>> "45 years after Engelbart's demo, we have a read-only web and Microsoft Word >> 2011, a gulf between "users" and "programmers" that can't be wider, and the >> scariest part is that most people have been indoctrinated long enough to >> realize there could be alternatives." > > I'm not sure how to understand this. The demo is probably somewhere on > youtube and when I have time I will try to watch it. However, neither > wikipedia: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos > > nor wired: > > http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/12/dayintech_1209 > > mention anything about programming by user. They say there were windows, > mouse, hypertexts, videoconferencing and other similar stuff. Not a word > about programming. So perhaps a gap between users and programers was > already well established by then.
WOW! that just goes to show how much is culturally forgotten. This is a perfect example of "news" vs "new". The people to which this was news by definition have preconceived notions. The commentary they write is through the lens of how they know what to explain. They leave out things they don't have existing concepts for - much like the story of the shaman seeing Christofer Columbus' ships for the first time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQcBQc3oaKg The analogy is actually a great one for all of science - what we really observe are the ripples. Anyway, I digress, as for the demo... The NLS (the oN Line System) was all about end-user, domain-specific programing (albeit, not really what we would call "programming" when viewed through the lens of today's practices). You have to sort jump into the context of the era. People were talking about augmenting human intellect via machines, "navigating thought vectors through idea space", etc. Forget "a bicycle for the mind," the vision of Vannevar Bush and Englebart was much closer to the post-humanist view espoused by proponents of the singularity. A very key element about the NLS was the ability to program into it new scripts and commands based on the semantics of the information! This was deeply personal but also very group work oriented as well. The SRI team did all of their meetings and group work in this collaborative programable space. Conference rooms had tables organized around a set of computer monitors in the middle. You could bring up references as part of a discussion for all others to see. Today's Power Point and projector screens at the head of a table are really a cheep copout shawn _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list [email protected] http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
