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Watch pg write an essay in real time

code.stypi.com

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Re: Watch pg write an essay in real time

#51

Post by pg »

petergreen wrote: post #33

I'd really love to hear pg's comments of wether there is a piece of software, a tool, that could help him write the essays. Is there something that constantly comes to his mind when he writes, in form of "if only there was X so that I could Y". Or anyone else's

Not really. Vi is all I need. I could probably think of things I'd like but don't realize I need. E.g. controlling an editor directly with my brain, so I didn't need to type. Hard to say about the narrower question of whether there is anything I'd want that's possible with existing technology.

Re: Watch pg write an essay in real time

#52

Post by pg »

nightpool wrote: post #22
trevyn wrote: post #9

Real time?

Real time, as in a 1:1 ratio between the time it took him to write it and the time it takes for you to see it played back. Not as in live, where you see it as he's typing it.

No, that's not true. The keystrokes are played back at a constant rate with no breaks.

Re: Watch pg write an essay in real time

#53

Post by petergreen »

pg wrote: post #51
petergreen wrote: post #33

I'd really love to hear pg's comments of wether there is a piece of software, a tool, that could help him write the essays. Is there something that constantly comes to his mind when he writes, in form of "if only there was X so that I could Y". Or anyone else's

Not really. Vi is all I need. I could probably think of things I'd like but don't realize I need. E.g. controlling an editor directly with my brain, so I didn't need to type. Hard to say about the narrower question of whether there is anything I'd want that's possible with existing technology.

Thank you Paul. I'm missing an ability to collapse / uncollapse parts of written text (meaningfully), so you could see only the plan, or summaries of each chapter, or paragraphs, etc. It would require a very good interface to be useful, but imagine the implications for consuming / learning when knowledge is presented in this way.

honestly been wanting to build this for myself forever

Re: Watch pg write an essay in real time

#56

Post by md2be »

thirdtruck wrote: post #47
austenallred wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not.

I say go ahead and compare. Shakespeare and Dickens were both considered highly-commercialized and not art in their time. We already see pg's incredible value as a writer. And what does the format matter? If it did, we would disregard haikus as poetry just because they can fit into tweets.

Are u nuts?

Re: Watch pg write an essay in real time

#59

Post by justin66 »

dylandrop wrote: post #34
austenallred wrote: post #28

This is fantastic. I've been an addict of http://reddit.com/r/artisanvideos for quite a while, because there's something fascinating and enlightening about watching artisans perform their work (for example, Alexis Ohanian designing the Hipmunk bellhop logo - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYEQpwduyPU ). It's especially interesting to note that there are few, if any, words in the entire essay that he didn't edit multi…

Everyone revises their work, many times over. But yes the great authors do as well. I think this tool is cool for that reason. “I have rewritten–often several times–every word I have ever written. My pencils outlast their erasers.” -- Vladimir Nabokov But are you really trying to compare a bullet-point style blog post (not really an essay) to Shakespeare, Hugo, or Dickens?

> Everyone revises their work, many times over. But yes the great authors do as well.

You state that as if it's some universal truth but it's certainly not. We know that Asimov only ever wrote a first draft and a final draft and Heinlein wouldn't even create a first draft most of the time. Neither of them is a Nabokov or Hemingway but they certainly fall into the category of "everyone."

Re: Watch pg write an essay in real time

#60

Post by krrrh »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #58

This functionality seems like it would be right at home in Google Docs.

This functionality was in etherpad, which was also YC-funded and also demoed their software with a playback of a pg essay.

While etherpad lives on as an open source project the original company/team was acquired by google and this resulted in google docs getting real time cursor movement and edits shortly thereafter (google docs originally updated via polling and often had collisions).

I think it's a shame that google never implemented more of the core ideas from etherpad, such as playback and contributor text highlighting. It's still the best online collaborative tool I've ever used. I had experiences writing letters to politicians in real time with dozens of anonymous strangers who we gathered via twitter, and collaborative grant proposal writing sessions that I can only describe as thrilling. It's also been fun to use etherpad to collaboratively take notes during conferences, and truly fascinating to replay and see how largely anonymous editors quickly start taking on certain roles without any prior discussion--one person gets very interested in fixing spelling mistakes, someone else gets really good at finding relevant urls for background information and links to slides, someone else just barrels ahead with whatever the presenter is currently talking about knowing that the others will fill in the gaps. A lot of the innovation happened in subset hardier, but etherpad made it way more accessible and this useful.

Etherpad deserved all the attention that google wave was receiving at the time because it really delivered on the promise of a truely flexible tool for collaborating and communicating more effectively than email.

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