The best thing about this website is that it was made in Dynamicland, which is the most bootstrapp-y & Dynamicland thing ever:
Dynamicland 2024
31–40 of 202 posts
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#32I assume this hasn't been "released" yet, but still thought I'd ask if the source code for the operating system (or "computing environment", in Dynamicland-speak) is available anywhere and also if there yet exists any DIY hardware guides for building your own to play with at my own location (far from the Oakland/Berkeley Dynamicland facility). I believe the FAQ confirms that this is not possible at the moment: > Wher…
There are some similar-ish systems with alpha-level install instructions: https://folk.computer/pilot
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#33The intro video looks very cool! I would love to try it but I doubt that'll be possible.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
The analogy I use is pro cooking vs home cooking. We mostly only have professional cooking in the world of computing. What if we created tools and environments for everyone to become a home cook? - What types of things might a home cook compute-r create, share, and remix? - How can individual home cook compute-rs get more agency and freedom over their programs? What would that world look like? - What if we could inco…
Thank you. I still don't exactly get it though. What's with the books on a shelf?
The books are the books that are recommended to read if you want to understand what they're doing and what prior work they're building on.
Bret mentioned computer literacy on the website. The books you can consider as "the curriculum" or "the theory" or what have you.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#35whenever i'll teach newcomers computing, i will now adopt the approach laid out here. it's easy to forget how painful learning computing is, how much you need to know about the internet to make a single http request and read out it's response. user @simonw talked about this recently on twitter [0][1]
absolute beautiful point about needing a different kind of literacy in the modern age at the end of the video.
i wish, with all my heart, that this and similar projects develop a loving community which will enable other communities to learn computing in an accessible, cheap and memorable way.
[0] https://x.com/simonw/status/1829195655006531661 (original twitter link)
[1] https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01j6z4cj87f5ky3c6ese0thscw (backup because twitter is not the future of computing)
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#36I assume this hasn't been "released" yet, but still thought I'd ask if the source code for the operating system (or "computing environment", in Dynamicland-speak) is available anywhere and also if there yet exists any DIY hardware guides for building your own to play with at my own location (far from the Oakland/Berkeley Dynamicland facility). I believe the FAQ confirms that this is not possible at the moment: > Wher…
>In the short term, additional spaces will be started by people who have contributed significantly to an existing space and have internalized the culture and its values
there's something ominous, weird, and sort of damning about being protective of your "culture and values" in this way and to this extent. If Dynamicland offered a truly novel computing paradigm, it should be one that is accessible by other cultures. If it offers a valuable culture and worthwhile values, those values should be viral on their merits. They should be broadcast, rather than kept closely guarded.
If you have to carefully indoctrinate new users into your culture in order to protect it and keep out the Others who might ruin your culture with wrongthink, maybe what you actually have is a cult.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
The analogy I use is pro cooking vs home cooking. We mostly only have professional cooking in the world of computing. What if we created tools and environments for everyone to become a home cook? - What types of things might a home cook compute-r create, share, and remix? - How can individual home cook compute-rs get more agency and freedom over their programs? What would that world look like? - What if we could inco…
Thank you. I still don't exactly get it though. What's with the books on a shelf?
It might be more time-understanding efficient to watch the video if/when you have enough time to mull what they show in it over. I'm not sure I would have gotten a useful take on this particular thing in a set of short text summaries and I'm usually one very biased towards that kind of consumption.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#38i'm always super impressed by brett victor and highly admire his work. that said, I have to admit that it doesn't really feel "right" based on what I've seen. there's so many limitations to the physical world that a virtual space doesn't have. i get that physical objects can participate in the UI and that arranging things in 3D space is sometimes nicer than using a mouse/keyboard. However, the fact that there is stil…
IMO the goal here isn't to replace traditional software engineering. It's to bring computing to spaces. Museums, classrooms, town halls, etc, which requires a different approach. The mental model I use is professional cooking in a kitchen vs home cooking. Different scale, tools, and approaches but some overlap in core ideas. A pro cook can criticize a home cook's workflow and tools, but the goals are different!
I think their goal is similar to what smalltalk's goal originally was: To allow for regular people to do complex things with a computer.
Ultimately, it didn't succeed in that goal but I believe inventing the first spreadsheet software can be counted as achieving some success there.
I admire this project and hope they can one day move beyond simply typing code on a sheet of paper to creating tools that actually make our compilers/IDEs look like using punch cards.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#39I had the good fortune of taking a field trip there in 2018.
The video is a very good overview of the project.
One interesting artifact of "the real world simulates itself" is version control. At Dynamicland, each version of a program is a sheet of paper (with a unique set of fiducials along the edges). If you want to edit a program, you grab a keyboard and point it at the program. A text editor comes up; you make your changes, and hit commit. When you do, it spits out a new piece of paper with your changes. Put it in the view of the camera to use the new version. Take it away and use the old paper to roll the change back.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#40I assume this hasn't been "released" yet, but still thought I'd ask if the source code for the operating system (or "computing environment", in Dynamicland-speak) is available anywhere and also if there yet exists any DIY hardware guides for building your own to play with at my own location (far from the Oakland/Berkeley Dynamicland facility). I believe the FAQ confirms that this is not possible at the moment: > Wher…
Now that we know the term to search for "RealTalkOS" we can see at least one person tried to build an implementation last year https://github.com/deosjr/elephanttalk
"Our goal is to invent a form of computation which local communities of non-specialists can make for themselves. From the ground up, for their own needs, which they fully understand and control."
I'm LiveStreaming building a RealTalkOS implementation now. Come join and let's build together! https://youtube.com/live/02-wJ7Od9Bo?feature=share