bonar@pitt.UUCP (Dr. Jeffrey Bonar) (12/19/88)
I have an invitation for net readers - create a metaphor for computing systems that goes beyond the desktop cliche. Four years ago, Apple had something with the Macintosh desktop: a new way to think about computing. Now, everyone is copying the desktop: Microsoft, IBM, AT&T. Even the new NeXT machine provides little more than a desktop with some cute simulated depth. Marshall McLuhan said that a new medium always began by imitating the old medium: cow paths were paved to make roads for the "horseless carriage", film began by putting a camera in front of a play, and finally, computer screens now look like a desktop. What if we really let go into our new medium; what should a computer work space really look like? William Gibson described a cyberspace where computer cowboys shared a: "consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts ... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding ..." (pg 51, Ace paperback edition of Neuromancer) What does your cyberspace, or whatever you would call it, look like. I'm interested in suggestions that are practical and serious, in particular, suggestions constrained by current technology in screens, keyboards, mice, etc. I'm also interested in suggestions that are fanciful and poetic. We get to create a medium from scratch - what should it look like. Note: please mail your suggestions to me directly. I will post a collection of the results. Send suggestions to: Internet: bonar@vax.cs.pittsburgh.edu or, using normal mail: Jeffrey Bonar 708 LRDC University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260
dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Dennis L. Mumaugh) (01/07/89)
In article <4362@pitt.UUCP> bonar@pitt.UUCP (Dr. Jeffrey Bonar) writes: > >I have an invitation for net readers - create a metaphor for computing >systems that goes beyond the desktop cliche. Four years ago, Apple >had something with the Macintosh desktop: a new way to think about >computing. Now, everyone is copying the desktop: Microsoft, IBM, >AT&T. Even the new NeXT machine provides little more than a >desktop with some cute simulated depth. > I suggest all people who are involved with Information Technology be required to read the following article before being allowed to post netnews: %A Vannevar Bush %T As We May Think %J Altantic Monthly %D August 21945 %X This article described an information handling workstation of the future, at which a user could sit and browse information which would appear on rear-projection screens; links between places in different documents would connect related information, and the machine would be able to switch over to those related documents if they were stored on the system (a concept today called "hypertext"). .br This article also describes the concept of intertextual links {margin notes} that became part of the documents and allow establishing correlations and cross-references. It also posited the concept of an information space and a world-wide data space. My point is that the above citation seems to be unknown to serious researchers. It describes a set of concepts that have not yet been achieved. A vague glimmering was attempted by Doug Englebert at SRI in his Augmented Knowledge Workshop. I feel that people need to re-examine a lot of the past as I seem to see people keep re-inventing old ideas that have become forgotten. Of course, one should remember that had not Alfred Einstein been around Vannevar Bush would have been the most famous scientist in the USA. It isn't surprising that his idea was so seminal. -- =Dennis L. Mumaugh Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm OR cuuxb!dlm@arpa.att.com
dlm@cuuxb.ATT.COM (Dennis L. Mumaugh) (01/07/89)
In article <4362@pitt.UUCP> bonar@pitt.UUCP (Dr. Jeffrey Bonar) writes: > >I have an invitation for net readers - create a metaphor for computing >systems that goes beyond the desktop cliche. Four years ago, Apple >had something with the Macintosh desktop: a new way to think about >computing. Now, everyone is copying the desktop: Microsoft, IBM, >AT&T. Even the new NeXT machine provides little more than a >desktop with some cute simulated depth. > >Marshall McLuhan said that a new medium always began by >imitating the old medium: cow paths were paved to make roads for >the "horseless carriage", film began by putting a camera in front of a >play, and finally, computer screens now look like a desktop. What if >we really let go into our new medium; what should a computer work >space really look like? > One of these years I hope to meet up with some one who has read some old fashioned Science Fiction!!! %A Arthur Clarke %T Imperial Earth %X Novel about a delegate to the Tri-centennial of the US Independence. Plot surrounds relationship with an old chum who is billiant and unstable. Major plot element is the portable, personal "computer" which is a lifelong companion, secretary, notebook, filing cabinet and general reference library. Said object when attached to the local equivalent "telephone" with ISDN and a global access becomes one's entry to the world. Check the book out. That book along with Vannevar Bush's article (see previous post) descibe a potential that makes cyberpunk look sick. -- =Dennis L. Mumaugh Lisle, IL ...!{att,lll-crg}!cuuxb!dlm OR cuuxb!dlm@arpa.att.com
dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) (01/07/89)
In article <2350@cuuxb.ATT.COM> dlm@cuuxb.UUCP (Dennis L. Mumaugh) writes: >[description of an article from 1945] >My point is that the above citation seems to be unknown to serious >researchers. It describes a set of concepts that have not yet been >achieved. A vague glimmering was attempted by Doug Englebert at SRI >in his Augmented Knowledge Workshop. I feel that people need to >re-examine a lot of the past as I seem to see people keep re-inventing >old ideas that have become forgotten. No one's re-inventing the wheel, but hand waving is hand waving. The real advances are going to be in actual systems. You seem to be assuming that the problem is a shortage of ideas, and complaining that we should be spending more time seeing what's already out there. Well, the real shortage is in things like technology, funding, resources, and time. Just because current hand waving bears a striking resemblance to past hand waving, it doesn't mean your re-invention alarm has to go off. Most work from 1945 is probably so extrapolative as to make it worthless. Who in 1945 could have predicted which vision of the future would seem right 40+ years later? The fact that one guy seems to have gotten it right is irrelevant. We don't want to have to constantly search through all the chaff of the past n years for the gems. On the other hand, similar papers published today (I have a few references if anyone is interested), while proposing very similar ideas, are of a better grade of hand waving, since their ideas are actually technologically feasible. (Of course, Technologically is only one species of Feasible.) And I certainly wouldn't expect people to grind through today's ideas forty years from now to see what they can find. If they still want cyberspace or office metaphors in forty years, good for them, but it won't be because someone looked up some forty year old articles, it'll be because the idea was good enough to be continually re-invented until someone had the bright idea of doing something about it. If you're worried about the original idea-man not getting credit for his good extrapolation, well that's life, and besides, there's nothing new under the sun anyhow, right? -Dan p.s. i haven't read the article in question, i am responding only to the ideas expressed in the message posted
janssen@titan.sw.mcc.com (Bill Janssen) (01/08/89)
>%A Vannevar Bush >%T As We May Think >%J Altantic Monthly >%D August 2 1945 More easily found in: Irene Grief (ed.), COMPUTER-SUPPORTED COOPERATIVE WORK: A BOOK OF READINGS, Morgan-Kaufman, CA, 1988. along with all kinds of other good stuff. Bill