@WIRED: A stirring vision for human progress beyond the touchscreen wired.com/2014/01/…
At least in Siberia you no longer could see the revolution. mercurynews.com/ci_23592605/mo…
A science book that you read by playing interactive simulations. A tour de force by @cgingold. earthprimer.com
(AKA -- finally, another "e-book" that actually deserves the "e". twitter.com/worrydream/sta… )
The Seeing Spaces comic is now a jpg for your tiny rectangle, as well as a printable pdf. worrydream.com/SeeingSpaces
Every step is so hard, so slow, like walking through mud, and the destination is so far away
In 1973, Carver Mead was publishing papers with embedded movies, in the form of flip-book animations in the margins. authors.library.caltech.edu/53664/1/010503…
"Will my work matter" is not just wrong question, but fatal question. You can't be realistic when trying to shift reality. Follow your heart
ridiculousness-driven development
Ok cool we'll pretty much go with that, except I think we'll order the spiritual direction from Edward Bernays instea
Pretty remarkable to read this in the context of "designing dynamic representations that draw on human capabilities". cabinetmagazine.org/issues/32/jasp…
In Maxwell's time, visualization algorithms were *performed*. You learned to feel them in your hands.
140 years later, my E&M professor was still teaching how to hand-sketch electric fields, but I think we might have been the last
The greatest advisory board. (from John Maxwell, "Tracing the Dynabook", p 170) tkbr.ccsp.sfu.ca/dynabook
![[Alan Kay's Vivarium] project was as broad-based as it was ambitious; it boasted an advisory board composed of various luminaries from the world of cognitive science, Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams, and even Koko, the famous gorilla (at one point, the team was engaged in creating a computer interface for Koko).](media/596742557721231360-CEgOMaYUkAAiMpg.png)
Gallery of Concept Visualization: conceptviz.github.io
Explorable Explanations Hub: explorableexplanations.com
Explorable Explanations Hub: explorableexplanations.com
Stuart Moulthrop's forward to @manjusrii's book is utterly amazing. I'm not sure he was fully awake when he wrote it. amazon.com/dp/0857280600
Alan Kay regarding Ted Nelson: "He's a nut. We need nuts like him."
Maybe sometimes the most valuable thing you can be is the needed nut.
Maybe sometimes the most valuable thing you can be is the needed nut.
Follow-up to "The Web of Alexandria". worrydream.com/TheWebOfAlexan…
Creating a new field, don't look for people interested in it, but people "interestable" in it.
worrydream.com/refs/Licklider…
worrydream.com/refs/Licklider…
Okay, I'll make a guess: what tastes like oranges, and is analytic everywhere in the complex plane?
I'm attempting to parody this, but everything I think of is totally plausible. The world is beyond parody.
(2/3) I wonder how many programming researchers today actually deeply understand Sussman's analogy and point here:
(3/3) To me, it's one of the most incisive observations I've ever read.
I've overheard this exchange several times in the last week, regarding the thing I'm working on.
I'm happy my copy of Licklider's "Libraries of the Future" was apparently once a checklist for someone else's project
Future scientists will be bewildered by our disembodied brain-in-a-jar model of cognition. Descartes is our Aristotle.
That was amazon.com/dp/0679740473 but see also Tomasello! amazon.com/dp/0262515202
I just backed the Library of Babel on @Kickstarter
I just backed the #Singularity on @Kickstarter
I just backed the #Anthropocene on @Kickstarter
You can always buy some wood and build a birdhouse, and the birds will like it as much as they ever did. No one can take that from you.
When we were starting CDG, Alan would say that he was looking forward to it being "fun". That seemed like such a strange word. ...
... We weren't doing this to have "fun". This was too important to be "fun". The desperate mission, the weight of the world...
... I'm coming to realize that, in this sort of work, fun is a requirement in order to get anywhere.
... If it's not fun in the moment, the despair will drag you down and eat you. Fun is the only short-term incentive.
@patrickc: Consistently reassured by the rigor and common sense of the security we insist on for the important things.
@patrickc As I understand it, a signature was never intended as authentication (e.g., you can make a witnessed "X" if you can't write) 1/3
@patrickc Forgery (like shoplifting) is not prevented by the mechanism itself, but by the fact that it's declared to be *illegal*. 2/3
@patrickc A signature is a symbol, made meaningful because it engages the social-legal apparatus. I think it's a clever hack. 3/3
@patrickc Yep. But I (always) worry when people want to replace these "hackable" social mechanisms with "secure" technical mechanisms...
@patrickc because I think the context-sensitive wiggle-room of social mechanisms (e.g. signing a spouse's signature on a check) is essential.
@patrickc The more we codify and lock down processes that used to be socially-mediated, the more "computer says no".
the virtual reality of dorian gray
what is the plural of manifesto
He's investing in AI and neuroscience research so humanity can merge with a superintelligence and he can upload himself into immortality...
... yet *I* feel like a crackpot for talking about spatial media and dynamic material?
Augmented Humility. Augmented Empathy. Representations for understanding other people by seeing the the larger systems they're embedded in.
@DanielleFong: People rarely understand the constraints that others are under, or take responsibility for their role in perpetuating them. Empathy matters
Real challenge: instead of seeing empathy as a personal virtue, design a medium that engenders empathy by default.
Empathy results from seeing and understanding the larger system that you and others are embedded in, seeing *why* others act as they do.
A medium can show context and connections. Without context, you assume ill intentions in others. WIth context, you can think systemically.
Narrative inherently embraces simple causes, personal agency, single perspective, limited context. A medium for empathy won't be stories.
@natematias I don't mean engendering empathy through emotional appeal! The opposite -- by seeing the bigger picture and many perspectives.
@ftrain Empathy or pity? All of those are "monsters vs victims" stories. True empathy would be understanding the monsters.
Studying history as "a way of trying to make strange what is so familiar that we find it hard to think about."
Someday, futurists will recognize "tools for thought" (Engelbart etc) as an essential theme enabling all the others.
A.I. (as a "thing", an Other) gets the headlines. I.A. (as a medium that patterns your thinking) is often invisible. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellige…
Just look at how that (breathtaking) last sentence relegates "tech" to four words at the end. dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3…
It takes an extraordinary futurist to recognize that the future lies with "hunches" and "the human feel for a situation"...
... and that concepts, notation, methods, and "tech" are all just means to that end. Everything but the tech tends to be invisible.
I know that everybody likes the "Probably not", but I think my favorite abstract is Gosper's "CONTRARY TO EVERYBODY". perl.plover.com/yak/cftalk/INF…
"Administration of Research in a Research Corporation" gave Engelbart the idea for his "conceptual framework" paper.
worrydream.com/refs/Kennedy…
It wasn't freely available on the web, so I made a nice HTML version for you.
Found the citation for that: worrydream.com/quotes/#doug-e… I AM NOT CLAIMING THIS TO BE RELEVANT TO MY CURRENT SITUATION NOT AT ALL
Worrying about sentient AI as the ice caps melt is like standing on the tracks as the train rushes in, worrying about being hit by lightning
If you really must go contain an AI, why not the "AI" of corporations+consumerism currently melting those ice caps. omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostil…
i miss u, ice caps
And if ice caps aren't your thing, well, we've got eight more genuine existential threats for you to work on! wired.com/2012/03/when-t…
If any "founders" out there want to "disrupt" our 401 ppm atmospheric CO2, or "moonshot" ocean acidification, that would be cool
"minimum viable planet"
Enlightened Imagination For Citizens, by Alan Kay. worrydream.com/EnlightenedImaginationForCitizens
"Here in 2015, the primary form of public communication is an archive of all the dumb things you've blurted out at 2 in the morning."
Hope is necessary but not sufficient.
yo internet I heard u like curated news & media, so I put curated news & media in ur curated news & media so u can fiddle while rome burns
self-driving bicycle for the mind
Things we prototyped years and years ago at Apple continue to trickle out.
The amount of work required between planting the seeds and harvesting the crop is almost unimaginable.
@jasonbrennan @andy_matuschak Sometimes you have to skate to where the puck has been lying motionless for forty years
A fine line between locating someone on an ideological map and cramming them into an ideological filing cabinet.
The reports of my inactivity have been greatly etc
Apparatus is a dynamic drawing tool by @mandy3284. A beautiful and important piece of work. aprt.us
youtube.com/watch?v=i3Xack…
Pay particular attention to how direct manipulation works by backsolving for variable values with numerical minimization.
I called DDV vimeo.com/66085662 the "Fortran" of dynamic drawing. Apparatus is more "Hypercard meets Datalog". (Very much a step up!)
"Caveat": a writing platform like "Medium" but you annotate every sentence you write with context, hedging, exceptions, "it's not that simple"
@mayli: I wish Siri would listen for people who say thank you and then say you're welcome. Feels like we're enforcing bad habits.
@mayli kinda wish Siri would go in the opposite direction. I think the most dangerous habit is thinking of an algorithm as a human being.
@mayli: right, so making it sound even less human-like than now? One or the other. The worst is "like a human you can treat badly"
@mayli many people seem interested in AI because they want servants. "Slavery without the guilt." I find it all kind of gross...
@mayli: So true! The underlying mentality that "things are in this world for me to use or use up" is so prevalent and so broken.
@mayli Tools can have an AI posture ("servant") or an IA posture ("superpower"). I say IA, and stop pretending to have conversations with tools.
hello and welcome to Neil Postman's tumblr of reaction GIFs
Neil's Face When he sees this page: medium.com/@MattBors/the-…
wait I got it, I'll just slip it in here and all the kids will come flocking in no time
move fast and don't break things into vector components
(a · b) + (a ∧ b) = minimum viable product
e^(-iθ/2) a e^(iθ/2) = pivot
e^(-iθ/2) a e^(iθ/2) = pivot
boy oh boy do I have a thanksgiving gift for you
Here's a preface for tomorrow's essay. worrydream.com/2015-11-23
★ What Can A Technologist Do About Climate Change? (A Personal View) worrydream.com/ClimateChange
"Hey Carver, any plans for your 81st birthday?"
"Oh you know, overturn general relativity, maybe grab a burrito youtube.com/watch?v=XdiG6Z…
John Cramer's summary: npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw180.ht…
Bret: "complex global problems".
Mac dictation: "complex Google problems".
Mac dictation: "complex Google problems".
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by the best minds of my generation destroyed by the best minds of my
Mutually Assured Dehumanization
How do you learn to build a computer with newfangled transistors? First try a shift register... then a multiplier...
peak cognitive dissonance
"Our virtual tools are permabroken and enraging."
"Our entirely virtual future will be awesome!"
"Our virtual tools are permabroken and enraging."
"Our entirely virtual future will be awesome!"
It's like the frog reaching down to turn up the temperature on its own pot.
Oh my god. A calculator for distribution arithmetic. I've been dreaming about this forever.
medium.com/guesstimate-bl…
(actually, I don't even think you can have "three dollars", if a dollar is defined by what you can buy with it at a later time)