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Folk Computer

folk.computer

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Re: Folk Computer

#41

Post by kens »

jdougan wrote: post #40
kens wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone using punchcards would be amazed by keyboards As someone who uses punchcards regularly, I don't understand what you mean. People used a keyboard to punch cards since the 1930s or earlier. You type on a keyboard and the keypunch puts the holes in the card.

Which make and model of keypunch do people use these days? I thought that IBM had discontinued the Model 029 ages ago (along with all the other unit record equipment).

I use the IBM 026 keypunch at the Computer History Museum. This is for historical things, not production use :-)

Re: Folk Computer

#42

Post by ripley12 »

orangesite wrote: post #25

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.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Folk Computer

#43

Post by Towaway69 »

kens wrote: post #41
jdougan wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which make and model of keypunch do people use these days? I thought that IBM had discontinued the Model 029 ages ago (along with all the other unit record equipment).

I use the IBM 026 keypunch at the Computer History Museum. This is for historical things, not production use :-)

OK, is it then safe to say no one uses punch cards in production ;)

I just assumed that punch cards have gone the way of dinosaurs but always pleased to change my assumptions.

Re: Folk Computer

#44

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jstanley wrote: post #2

What is this?

Exactly, websites like this need straplines and a clear "about" page.

>"This {convoluted previous story about an audience generated concert that uses computer vision} is basically the idea behind Folk Computer, a small human-computer-interaction (HCI) research project run out of a converted auto shop in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that I visited one afternoon in March. Its founders, Omar Rizwan and Andrés Cuervo, want to make an interface that is haptic and three-dimensional: no longer an image of a desktop, but a real one. Folk’s hardware consists of a tiny, monitor-less Intel computer, a ceiling-mounted camera, a projector, a printer, and lots of paper spread out on an IKEA table. Each sheet is printed with a QR-code-like marker (called an AprilTag) that corresponds to a program written on a laptop and stored on the Github cloud. The camera reads the tag and executes its instructions, which, for now, are fairly simple – “draw a green box,” for example, causes the projector to cast four green lines onto the table. Folk is part of a larger “screenless” trend in HCI, ..." (Spike Magazine, https://spikeartmagazine.com/articles/essay-emily-dickinson-...)

I guessed that following the "in the media" link would lead to a story with a brief synopsis, but the link just goes to a blogroll that's no longer got the "Folk computer" story on, searching for it gets one the above page though.

Re: Folk Computer

#45

Post by yawboakye »

shon wrote: post #39
vajrabum wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Hmm, thanks for the interesting article. Probably knew that at one time but forgot lol. Still, it shows my point, that research that reaches too far from the company’s core biz is difficult to recognize as a success. The laser printer, was a better printer and it was an improvement to Xerox existing scan+print business. Bell Labs also had a lot of commercial success.

when a business has an r&d department it's inherently suicidal to consider any current activity as ‘core biz’ especially in a competition. your research department’s objective is to move the puck into new locations, hopefully evading your competitors, and your job as mother institution is to skate there. settling into any so-called core business is contra good business thinking. starting an r&d department isn’t.

Re: Folk Computer

#46

Post by yawboakye »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #26
jrowen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thei…

not really. from my study (of both xerox and other companies with similar fate), it’s success that killed them. when you have a hugely successful product that people can’t seem to live without, and businesses can’t operate without, it’s extraordinarily difficult to plan and execute its demise in favor of something new. your business executives, skilled in the arts of racing to bottom lines, won’t side with you. they’d rather go down with the ship than keep jumping every 5 years or so.

edit: goes without saying that the best time to take on any largely successful company is approximately a decade from when they’ve been successful. that is to say, we’re on the cusps of a better payments api (ie stripe of this decade), better email (37signal’s hey), better e-commerce, etc.

Re: Folk Computer

#47

Post by anonymouskimmer »

yawboakye wrote: post #46
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thei…

not really. from my study (of both xerox and other companies with similar fate), it’s success that killed them. when you have a hugely successful product that people can’t seem to live without, and businesses can’t operate without, it’s extraordinarily difficult to plan and execute its demise in favor of something new. your business executives, skilled in the arts of racing to bottom lines, won’t side with you. they’…

From what I had gathered, today's VC incubators and academic-affiliated incubators work on the inventor -> entrepreneur model (or at least entrepreneur -> inventor model).

Re: Folk Computer

#48

Post by anonymouskimmer »

ripley12 wrote: post #42
orangesite wrote: post #25

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.

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I thought it was a pithy comment that quickly indicated that, like emacs or vi versus pico or nano versus notepad, that this seems like a system that would segment people into lusers, users, and powerusers even harder than modern computing interfaces.

Re: Folk Computer

#49

Post by RecycledEle »

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…

If you want a folk computer, it needs to read standard file types, have a little attack surface as possible, run off batteries charged by its environment, and otherwise be similar to a phone with half-a-dozen very spacious NVME drives packed in.

Re: Folk Computer

#50

Post by infinite8s »

shon wrote: post #39
vajrabum wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

Hmm, thanks for the interesting article. Probably knew that at one time but forgot lol. Still, it shows my point, that research that reaches too far from the company’s core biz is difficult to recognize as a success. The laser printer, was a better printer and it was an improvement to Xerox existing scan+print business. Bell Labs also had a lot of commercial success.

Makes you wonder how the mythos that Xerox dropped the ball with PARC is so pervasive in our culture, or that it was net unprofitable. Probably the early scrappy 'garage engineering' mythology surrounding Apple plays into it?
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