[HN Gopher] Folk Computer
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Folk Computer
Author : schmudde
Score : 104 points
Date : 2024-02-03 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (folk.computer)
(TXT) w3m dump (folk.computer)
| jstanley wrote:
| What is this?
| reanimus wrote:
| https://folk.computer/notes/tableshots
|
| This page gives more explanation than the landing page does I
| think
| stereolambda wrote:
| I think a better overview is under the "Towards a folk
| computer" link on the main page (perhaps the submission link
| should be changed?). Essentially (if I understand correctly)
| they want to let you control computer by moving things in the
| physical world: mainly items on a real tabletop. Sort of anti-
| virtual reality, in a way!
| codetrotter wrote:
| Tangible Computing :D
| __loam wrote:
| Someone get Tim on the line to look into this.
| atrus wrote:
| Not to sound dismissive, because this is cool, but this
| pretty solidly AR, just instead of a headset you're using a
| projector. I don't think it'd be too difficult to port this
| to _vr headset of choice_
| staplers wrote:
| Headsets are in many ways a less cool version of our own
| eyes.
|
| Also, this would be helpful for the sightless.
| netghost wrote:
| The button is pretty amusing, but The rest of the site does a
| better job of motivating it.
|
| I've taught a few kids a little bit of programming with things
| like scratch, but I think this would be infinitely more fun. I
| could imagine a group of kids who don't think programming is for
| them having a blast with something like this.
| ryanwhitney wrote:
| Both seem to have worked at/with Dynamicland previously, though
| not mentioned on this site.
|
| https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/
|
| https://cwervo.com/projects/dynamicland-experiments/
| joshmarinacci wrote:
| I was gonna say, this sounds a lot like continuing the research
| of Dynamicland, which itself contained research from CDA, VPRI,
| and other groups. Why is it so hard to find a consistent funder
| of basic research like PARC in the 70s?
| schmudde wrote:
| It's astonishing (and sad) how few opportunities exist for
| basic research.
| skadamat wrote:
| Donald Braben's book touches on what's changed pretty well
| I felt (published by Stripe press too):
| https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Freedom-Civilization-
| Donal...
| schmudde wrote:
| Ah nice tip. Will put it on the reading list!
| shon wrote:
| PARC, though awesome for society, was a massive commercial
| failure for Xerox.
|
| As tech nerd, I love the lore of The PARC and went to visit
| it as soon as I moved to the Bay Area.
|
| However, I assume it would be taught as a lesson of what not
| to do in a business context:
|
| Investing in pure research often yields innovations that are
| opposed to existing business lines or simply too far out to
| see as useful by management.
|
| That said, many companies have research arms. Microsoft,
| Walmart, IBM, Meta, Google...
| jrowen wrote:
| Lesson: Don't develop innovations that are too advanced for
| management to understand, because they will pass and let
| the rest of the world eat their lunch.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I think the actual lesson learned was to develop these
| research departments as incubators where the inventors
| are expected, and trained, to become entrepreneurs who
| spin out companies that the parent company owns part of.
|
| It would have been easier to just make some of the
| inventors upper-level managers and executives of the
| parent company.
|
| Given the cost of the original Xerox computer, Apple
| still may have eaten their lunch. Apple itself spent a
| lot of effort getting the Macintosh, expensive as it was,
| as cheap as it was.
| vajrabum wrote:
| Uh no. Xerox made billions from the laser printer. And yes
| they missed capturing all the profit but it was crazy
| profitable.
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2015/03/21/how-
| parc-...
| refulgentis wrote:
| Honestly and respectfully, would you be clambering to fund
| this?
|
| It's disturbing how little actually came out of dynamic land,
| and now there's a schism where the founders are pasting QR
| codes to hands and have as their 3rd bullet point "GPU FFI
| shaders"?
|
| Does any of that scream fundamental UX research, or the
| future of computing?
|
| To me, it's just another tired retread of half-baked
| messianic thinking that tails off into nowhere as the hero
| complex devolves into a series of half-baked ideas designed
| to scratch an individuals daily itch, rather than a central
| purpose.
|
| Google had stuff like this internally for quite some time,
| through much later than most people would guess.
|
| The thing is there just isn't some vastly superior paradigm
| sitting out there to fix computing with. The industry is
| mature enough that if something truly good and helpful
| exists, even in parts, it's quickly implemented.
|
| One ray of light might be that the rate of change is fast
| enough that there are likely to be gaps emerging over the
| next decade.
|
| But they're not going to be found in this sort of fashion.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| The moment I saw papercraft, computer vision, and a projector,
| I thought this had to have some relation.
|
| I've never been able to resolve a clear position for myself on
| Dynamicland. I've long admired Brett Victor's work, and I have
| only the fondest appreciation for the project's philosophy and
| the enthusiasm with which Victor writes about it.
|
| The only problem is that I've never been able to figure out
| even the first thing about how it works. It's completely
| incomprehensible to me, and I just don't know how to square the
| project's ideals of human-centered, community-based computing
| with its seemingly-impenetrable alternate universe of dot
| stickers and projected images.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Came here to say the same - Bret Victor is doing similar
| things[1].
|
| I think the point of these projects is to find an alternative
| approach to interfacing with technology. Why not combine
| paper and computers?
|
| We make the assumption that interfacing to technology is
| limited to keyboards, mice and fingers but there is no reason
| for us to limit ourselves to these approaches.
|
| Anyone using punchcards would be amazed by keyboards and so
| we will be amazed by interfaces that are beyond our
| imagination.
|
| [1] https://dynamicland.org/
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Anyone using punchcards would be amazed by keyboards and
| so we will be amazed by interfaces that are beyond our
| imagination.
|
| Typewriters, proper, pre-existed alongside punchcards for
| many decades before being incorporated into computer
| interfaces as keyboards. The fact that they did pre-exist
| computer keyboards may have led to them becoming the
| default so fast. While keyboards are amazing, they
| certainly weren't beyond imagination.
|
| I guess you can say that QR codes, projectors, and cameras
| predate this Folk computer idea as well. But they are also
| far less intuitive. Using a typewriter well requires
| knowing basic literacy and a few new functions (carriage
| return, line feed, shift, etcetera). Graduating from a
| typewriter to a keyboard requires learning some additional
| functionality.
|
| What current devices are teaching the basic functionality
| needed to jumpstart adaptation to this Folk computer
| interface?
| lloydatkinson wrote:
| Is this a paper computer? If so, the first page of the site does
| a poor job of explaining what it is, and even then going to "make
| a button" page it's still not that clear. Where is the about page
| or some kind of introduction?
| Liftyee wrote:
| Agree that the first page is not very helpful. I found this
| "longform" to be better:
| https://folk.computer/notes/tableshots#towards-a-folk-comput...
| aeontech wrote:
| This was also mentioned recently in a good discussion on another
| post on the author's blog:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38979412
|
| Tbh it's really cool to see a practical walkthrough of what
| applying dynamicland ideas can look like, and I love the fact
| that there is a bunch of open source coming out of it.
| csmeyer wrote:
| Just saw a demo of this last week. The most exciting use case was
| when multiple tags "programs" composed. For example, one program
| measures a value, passes that to one that accumulates values, and
| another that plots.
|
| I think there is a very cool version of this where the primitives
| are simpler and easier to compose (the composition demo I saw was
| a bit difficult to pull off). Then, rather than program the
| purpose of individual tags, you can create programs physically on
| the table
| skadamat wrote:
| +1 to this, I was also there and it was lots of fun
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| So does the primary use case of this seem to be for teaching
| computational ideas in a simple manner?
| KomoD wrote:
| Site seems dead.
|
| edit 1h later: loaded now, dont know what im looking at
| Joeboy wrote:
| I started on the "Let's make a button" page and got very
| confused. IIUC the missing part is "you point a camera at stuff
| and a program on your computer does things in response, including
| sending output back to the stuff via a projector". Printing
| things onto bits of paper and folding them up doesn't cause
| anything much to happen on its own.
| lsy wrote:
| This is almost the opposite of what I envisioned when reading the
| title "folk computer", which makes me think of a computing
| experience that's fundamentally simple, convivial, and
| transparent to users, something like what's captured by the
| concept of "permacomputing". While the ideas explored here are no
| doubt interesting and probably important to consider, they seem
| like they require an enormous amount of abstraction and
| complexity to implement, while at the same time remaining
| somewhat impenetrable to the user. For example, using QR codes
| guarantees that the semantics of any given symbol are impossible
| to determine at a glance. Is it really an improvement over the
| mouse-and-screen paradigm to paste QR codes to your hands (the
| printed hands in the demo are actually two left hands), and set
| up a rig that requires camera mounts, projectors, and a large
| flat surface dedicated to object manipulation with extremely
| specific, non-intuitive semantics? I can't help but wonder how
| this would ever generalize to the number of uses or amount of
| convenience that people were able to wring out of even simple
| text-based terminals.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, I was pretty excited at first, hoping someone is showing
| their forward-looking human-friendly computer, encompassing all
| of the best principles of permacomputing and frugal
| computing... Was not expecting some kind of "real-world
| computing" platform. It's definitely interesting, but not at
| all what I expected based on the name.
| orangesite wrote:
| Yeah, another universe where you have wizards who know how to
| fold the paper correctly to make the ambient computational
| environment do things.
|
| Hard pass.
|
| Folk computing for me is a hardware/software layer stripped off
| the commercial abstractions that hide the inherent simplicity of
| the medium.
| FergusArgyll wrote:
| This is pretty cool once I figured out what it is (~10 minutes)
| pyinstallwoes wrote:
| This would be cool with a "swarm" of "cold-tech" displays. Like,
| a bunch of small e-ink displays. Feels like something like
| elixir/erlang vm would do great with.
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