scrapbooking

(refs) worrydream.com/refs/Kay_1972…
worrydream.com/refs/Kay_1977…
worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk
archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1981-08…

more scrapbooking

(refs) https://archive.org/details/Apple-1_Operation_Manual_1976…
archive.org/details/a2_the_DOS_Manual…
archive.org/details/Apple_II_Prodos_Users_Manual…
maccaps.com/MacCaps/DIY_Information_files/Macintosh_Manual_1984.pdf

spotted a xerox alto in its natural habitat

@ctbeiser

@stephtwang my interpretation is something like: shenzhen i/o is fun/challenging/funny because you're solving trivial tasks using inadequate representations (e.g. asm). For work that "actually matters", better strategy may be to seek better representations rather than cope with puzzle-solving

@stephtwang at least, hutchins is claiming that the cognitive evolution of culture proceeds in this way (by re-encoding tasks in better representations rather than continuing to puzzle through them). Evolution is a slow gradual process, of course.

babbage's analytical engine comes with two bells (archive.org/details/passagesfromlife03char… )

mprove.de/visionreality/mail/kay.html#Dec98

@nagle5000 it's a common Alan trope, referencing McLuhan (e.g. vpri.org/pdf/future_of_… )

FLEX machine, 1968
Smalltalks, 1971-1979
NoteTaker, 1978
Vivarium, 1986-1993
Playground, 1988-1992
Squeak, 1996-
Etoys, 1997-
Croquet, 2003-2007
STEPS, 2006-2012
CDG/HARC, 2013-2017
Tutor, 2016-

(architecture machine group, ~1976)

No, if that money had needed to come from venture capitalists, the project never would have happened.

In his later life, Bob Taylor was once accused of rosy retrospection with regards to the research environment in the 60s and 70s. Bob thought for a couple minutes, and finally declared, "No, god dammit, it *was* a golden age."

stories and games (from worrydream.com/AlanKaySqueaklandPosts)

understanding engelbart

on documenting dynamicland

James Clerk Maxwell wrote the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for "Diagram". It contains two diagrams.

At my first job, I remember protesting that a certain fashionable industrial design decision would look ridiculous in ten years. My boss responded, "We're not selling this product in ten years. We're selling it now." I learned something about myself that day.

gibbs-mode

@tophtucker total number of dreams divided by average size team per dream

@tophtucker

@tophtucker By the way, have you read much along this thread (that I just made up)? I think you might be into it. I'm thinking of Ong in particular (or at least as a starting point).

Carver's wonderful whirlwind history of how people learned to move electrons around youtube.com/watch?v=m99YI7…

radiation pressure @dynamicland1

(This was three lines of code. You could have made it yourself.)

osa.org/en-us/history/…

@byedit In Early History of Smalltalk, Kay mentions Piaget, Bruner, Montessori, Dewey, Holt, Suzuki, Arnheim, McLuhan, others. worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk

Later: Betty Edwards, Doreen Nelson, Tim Gallwey, Koestler, (even later) Kahneman... (Some pointers here: squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp)

@pwang This is a interesting exchange between (pro-data) Rich Hickey and (pro-meaning) Alan Kay: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=119416…

(FWIW, after Rich concedes that most data requires "sufficient formatting and metadata" and "some human involvement for interpretation", Alan could have added, "For a scalable (intergalactic) system, that "metadata" must be a *process*, because human involvement doesn't scale.")