a suture for your fractured future
In case you missed it, we have a website for @Dynamicland1 now. dynamicland.org It manages to convey a good 20% or so of what the project is all about!
twitter headers archive has been updated with the last few years of this nonsense
worrydream.com/TwitterHeaders
1. But is it *programmable*?
2. Is it *learnably* programmable?
3. Is it learnably programmable *together*?
2. Is it *learnably* programmable?
3. Is it learnably programmable *together*?
To semiunsubtweet, this isn't really a dig at NL so much as a clarification that what we're making at DL (and what gets made at DL) is something else entirely.
(It's sort of the difference between the Switch itself and, say, a Smalltalk environment.)
(It's sort of the difference between the Switch itself and, say, a Smalltalk environment.)
(I hesitated in posting this because I'm not sure "Smalltalk environment" means anything to anyone anymore. Maybe people just read it as Smalltalk syntax highlighting in Sublime Text.)
Even the hardest of the hardcore hackers want to sit around the same table and work together in person.
trixter.oldskool.org/2015/04/07/808…
Made a little utility to highlight the pages that were created today (while playing "Today" by the Smashing Pumpkins) (12 LOC) @Dynamicland1
(This happened after @mayli made "Purple Rain" and "Kind of Blue".)
twitter.com/mayli/status/9…
lots of great songs about triangles
also @dynamicland1 has canola oil
(thx @lukexi)
it's derived from the seed of the canola plant
which north american farmers have been growing for about thirty years
also I think we're some sort of futuristic community space but tbh we're mostly about the canola oil
Lovely interview with @humantransit (via @vectorpark).
"That attitude is catastrophic" is my new favorite sentence.
ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/01/26/219…
@mayli advice from the highest authority
@itshunkydory Dynamicland has become self-aware and is deriving Darude - Sandstorm from first principles
bundled resources @Dynamicland1
(@mayli, this is getting to be a thing)
You walk up to the person who's doing it and ask them to please stop doing it. If they don't stop, you kick them out.
(When everybody is present in the same space, much of "security" reduces to social negotiation rather than technical barriers.) twitter.com/JobvdZwan/stat…
(When everybody is present in the same space, much of "security" reduces to social negotiation rather than technical barriers.) twitter.com/JobvdZwan/stat…
Privacy is also just social norms. Things left on public tables are assumed to be public. Things on your own desk are somewhat more private, and things in your notebook or bag are completely private. To work on a private project, go off into a corner. No permission bits required.
"Security by maturity."
@violinar From Postman himself --
- Technopoly: amazon.com/dp/0679745408
- the five things: worrydream.com/refs/Postman…
- the seven questions: youtube.com/watch?v=uglSCu…
- Technopoly: amazon.com/dp/0679745408
- the five things: worrydream.com/refs/Postman…
- the seven questions: youtube.com/watch?v=uglSCu…
@violinar About the alphabet and oral/written modes of thoughts specifically, I love "Domestication of the Savage Mind" by Jack Goody and "Orality and Literacy" by Walter Ong.
@violinar About the printing press, the canonical work is "The Printing Press as an Agent of Change" by Elizabeth Eisenstein. "Speed of light transmission of images" probably references McLuhan.
Thanks @ChristinaDEI for a video digest of the 1969 (not 1968!) Engelbart demo!! dougengelbart.org/firsts/1969-de…
I made a browsable version of that video a couple years ago, but it doesn't exactly fit on a webpage. (Turn on sound.)
I really really like this way of putting it. (I've phrased this in the past as "If you think I've gone off the rails, I was never on your rails to begin with" but this is nicer.) twitter.com/arthur_affect/…
From the preface of a book from 1909 about best practices for running your machine shop. (Keep reading.)
creative differences
creative sums
creative products
creative quotients
creative sums
creative products
creative quotients
of all possibilities consistent with the facts, believing the most optimistic one.
Occam's Raiser
rereading Egan on the plane, and came to that part where I once tried to extract a quote and ended up transcribing ten pages
worrydream.com/oatmeal/egan-1…
The universe (which others call Twitter) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of rectangular galleries.
@joannekcheung Some say the world will end in fire.
Some say in snow.
Peruse the dire daily news
to scope the world through burning hues.
But further focal distance brings
a winter slowly turning spring.
Some say in snow.
Peruse the dire daily news
to scope the world through burning hues.
But further focal distance brings
a winter slowly turning spring.
I guess this is the "funny" part that I'm supposed to tweet, but really, the entire book is so illuminating in its historical perspective. amazon.com/dp/1524762938 (highly recommended)
@joannekcheung Birds get worms that taste delicious.
Owls get stars to place their wishes.
Martians wish, by night and day,
they weren't so cold and far away.
Owls get stars to place their wishes.
Martians wish, by night and day,
they weren't so cold and far away.
I got the "are you Bret Victor" walking back from the museum this afternoon. Asked him about himself: "I'm a gardner. I used to be a programmer, but after your talks, I couldn't do it anymore." "Your recent work gives me hope for my two kids."
I really like @windyoona's "Sound of the Dialup" chart:
windytan.com/2012/11/the-so…
so I printed it out and put it on the wall. (Turn on sound.)
windytan.com/2012/11/the-so…
so I printed it out and put it on the wall. (Turn on sound.)
modem dialup is the best party music
no no, I'm not interested in "project-based learning", I'm interested in "learning-based project-ing"
I'm working on a "'project-based learning'-based learning"-based project.
@acwervo @lethalbeef I like @ChrisDeLeon's bit on how real-world games have "rules" (enforced and bent by consenus), but in video games, those become "laws" (of nature, unalterable)
digra.org/wp-content/upl…
youtube.com/watch?v=5n-apf…
A huge motivation for DL is escaping the fixed laws of digital worlds.
@lukexi is editing pages on the wall and needs to switch between them, so I made him a page selector using yardstick-and-foamcore technology
earlier, @lukexi filed a bug report by physically handing me a test case and talking it over. I fixed it today and threw it away
If you're not at the right place at the right time, you've got to make the right place and make it the right time.
partial differential equations are a kind of dance notation
periodic reminder that everything on my twitter feed featuring colored dots actually exists in this world, and the rest mostly exists elsewhere
tbh, the colored dot stuff lived elsewhere for a long time before we imported it
sounds of the logistic map
wait, who's the father of all demos
the 1968 Fall Joint Computer Conference was an immaculate convention
when the moon hits your eye
and you're told you will die
memento mori
and you're told you will die
memento mori
collidescope
bobby mcferrin is the best party music
@tophtucker So, astronomers observe, a moon
Hath smaller moons around it strewn;
And these have more, too small to fathom,
And so proceed down to the atoms
Hath smaller moons around it strewn;
And these have more, too small to fathom,
And so proceed down to the atoms
A number used to be a tactile phenomenon. Now it's an image.
I wonder if music-making will go the same way, purely manipulating intangible marks on screens, instruments becoming as obsolete as the abacus.
(via journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.117… )
I wonder if music-making will go the same way, purely manipulating intangible marks on screens, instruments becoming as obsolete as the abacus.
(via journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.117… )
@inthehands but what if singing is someday seen as handwriting is today -- quaint, messy, not for anything serious, falling into disuse, atrophying... (are we already there?)
getting into sticky-note-based configuration technology
youtube.com/watch?v=hEkiDYUV_AM [print however you like]
youtube.com/watch?v=hEkiDYUV_AM [print however you like]
getting into sticky-note-based configuration technology
youtube.com/watch?v=ys6gomDrRQ4 [volume control]
youtube.com/watch?v=ys6gomDrRQ4 [volume control]
the controls for "print however you like" are drawn on tracing paper, so you can still see the code underneath
@MattPLavoie @nsfmc When you're working on a 50-year time scale, fun is a requirement in order to get anywhere. Otherwise, the enormity of the task will drag you down and eat you. Joy in the moment is the only short-term incentive.
every now and then we learn something
every now and then we don't
Dynamicland is a computer designed, from the ground up, around human beings talking to human beings
@michael_nielsen I used to ask those questions, before I got too concerned about what was being done with all that "powerful" power. I switched to the q of what new forms of communication could make possible understanding, responsibility, and stewardship of global systems
@michael_nielsen
The answers to your questions are the same as the answer to "can we split the atom", that is, "obviously yes, but if that's the only question you're asking, you're also asking for some terrible implications".
@flantz @michael_nielsen I consider propaganda and modern advertising to be powerful forms of communication. And the conversations at Los Alamos were conducted in a powerful mathematical language very much in the spirit of Michael's question.
@nagle5000 why didn't Lavoisier just start a Patreon
rain this color
harder to capture in a tweet -- this came out of @itshunkydory and me casually taking turns messing with "make it rain" while chatting with Margaret and Cynthia around the lunch table. it's a doodle. twitter.com/acwervo/status…
this is what's impossible to convey about @dynamicland1 -- what look like "demos" or "projects" in these tweets are actually just the leftover scratch paper from conversation, discussion, exploration, playing, joking, riffing in a real place in real time with real people
start a project that you need to work on until age 110
Congratulations Apple, a 942.8 billion dollar company, for building on the work of @tristanharris and @edelwax, who have dedicated so much of the last few years to scrounging for nonprofit funding. twitter.com/sableRaph/stat…
To be clear, this has nothing to do with Apple being "bad" or "good". It's a structural problem. There are vast incentives for logging the forest, planting seeds has become an unfundable nightmare, and many people don't realize that trees grow from seeds in the first place.
1. Invent.
2. Publish.
3. Die.
4. PROFIT
2. Publish.
3. Die.
4. PROFIT
jan 5, 2018, a dynamic conversation supported by dynamic modeling in the dynamic medium @qualmist @nagle5000
(has sound)
(has sound)
@arntzenius @Dynamicland1 indeed, very much inspired by Linda's tuple spaces, with two less-old ideas: tuples as complete sentences (inspired by Inform 7 and @alexwarth) and tuples located in real physical space (inspired by handwork, Tufte, reality). Both super-important!
@rsnous another purpose of this dramatic simplification is to enable STEPS-like human-scale computing systems, and the purpose of *that* is to enable Nile Viewer-like representations that let people to see and understand the behavior of the entire system at every level of abstraction
if you want to do anticomputing, you gonna need a hypercube
worrydream.com/refs/Jefferson…
worrydream.com/refs/Repenning…
@rsnous and you want to notice claims and make wishes about objects, not about the sensors and actuators (e.g. in the dragglezone, instead of wishing about the dragglebots, you wish that an object contains dots, and the bots do their thing under the table to make reality match the wish)
@joannekcheung lorem ipsumbody once told me dolor sit gonna roll me, amet the sharpest tool in the sed
@Cabbibo @Dynamicland1 @carolinehermy glammed-up system components are a lab tradition!
twitter.com/worrydream/sta…
The "deploy-or-die" attitude in research is obscenely negligent. If what you're creating can have enormous and unpredictable ramifications, then testing on millions of people is unethical and depraved. If it can't, then you're not doing significant research.
@haikustranger @rsnous Indeed! I think the difference is that programming consists of constantly churning out new blackboxed functions, whereas in electronics, you only occasionally make a black box yourself. So every op-amp is carefully designed, has a detailed spec sheet, application notes, etc.
@rsnous I think about this suggestion from Scott a lot. I kind of think every CS undergrad should be required to implement a toy Xanadu.
"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither." -- CS Lewis on assigning CS students to implement Xanadu instead of some compiler or database or whatever
pretty sure my favorite business book is still cometbus #51
@ilovecomputers @Cabbibo @andy_matuschak @elikosminsky dynamicland "malware" is really just "annoying the people around you", which is a state of being which I'm pretty sure was not invented at dynamicland
@rsnous @Dynamicland1 Growing up within a worldview of "apps" and "dev tools" constrains people to see everything in those terms. It can take tremendous unlearning to even be able to /see/ an "authoring is always on" system for what it is.
squeakland.org/resources/arti…
squeakland.org/resources/arti…
1953, Charlie Townes invents the maser (precursor to the laser), then takes a sabbatical to consider doing something useful instead
@nicklovescode @rsnous Dynamicland is about incubating the future of person-to-person communication and systemic literacy. Since the Dynabook, computation has merely been means to that end. See e.g.
worrydream.com/cdg/ResearchAgenda…
vimeo.com/115154289
worrydream.com/refs/Kay…
worrydream.com/refs/Kay…
worrydream.com/cdg/ResearchAgenda…
vimeo.com/115154289
worrydream.com/refs/Kay…
worrydream.com/refs/Kay…
all your piety and wit
won't change a goddamn word of it
won't change a goddamn word of it
electrons will never go out of style
@edouerd (FWIW, AK tends to implicate TBL more than I think is fair. TBL's WWW was WYSIWYG-editable. Others made "the browser".)
@rsnous "web browser" is exactly akin to "hypercard player", which is what killed hypercard dorophone.blogspot.com/2011/07/ducksp…
@rsnous @_chenglou this is how people take notes and chat (for real work) when not confined by a screen
@notcalledjack @rsnous @_chenglou slightly less convenient, massively *massively* more effective. I care about effectiveness.
@maxkreminski @rsnous Isn't this dissonance characteristic of any domain where humans layer a narrative over a system? e.g. mythological and religious narratives over actual nature, advertising narratives over the actual economic system, political narratives over the actual social system... 1/
@maxkreminski @rsnous The scientific process (and, to some extent, historical research done well) are humanity's only serious attempts to escape this vulnerability by painstakingly ensuring that the narrative matches the system in every possible detail. 2/
@rsnous I have a thing about "The Two Computer Sciences" that I've talked about but never written down
the web does what xanadon't
@rsnous my understanding was that if you like something you're supposed to put a sticker of it on your laptop
@jtaylorhodge @orbuch @rsnous use of this sticker contractually binds you to think about things: worrydream.com/oatmeal/thinking-sticker.zip