Casey Ransberger casey.obrien.r at gmail.comwrites
<mailto:fonc%40vpri.org?Subject=Re%3A%20%5Bfonc%5D%20Task%20management%20in%20a%20world%20without%20apps.&In-Reply-To=%3CDD90A941-C94A-4F01-A013-6D838B0B2524%40gmail.com%3E>
A fun, but maybe idealistic idea: an "application" of a computer
should just be what one decides to do with it at the time.
I've been wondering how I might best switch between "tasks" (or really
things that aren't tasks too, like toys and documentaries and
symphonies) in a world that does away with most of the application
level modality that we got with the first Mac.
The dominant way of doing this with apps usually looks like either the
OS X dock or the Windows 95 taskbar. But if I wanted less shrink wrap
and more interoperability between the virtual things I'm interacting
with on a computer, without forcing me to "multitask" (read: do more
than one thing at once very badly,) what's my best possible
interaction language look like?
I would love to know if these tools came from some interesting
research once upon a time. I'd be grateful for any references that can
be shared. I'm also interested in hearing any wild ideas that folks
might have, or great ideas that fell by the wayside way back when.
For a short time, there was OpenDoc - which really would have turned the
application paradigm on its head. Everything you interacted with was an
object; with methods incorporated into it's "container." E.g., if you
were working on a "document," there was no notion of a word processor,
just the document with embedded methods for interacting with it.
Miles Fidelman
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In
practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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