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Dynamicland 2024

dynamicland.org

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Re: Dynamicland 2024

#81

Post by biot »

abeppu wrote: post #76
bsimpson wrote: post #67

Earlier 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…

> 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.

You're making several incorrect assumptions here:

1. That you can't interactively try out the code as you're editing it.

2. That the system as implemented is the final vision of how the system ought to work forever.

From https://youtu.be/5Q9r-AEzRMA?t=150 "Anyone can change any program at any time and see the changes immediately", which demonstrates live editing the code and seeing the projected flow lines change color. So you can keep editing and iterating on the program, trying out your changes without ever having to print anything. Once you are satisfied with your improvements, you then "commit" the code, which results in the system printing out a new page with its new identifier.

And if any part of your expectations isn't how things work, it's likely because this is a research project and nobody has written the code to make it behave the way you'd like. Since Realtalk is built on itself, one would only need to make the appropriate changes to improve the system.

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#83

Post by jkestner »

Juliate wrote: post #42
dingnuts wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. I…

> there's something [...] about being protective of your "culture and values" in this way and to this extent Yes, AND it may also be because it's kind of innovation in the open, before it's really ready or that all the critical angles are fixed, and they might not want spoil specifics they would like to make flourish and present to the whole world, and see them ... let's say half-assed, or misunderstood enough that i…

Ideas are fragile, etc. There's a point at which you want feedback, but not before you've built enough for people to see the vision. Depending on your audience, you may need to build more or less to get to that point.

Still, they've been working on this for yeeeears.

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#84

Post by jdougan »

Uehreka wrote: post #62

As cool as Dynamicland is, I still don’t get why they won’t open source it or at least release it in some form. I’ve heard various people give roundabout excuses, but none of them hold water. They often fall into one of the following categories: - “People won’t get the core ideas and will use it to make things that go against the core ideas” — People who care about Bret Victor’s work will take the time to learn the i…

> - “People won’t get the core ideas and will use it to make things that go against the core ideas” — People who care about Bret Victor’s work will take the time to learn the ideas. People who don’t might try and make something Bret doesn’t like, but currently the world is full of things Bret doesn’t like, so I don’t get how that would be different than the status quo.

I think the problem is like what happened to "agile" after the manifesto. People took a term with a meaning, and ignored that meaning in promoting their own stuff, thus confusing the terminology and messing up discussion of the concepts.

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#85

Post by jf »

shoxidizer wrote: post #80
jf wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, noted! With that in mind, did you know that those printer dots are what the team that won the 2011 DARPA Shredder Challenge used to win?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Shredder_Challenge_2011

Fun fact: Otavio Good, who led the winning team, learned about the printer dots on this very site. As I recall, he said that the dots were like a map that let them reconstruct the shredded documents.

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#86

Post by jf »

sedatk wrote: post #78
shoxidizer wrote: post #74

Earlier 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

Oh, that’s why my HP inkjet refuses to print a black & white page when it’s low on yellow.

Woah! I never considered that until now. I'll bet you're right.

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#87

Post by thatguymike »

I spent quite a lot of time at Dynamicland Oakland. It's great fun and the people are just wonderful. I think of Realtalk as adding another layer to programs, the Physical Layer. Program behavior can be determined and controlled by physical layout as well as code. It's not completely unlike a frontend/backend distinction, and in fact you could make a Realtalk simulator using a javascript canvas much more easily than building the camera/projector setup.

Just like building full stack software, there's a large amount of nonobvious skill in dictating your separations of concerns between the physical layer and software layer. Good programs are flexible, remixable, modular, intuitive, and let non-programmers make nontrivial interactions and enhancements via the physical layer. Bad programs require you to have the physical objects in a particular configuration, or break completely if one piece of paper is lost. I found these programming design questions a really interesting part of playing at Dynamicland.

A solid limitation of the system is that the pieces of programs aren't actually modular. You can't take a Cat from one program and a Dog from another program and have the dog interact with the cat. This is obvious in software - that's why we design APIs - but it's frustrating when all your programs exist in the same space (that's the whole selling point) and when bringing part of Program A into Program B is so intuitive and, when you have dozens of these programs lying around the room, inevitable.

I'd love to see them explore (wait for it...) using AI. Incorporating object recognition could remove the need for pasting dots onto every object by defining rules like "when you see a car, color it Red". It could allow for inter-program interoperability via the shared language of object recognition. And it could even determining logical interactions in a fun and surprising way: what _should_ happen when I take the cactus from this program and put it on top of the balloon from that program?

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#88

Post by _dain_ »

Alright someone has to be the skeptic: there's no fucking god damned way this works as well as the video suggests. There has to be enormous amounts of behind-the-scenes work to support this thing; the idea that it's self-hosting all in one room is an absolutely extraordinary claim. It's a big red flag that they only invite specific people who are good "culture fits", and don't have any public code. They can't risk people seeing the puppet wires.

It's some Wizard of Oz / Potemkin village / confidence trick. That's why nothing has been released after a decade -- there's nothing to release. It's vapor, this generation's Xanadu.

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#89

Post by Kerrick »

skadamat wrote: post #24
jedberg wrote: post #13

Can someone who has six minutes to watch the intro give those of us who don't a TL;DW?

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…

Related: "An App Can Be a Home-Cooked Meal" https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/

Discussed here on HN at least twice:

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22332629

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38877423

Re: Dynamicland 2024

#90

Post by soulofmischief »

This is a pretty neat idea. Watched through a few talks. I love cyberphysical programming, live programming, involving the audience in the computation, so Bret's work with Dynamicland speaks to me. I do however think the card system could use a rethink in terms of ergonomics.

Wish I still lived in California so I could check out the system in person! Watching the development of this project with keen interest... sure, a lot of the ideas might not end up catching on, but that's the nature of research.

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