I'm hopeful VR programming with standardized programming languages and AI will create a Dynamicland-like software environment one day. Social spatial programming just needs to be made fun like building in a game.
Dynamicland 2024
71–80 of 202 posts
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#72i'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…
I like the ideas around the interface where physical objects are part of the UX, but I think putting everything into paper takes it too far.
Putting things on paper means you cannot share things outside of your immediate community which I think is one of the main advantages of computing and the internet.
Creating a place for physical community is great, making a UX which allows sharing that experience is great. Firewalling your ideas off from the rest of the world, not so great.
I could see a world where these communities are federated. Maybe your local computing community is connected to other locales as well as somewhere else which is far away (like we do today with sister cities).
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#73Earlier 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?
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Re: Dynamicland 2024
#74I 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 yo…
> with a unique set of fiducials along the edges I suspect each piece of paper, if examined with a good enough camera, has a unique fingerprint, like a snowflake, and perhaps this could be used in the future for an "Isomer Addressed Filesystem". In other words, all pieces of paper ship with a UUID already, woven into their atoms.
I would suggest instead convincing every printer manufacturer to embed in every printer a routine that encodes a unique identifier on every print and then reading that using more typical cameras. The hard part has already been done.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> with a unique set of fiducials along the edges I suspect each piece of paper, if examined with a good enough camera, has a unique fingerprint, like a snowflake, and perhaps this could be used in the future for an "Isomer Addressed Filesystem". In other words, all pieces of paper ship with a UUID already, woven into their atoms.
I would suggest instead convincing every printer manufacturer to embed in every printer a routine that encodes a unique identifier on every print and then reading that using more typical cameras. The hard part has already been done. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
I'm pretty sure that I mentioned the printer tracking dots to the researchers at the lab and certainly mentioned DataGlyphs. So they were aware of alternatives. The trick is to get a workable system with cameras that have the resolution to pick out those details from a dozen feet away, as well as a software stack that can recognize them at ~60fps.
The goal has always been to move away from the dots, you can see this in the progress report: https://dynamicland.org/2019/Progress_report/
That said, and this is purely my opinion, the system works well enough as it is, and there is so much fun stuff to build on top of what works, that it's hard to prioritize a better object recognition system over the myriad of other interesting things to be done.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
... so in the intro video at like 2:37, it says that a program can be in language, or an arrangement of components, or a hand-drawn diagram, because anything you can write an interpreter for is a program. The "arrangement of components" and the "hand-drawn diagram" shots show stuff drawn on a whiteboard, which seems like it can be edited by redrawing. Are you saying that a hand-drawn diagram program can be freely edi…
It's been 6 years since I've been there. I'm sure they've made developments since then. I also think these comments along the lines of "what about X" are unhelpfully reductivist/dismissive. The whole point is that it's a research project. If you can think of a better way to make ephemeral room-sized computing work - cool, let's try that! Just because it worked some way when I was there in 2018 or some way in the vide…
> The whole point is that it's a research project.
> It's a vision for the future.
Neither of these mean we can't or shouldn't be able to have discuss whether parts of it are good or bad, make more or less sense. Is it a vision of a future you'd want to work with/in?
> I also think these comments along the lines of "what about X" are unhelpfully reductivist/dismissive.
My first statement was "I think the overall idea here is really cool". The intent is not to be dismissive. But if you think the only acceptable reaction is unalloyed praise ... then why even have it on a discussion-oriented site?
I think the way of working being demonstrated seems like a great fit for some kinds of work and that trying to awkwardly shoehorn software-development to happen in their system detracts rather than adds to it.
> If you can think of a better way to make ephemeral room-sized computing work
... I think an IDE, a keyboard, and a projector are better than printing code blocks at a specific revision which is identified by a computer-readable id, and which must be given a new ID and a new printed page every time you want to try executing a new version.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not OCR. Those colored dots along the periphery are fiducials. They're how Realtalk recognizes a program. Every object that you can interact with in Realtalk has a unique set of fiducials. When the camera sees one, it looks up its behavior and projects it accordingly.
So if you physically copy and paste code, or edit it with a pen, that won't work, right? The embodiment feels superficial.
Correct, that doesn't work in the system as implemented. But my understanding is that there has been a goal from the start to _eventually_ get physical code editing to work. I recall hearing the researchers talking about wanting to eventually get handwriting recognition working, so you could edit code by hand.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
> with a unique set of fiducials along the edges I suspect each piece of paper, if examined with a good enough camera, has a unique fingerprint, like a snowflake, and perhaps this could be used in the future for an "Isomer Addressed Filesystem". In other words, all pieces of paper ship with a UUID already, woven into their atoms.
I would suggest instead convincing every printer manufacturer to embed in every printer a routine that encodes a unique identifier on every print and then reading that using more typical cameras. The hard part has already been done. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
Oh, that’s why my HP inkjet refuses to print a black & white page when it’s low on yellow.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's been 6 years since I've been there. I'm sure they've made developments since then. I also think these comments along the lines of "what about X" are unhelpfully reductivist/dismissive. The whole point is that it's a research project. If you can think of a better way to make ephemeral room-sized computing work - cool, let's try that! Just because it worked some way when I was there in 2018 or some way in the vide…
> The whole point is that it's a research project. > It's a vision for the future. Neither of these mean we can't or shouldn't be able to have discuss whether parts of it are good or bad, make more or less sense. Is it a vision of a future you'd want to work with/in? > I also think these comments along the lines of "what about X" are unhelpfully reductivist/dismissive. My first statement was "I think the overall idea…
Yours wasn't the only comment along those lines, and I was replying to the class of them rather than yours specifically.
I don't mean to curtail discussion or say that only praise is allowed. I just want to steer away from "gotcha" energy on a research project.
Ideas/discussion/critique are welcome! "This project is dumb because it does things differently than I'm used to" or "because it currently only supports digital changes to the physical paper" are less helpful. Part of the fun of a research project is trying weird stuff to see what feels better and what doesn't.
Again, none of this is directed at you personally or about your specific comment. I just noticed a trend of comments about the code editing experience that felt more like trying to dunk on the concept than promoting curious discussion.
Re: Dynamicland 2024
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would suggest instead convincing every printer manufacturer to embed in every printer a routine that encodes a unique identifier on every print and then reading that using more typical cameras. The hard part has already been done. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
I'm pretty sure that I mentioned the printer tracking dots to the researchers at the lab and certainly mentioned DataGlyphs. So they were aware of alternatives. The trick is to get a workable system with cameras that have the resolution to pick out those details from a dozen feet away, as well as a software stack that can recognize them at ~60fps. The goal has always been to move away from the dots, you can see this…
I imagine it would very difficult to read these dots from a distance and dynamically. I just mention it because most printed documents already have indentifiers printed on them that don't require seeing individual fibers.