

#54

Post by safety1st »

nier wrote: post #4

The URL currently shows an error page. Here is its archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20221225002720/http://www.mondo2...

Came for Hypercard and was treated to a surprisingly cogent argument against existential nihilism in the first few paragraphs.

Nihilism posits that our lives are intrinsically meaningless, because on a cosmic scale there is no such thing as meaning; it's a human construction, local to us, just something we made up.

To my knowledge, few or none of the major philosophers ever really attacked the nihilist insight directly, they mostly accepted it and talked about different ways to cope.

Bill Atkinson (while tripping on acid) posits that if life and consciousness are recurrent phenomena throughout the universe, our lives are quite meaningful in the sense that we are part of the progressive ordering of the universe (the apex of it based on our current understanding, in fact). Stars are a more ordered form of matter than the plasma which came into existence at the big bang, they give rise to solar systems, planets give rise to biospheres, biospheres give rise to consciousness, and consciousness gives rise to further forms of order...

And if you believe in aliens :) it's all happening on a cosmic scale.

It is an unfathomably large anti-entropic drama playing out across all of existence. Bit players we may be, but we are most certainly players who spend our lives either adding or removing order from the cosmos.

If that's all true I find the nihilist insight far less believable. It would mean we are participating in the main thing the universe has been busying itself with since the start, which appears to be some kind of ordering and complexifying of itself...

Re: The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018)

#55

Post by everblitz »

I came across a rumor that the design of some hand-held technology and user interfaces may have been influenced by a small device that was reportedly discovered on a crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. This coke-can-sized device was given to Steve Jobs to play with. It is said to have the ability to project a holographic interface directly through a person's neurology when touched.

It is worth noting that this alleged "smart can" is not to be confused with the rumored "Yellow Book," which is said to be a holographic "smart glass" pad containing a comprehensive history of the universe and requiring a lifetime of reading and understanding to fully comprehend via a neurointerface.

Re: The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018)

#56

Post by pwdisswordfish9 »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #6
cc101 wrote: post #3

A huge difference between HC and the web browser: almost anyone would make a HC stack, creating on the web is largely unavailable for most folks. HC was about creating not browsing.

I’m a self taught programmer, mostly for web targets. Granted my attempt to learn HyperCard began earlier and I had less tenacity in my attempt, but I found it utterly impenetrable. I learned to build for the web with View Source. Granted it’s harder to do that these days, with many assets being built and minified. But the documentation is worlds better than it was then, and the APIs are a hell of a lot more accessib…

> with many assets being built and minified

... often needlessly and even to the author's own detriment, given the need to configure (and then maintain the configuration of) the shoddy tooling that produces the blobs--and the inability to debug them directly, of course.

Re: The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018)

#57

Post by pwdisswordfish9 »

AlbertCory wrote: post #8

He didn't mention any of this LSD stuff on The Computer Chronicles [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FquNpWdf9vg I actually wrote about that episode in The Big Bucks https://www.albertcory.io/the-big-bucks

From the Laporte interview:

"I'm 65. I can tell things I wouldn't [have] told if I were earlier. Hypercard was inspired by an LSD trip."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdJKjBHCh18

Re: The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018)

#58

Post by AlbertCory »

pwdisswordfish9 wrote: post #57
AlbertCory wrote: post #8

He didn't mention any of this LSD stuff on The Computer Chronicles [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FquNpWdf9vg I actually wrote about that episode in The Big Bucks https://www.albertcory.io/the-big-bucks

From the Laporte interview: "I'm 65. I can tell things I wouldn't [have] told if I were earlier. Hypercard was inspired by an LSD trip." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdJKjBHCh18

Yeah, If he'd said that on TV in 1987, would he have been regarded as still a Mac genius, or would he have been shunned?

I think it's a good question. It's not obvious to me that it would have been the end of his career, but I'd probably have done the same as he did back then.

In thinking further, Stewart Cheifet would have scrapped the episode, and he might have gotten invitations to go on other, more sensationalistic shows. Good call.

Re: The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018)

#59

Post by eyelidlessness »

pwdisswordfish9 wrote: post #56
eyelidlessness wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a self taught programmer, mostly for web targets. Granted my attempt to learn HyperCard began earlier and I had less tenacity in my attempt, but I found it utterly impenetrable. I learned to build for the web with View Source. Granted it’s harder to do that these days, with many assets being built and minified. But the documentation is worlds better than it was then, and the APIs are a hell of a lot more accessib…

> with many assets being built and minified ... often needlessly and even to the author's own detriment, given the need to configure (and then maintain the configuration of) the shoddy tooling that produces the blobs--and the inability to debug them directly, of course.

Minification is good for users in most ways, it’s fewer bytes on the wire and faster to parse. And I know bad tooling and config is the meme but I will say I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how simple it’s been to adopt Vite both in new projects and now a >10 year old one.

Edit: I’m just waking up and missed the point about debugging, but source maps work very well. Perhaps more sites should ship them to production though!

Re: The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018)

#60

Post by lolive »

Daub wrote: post #48
lolive wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, Obsidian has been the first experience of building up my own read/write Web. After 25 years of passive Web, it has been a very refreshing experience.

This is news to me. Spent the last ten minutes checking it out. Fascinating.

Be careful that the ecosystem of plugins for that piece of software is a world in itself. #addiction
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