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Folk Computer

folk.computer

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Re: Folk Computer

#21

Post by shon »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #10
ryanwhitney wrote: post #8

Both seem to have worked at/with Dynamicland previously, though not mentioned on this site. https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/ https://cwervo.com/projects/dynamicland-experiments/

I was gonna say, this sounds a lot like continuing the research of Dynamicland, which itself contained research from CDA, VPRI, and other groups. Why is it so hard to find a consistent funder of basic research like PARC in the 70s?

PARC, though awesome for society, was a massive commercial failure for Xerox.

As tech nerd, I love the lore of The PARC and went to visit it as soon as I moved to the Bay Area.

However, I assume it would be taught as a lesson of what not to do in a business context:

Investing in pure research often yields innovations that are opposed to existing business lines or simply too far out to see as useful by management.

That said, many companies have research arms. Microsoft, Walmart, IBM, Meta, Google…

Re: Folk Computer

#22

Post by amatecha »

lsy wrote: post #20

This is almost the opposite of what I envisioned when reading the title "folk computer", which makes me think of a computing experience that's fundamentally simple, convivial, and transparent to users, something like what's captured by the concept of "permacomputing". While the ideas explored here are no doubt interesting and probably important to consider, they seem like they require an enormous amount of abstractio…

Yeah, I was pretty excited at first, hoping someone is showing their forward-looking human-friendly computer, encompassing all of the best principles of permacomputing and frugal computing... Was not expecting some kind of "real-world computing" platform. It's definitely interesting, but not at all what I expected based on the name.

Re: Folk Computer

#23

Post by refulgentis »

joshmarinacci wrote: post #10
ryanwhitney wrote: post #8

Both seem to have worked at/with Dynamicland previously, though not mentioned on this site. https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/ https://cwervo.com/projects/dynamicland-experiments/

I was gonna say, this sounds a lot like continuing the research of Dynamicland, which itself contained research from CDA, VPRI, and other groups. Why is it so hard to find a consistent funder of basic research like PARC in the 70s?

Honestly and respectfully, would you be clambering to fund this?

It's disturbing how little actually came out of dynamic land, and now there's a schism where the founders are pasting QR codes to hands and have as their 3rd bullet point "GPU FFI shaders"?

Does any of that scream fundamental UX research, or the future of computing?

To me, it's just another tired retread of half-baked messianic thinking that tails off into nowhere as the hero complex devolves into a series of half-baked ideas designed to scratch an individuals daily itch, rather than a central purpose.

Google had stuff like this internally for quite some time, through much later than most people would guess.

The thing is there just isn't some vastly superior paradigm sitting out there to fix computing with. The industry is mature enough that if something truly good and helpful exists, even in parts, it's quickly implemented.

One ray of light might be that the rate of change is fast enough that there are likely to be gaps emerging over the next decade.

But they're not going to be found in this sort of fashion.

Re: Folk Computer

#24

Post by jrowen »

shon wrote: post #21
joshmarinacci wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was gonna say, this sounds a lot like continuing the research of Dynamicland, which itself contained research from CDA, VPRI, and other groups. Why is it so hard to find a consistent funder of basic research like PARC in the 70s?

PARC, though awesome for society, was a massive commercial failure for Xerox. As tech nerd, I love the lore of The PARC and went to visit it as soon as I moved to the Bay Area. However, I assume it would be taught as a lesson of what not to do in a business context: Investing in pure research often yields innovations that are opposed to existing business lines or simply too far out to see as useful by management. Tha…

Lesson: Don't develop innovations that are too advanced for management to understand, because they will pass and let the rest of the world eat their lunch.

Re: Folk Computer

#25

Post by orangesite »

Yeah, another universe where you have wizards who know how to fold the paper correctly to make the ambient computational environment do things.

Hard pass.

Folk computing for me is a hardware/software layer stripped off the commercial abstractions that hide the inherent simplicity of the medium.

Re: Folk Computer

#26

Post by anonymouskimmer »

jrowen wrote: post #24
shon wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PARC, though awesome for society, was a massive commercial failure for Xerox. As tech nerd, I love the lore of The PARC and went to visit it as soon as I moved to the Bay Area. However, I assume it would be taught as a lesson of what not to do in a business context: Investing in pure research often yields innovations that are opposed to existing business lines or simply too far out to see as useful by management. Tha…

Lesson: Don't develop innovations that are too advanced for management to understand, because they will pass and let the rest of the world eat their lunch.

I think the actual lesson learned was to develop these research departments as incubators where the inventors are expected, and trained, to become entrepreneurs who spin out companies that the parent company owns part of.

It would have been easier to just make some of the inventors upper-level managers and executives of the parent company.

Given the cost of the original Xerox computer, Apple still may have eaten their lunch. Apple itself spent a lot of effort getting the Macintosh, expensive as it was, as cheap as it was.

Re: Folk Computer

#27

Post by anonymouskimmer »

csmeyer wrote: post #13

Just saw a demo of this last week. The most exciting use case was when multiple tags “programs” composed. For example, one program measures a value, passes that to one that accumulates values, and another that plots. I think there is a very cool version of this where the primitives are simpler and easier to compose (the composition demo I saw was a bit difficult to pull off). Then, rather than program the purpose of…

So does the primary use case of this seem to be for teaching computational ideas in a simple manner?

Re: Folk Computer

#29

Post by vajrabum »

shon wrote: post #21
joshmarinacci wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was gonna say, this sounds a lot like continuing the research of Dynamicland, which itself contained research from CDA, VPRI, and other groups. Why is it so hard to find a consistent funder of basic research like PARC in the 70s?

PARC, though awesome for society, was a massive commercial failure for Xerox. As tech nerd, I love the lore of The PARC and went to visit it as soon as I moved to the Bay Area. However, I assume it would be taught as a lesson of what not to do in a business context: Investing in pure research often yields innovations that are opposed to existing business lines or simply too far out to see as useful by management. Tha…

Uh no. Xerox made billions from the laser printer. And yes they missed capturing all the profit but it was crazy profitable. https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2015/03/21/how-parc-...

Re: Folk Computer

#30

Post by mortenjorck »

ryanwhitney wrote: post #8

Both seem to have worked at/with Dynamicland previously, though not mentioned on this site. https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/ https://cwervo.com/projects/dynamicland-experiments/

The moment I saw papercraft, computer vision, and a projector, I thought this had to have some relation.

I’ve never been able to resolve a clear position for myself on Dynamicland. I’ve long admired Brett Victor’s work, and I have only the fondest appreciation for the project's philosophy and the enthusiasm with which Victor writes about it.

The only problem is that I’ve never been able to figure out even the first thing about how it works. It’s completely incomprehensible to me, and I just don’t know how to square the project's ideals of human-centered, community-based computing with its seemingly-impenetrable alternate universe of dot stickers and projected images.

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