[HN Gopher] Notes from Dynamicland: Geokit (2018)
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Notes from Dynamicland: Geokit (2018)
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 43 points
Date : 2024-01-13 12:37 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (omar.website)
(TXT) w3m dump (omar.website)
| andsoitis wrote:
| in case you wonder what's happening in Dynamicland land, here was
| the last update from Bret Victor: http://worrydream.com/July2023/
| ripley12 wrote:
| Also, Omar and some other people have been working on the very
| cool Folk Computer which is inspired by Dynamicland:
| https://folk.computer/notes/tableshots
| VonGuard wrote:
| Dynamicland was amazing. So far ahead of its time, yet also so
| utterly without a practical real world application. So dedicated
| are they to the idea of dynamic code running the space that they
| wrote the kernel on a whiteboard, and if anyone wanted between
| the camera and the whiteboard with the code on it, the whole
| space would crash. Now THAT is dynamic.
| iamwil wrote:
| Not at all. They're currently doing some playtesting with
| computational biology labs.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230514180550/https://dynamicla...
| random3 wrote:
| When it initially came out I thought it's amazing. The idea of
| immersive computing actually is, more than amazing, natural. And
| I think we're actually on the path towards that, maybe just not
| through Dynamicland directly.
|
| It seems a bit like Ted Nelson's Xanadu - a vision without the
| end-to-end capability to realize it. Most inventions had a
| visitonary that had the ability to realize them to some extent or
| catalyze the talent to supplement it. Whether that's from being
| to early or not havign the right people around it, I can't brush
| of the exclusivist feeling that surrounds the project and last
| words on Bert Victor's note: "I'd appreciate if you don't as for
| my opinions on things". IMO you either build for yourself or for
| everyone else. Both are ok, but certain mixes of attitudes are
| incompatible.
| rwesty wrote:
| I'm optimistic for interactive and physical programming to take a
| foothold in our world. How many more phone apps do we really
| need? Aren't many of the user optimized social apps wreaking
| havoc on the youth?
|
| Shifting thinking back to extending human creativity and making
| programming available to less technical audiences might change
| our technology use to a less neck craning, social interaction
| devoid format.
|
| These things take time and significant breakthroughs. See -
| https://www.lively-kernel.org. Over a decade ago Dan Ingalls and
| team built a Smalltalk inspired JavaScript flavor. IDE and
| language combined.
|
| That has morphed into lively.next which is used by at least one
| commercial company to develop animated visualizations.
|
| I hope to see this type of programming expanded. I had a SMART
| board in middle school - think figma on a big white board - and
| teachers came up with lots of creatives ways to engage us and get
| us to work with each other through doodling on the board.
|
| Will that reach the professional world? Can NASA doodle a
| spaceship to the moon? Maybe with AI tool development, the idea
| of computers filling in the technical detail for user drawn plans
| isn't impossible.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _Notes from Dynamicland: Geokit_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17700612 - Aug 2018 (10
| comments)
| refulgentis wrote:
| This is my first time seeing Dynamicland in a few years, and it's
| interesting: my perspective is flipped.
|
| Instead of seeing it as "computing in 2100", I see "ehhh, you say
| you could get the iPad out, hope you don't have embarrassing
| notifications, unlock it, and look through 24 rainbow gradient
| icons with red bubbles"...
|
| ...is laying out 10 things better? ...is having to putting a
| piece of glass against a big map, then rotating it, causing it to
| zoom in on a nearby sheet of paper, better than pinching?
|
| I want to write off that reaction immediately as being older and
| jaded, but who knows.
| csande17 wrote:
| If it helps, I don't think there's any glass involved. The IR
| "dial" appears to be made of white paper like everything else;
| you can see the map "behind" it because it's actually being
| projected from above.
| chazeon wrote:
| Of course, a lot of this is about coding on paper. I would wonder
| if it is possible to run the projection on screen instead. Say I
| have three iPads; their placement can likely be some input. The
| projection will not get a resolution comparable to a screen soon.
|
| One issue with iPad is the pencil does not automatically
| reconnect to another one after touching anther screen.
| iamwil wrote:
| > In Realtalk, most of that code falls away - provided that you
| represent your objects as individual physical pages. Once you
| have physical pages, you automatically get the operations of the
| physical world: placing and picking up objects, moving and
| grouping objects in space, pointing objects at each other, and so
| on.
|
| This was the key part that helped me click into what was special
| about what Dynamicland was doing. Instead of implementing lists,
| it just relies on the physical world to "implement" lists for
| you.
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