[HN Gopher] The paper computer
___________________________________________________________________
The paper computer
Author : jsomers
Score : 264 points
Date : 2026-04-13 04:57 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (jsomers.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (jsomers.net)
| booleandilemma wrote:
| If I understand this correctly, you're talking about using paper
| as a computing interface? That's such a neat idea!
| jsomers wrote:
| Yeah, and it's really worth checking out
| https://dynamicland.org/, because Bret Victor is actually doing
| this -- slash pointing the way to what such a world could look
| like. It just seems like now might be a good time for specific
| smaller parts of that vision to be carved off and developed
| further. I say that largely because of the advances in
| multimodal AI, which maybe haven't been fully applied yet in
| this area.
| smj-edison wrote:
| And a shout-out to https://folk.computer/ as well! They're
| not as far along in terms of feature parity, but they are
| open source, and exploring the space in other directions.
| kruffalon wrote:
| If you have any ins with this project would you mind asking
| them to add a line or 2 describing what it is about, or
| even a linked text in the start.txt file?
|
| Just a simple:
|
| > Folk Computer is a research & art project centered around
| designing new physical computing interfaces.
|
| From ./notes/tableshots.txt with a link towards the top
| would imo be quite helpful.
|
| (Sorry, this is just one of my pet peeves: needing to know
| what a project is about before being able to read about it
| is just terrible UX, although extremely common as we as
| humans tend to forget that we know things others don't)
| smj-edison wrote:
| Thanks! I can pass it on. Would you say then that having
| an overview on the main page, with links for more details
| would be a better approach?
| kruffalon wrote:
| I would say that simply expanding the first word of
| "hello -" into:
|
| > Hello, Folk Computer is a research & art project
| centered around designing new physical computing
| interfaces. [read more](./notes/tableshots.txt)
|
| Is more than sufficient, most of the website is for
| people who already know about the project. I'm just
| asking for a small part at the beginning for us who are
| new :)
| azhenley wrote:
| Reminds me of Paper Website from the Tiny Projects series,
| discussed back in 2021.
|
| https://daily.tinyprojects.dev/paper_website
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29550812
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I actually quite like this idea, especially if you could have
| an automated ingest system. It could be a good way to let
| isolated places have a voice online, even if it isn't
| necessarily very high speed. It's almost like http-over-post or
| something. You could even have a comments section, and post the
| comments to the website author
| toomim wrote:
| How about hacking a remarkable e-ink tablet as an easy prototype?
| The remarkable is basically a "better paper" already.
| funksta wrote:
| This was my gut reaction as well as an eInk enthusiast, but I
| think the author is looking for something quite different. As
| much as the rM is a calmer, slower-paced device by design, it's
| still a device with a screen that doesn't have the same
| physical affordances and spatial flexibility as pieces of
| paper.
| fragmede wrote:
| Remarkable is it though. where it wins, is that I can select
| an arbitrary region, and copy and paste and _resize_. Can 't
| do that with pen and paper.
| funksta wrote:
| I agree, absolutely love my reMarkable for those reasons,
| as well as not needing to manage the _annoying_ physical
| properties of paper (storage, organization) any more
| charlieboardman wrote:
| Receive email, render page with the email and a reply section and
| a unique ID, print it out physically
|
| Human picks up all the sheets out of the printer, writes out
| replies with pen
|
| Human puts the stack of answered email sheets in a multi-page
| scanner
|
| Scanner physically scans them, agent transcribes them and matches
| them back to the incoming emails via the unique ID on each sheet,
| sends replies
|
| You could adjust this flow for anything where human input is just
| one part of a larger sequence: just add print -> write -> scan
| into your flow where you'd normally have a human type. It's kind
| of a rebirth of faxing
| smj-edison wrote:
| I will say scanners are somewhat unergonomic, but if you had a
| high enough definition camera, you could photograph the
| document in its "natural environment". Granted, it's harder to
| get an evenly lit picture that way, but I think it's a nicer
| interface.
| charlieboardman wrote:
| Fair enough, I actually have been thinking about this topic
| lately since I have to generate and print and fill out and
| sign a lot of paper vouchers in my job. I would prefer having
| a dedicated scanner to just throw them into in a stack with a
| server/cron job/bash script always watching for new incoming
| documents rather than a more complex camera setup but yeah
| something like a camera over your shoulder on your desk could
| pick up documents too
| metaketa wrote:
| This is fixed by using anoto paper and a supporting pen!
| layer8 wrote:
| Scanners with automatic feeders are ergonomic when you have
| to scan more than a page or two. Just place your stack of
| paper in the feeder and press start. I had a job where I used
| to do that routinely, and no way a camera would have been
| more convenient.
| lamasery wrote:
| All of my document "scanning" for the last--god, maybe 15
| years?--has been with a phone camera.
|
| Before everyone just started using Docusign anyway, I'd
| bought houses with a phone "scanner". LOL.
|
| I don't think I started with it, but for a very long time
| I've had an app called TinyScanner that's good-enough at edge
| detection, can de-noise or make a document entirely black &
| white, and can glue multiple pages together into a PDF. The
| results look better than plenty of flatbed scanner results
| I've seen, if not as good as the _best_ of those.
| The-Bus wrote:
| I've been using Genius Scan for ~15 years and it also lets
| you send faxes (via credits you buy). My phone works for
| 99% of my use cases.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I always wished I could throw my Pocketmod[0] in the scanner at
| the end of the day and have a nice new one with any notes I
| wanted to carry over to the next day freshly printed and
| waiting in the morning.
|
| [0] https://pocketmod.com/
| grvbck wrote:
| On one of my first qualified jobs, my manager (a lovely older
| lady) did exactly this. All incoming emails were printed and
| put into a binder. Then she would go home, write an answer with
| a pen on the back side of every single one, and on the next day
| write a new email to the recipient. 10-15 % of all emails she
| sent this way would bounce because she had written the address
| incorrectly.
|
| When I showed her the reply button in Eudora (this was in
| 2001), she was so happy that she bought me a cake.
|
| She struggled with IT but was tack sharp otherwise. So far
| she's the only boss I've ever really liked.
| johnthedebs wrote:
| I love the idea.
|
| Just the other day, I noticed my thinking was so hijacked by
| distractions while building something (with AI help) that I
| started writing in a notebook to stay on track. The last time I'd
| written in the notebook was 3 years ago; in this case writing
| stuff down in it really helped to get me unstuck.
|
| I'm excited to imagine workflows that could make computing a more
| physical activity. Thanks for writing and sharing this.
| bitwize wrote:
| Thought this was gonna be about CARDIAC, lol.
|
| Emacs, and technologies built on it, such as org-mode, come
| somewhat close to ideas expressed here by having plain text in a
| buffer be the unifying data format. You can organize stuff by
| just moving snippets of text around.
|
| I think it's difficult in practice to design data manipulation
| interfaces based on real-world objects because atoms are heavy
| and bits are not. Data is just much more malleable and
| transformable than real world objects, at least at the pre-
| Diamond Age tech level we're at. But maybe ML will help make this
| easier by allowing computers to track and scan the objects more
| easily.
| musicale wrote:
| https://www.instructables.com/CARDIAC-CARDboard-Illustrative...
|
| Although the cardboard implementation is kind of the point, I
| think it's cool that someone made an FPGA version (dead link
| though, RIP drdobbs.com).
| stratts wrote:
| The idea of writing a draft on paper, or cutting out squares to
| prototype layouts on a table, sounds like a nightmare to me. But
| I never did like pen and paper much and have lived and breathed
| computers since I was young. My ideal method of writing is a full
| screen monospaced terminal
|
| That said, I do much prefer reading on paper, or at least on
| e-ink, for many of the same reasons outlined in the post.
| Computers and phones are just too distracting, and too dynamic.
|
| And I'd love some way to write down shopping lists or
| appointments, and have them available wherever, without having to
| pull out the phone. Our current method is a whiteboard + a photo
| whenever we need it, which doesn't quite cut it.
| whoamii wrote:
| How does a 30" e-ink screen sound?
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Throw in touch for using a stylus and I'd buy it
| al_borland wrote:
| > they have the problem that they make it difficult to just use
| your calendar, todo list, or map--or even just respond to a
| friend's message--without encountering something else along the
| way, like a social network, short-form video, Slack, the news, or
| some other notification.
|
| I see this seemingly everywhere. People are looking for these
| extreme solutions to solve the problem of getting distracted by
| an app like Instagram or TikTok on their phone. Wouldn't
| uninstalling the app, and going a step further, deleting the
| account, be the more pragmatic solution here? We control what is
| installed on our devices, what accounts we have, and which
| notifications we receive. If someone has enough agency to move to
| a pen and paper, surely they can uninstall some apps?
|
| While I like the idea of having a magic paper notebook that would
| somehow interact with computer systems, that idea seems like
| mostly science fiction without having significant levels of
| technology all around you (cameras, projectors, etc) which would
| kind of defeat the purpose imo.
|
| I watched the first video on Dynamic Land and I think I'd feel
| very uncomfortable in a room like that. Look the wrong way and
| catch a projector's light in the eye, and once big tech gets into
| the game, who knows what happens with all the data from the
| cameras. I've grown rather paranoid.
|
| A phone with just utilities installed, no social media, or going
| a step further to something like an e-ink tablet (something like
| Remarkable), seems like it would get most of the way there and
| actually work today. The biggest concern then becomes the web
| browser, but the big tech companies do most of the work for us by
| making sites insufferable to use while logged out and without an
| app.
|
| Something might be able to get rigged up with RocketBook as well,
| for an actual pen on paper experience, but having to take a
| picture of the pages is kind of a pain. I have one and the
| novelty wore off very quickly; it has sat in a drawer for years
| now.
|
| I've struggled with this idea a bit myself, as I sometimes
| romanticize the idea of using analog tools, but when they exist
| alone on an island, that seems to come with some considerable
| downsides in the modern world.
|
| Apple Notes can be good for some of this too. Instead of using
| ChatGPT, Apple Notes can use the phone camera to do live OCR on
| text and add it into a note. I've used it a couple times and it's
| pretty handy, when I remember it.
| pugio wrote:
| Paper Computing (great name!) is something I've been thinking
| about a lot to help my kids benefit from tech without exposing
| them to the brain melting addiction of screens. I sacrificed a
| few crazy nights of sleep to try to build a Paper Computer Agent
| prototype for a recent Gemini hackathon (only to disappointingly
| have submission issues right before the actual deadline) which my
| kids loved and keep asking me to set up permanently for them.
|
| It's essentially a poor man's hacked up DynamicLand - projector,
| camera, live agent. There are _so many_ things you could do if
| you had a strong working baseline for this. My kids used it to
| create stories, learn how to draw various things, and watching
| safe videos they could hold in their hand.
|
| There's something weirdly compelling and delightfully physical
| about holding a piece of paper that shows a live rocket launch,
| with the flames streaming down the page. It could also project
| targeted pieces of text, such as inline homework advice, or
| graphs next to data. It doesn't take long to imagine any other
| number of fun use cases, and it feels a lot more freeing and
| inspiring than keeping everything bound to a screen.
|
| Github - https://github.com/Pugio/Orly (hacky minimal prototype
| that did the thing)
|
| Video Pitch - https://youtu.be/-9l1x7GnmxU (filmed an hour before
| the deadline on an old phone with no sleep)
| oleggromov wrote:
| This is lovely.
| nunodonato wrote:
| this is really cool, I'd love to use something like this for my
| kids too. Maybe I'll try your project when I have some more
| free time. Would love to contribute but i'm not very skilled in
| python.
|
| If you don't mind me asking, what hardware did you use?
| Especially for the project, I'm guessing it needs to have quite
| a strong bulb in order to be seen in broad daylight?
| mmasu wrote:
| this is such a great idea! well done
| password4321 wrote:
| R.I.P. to the Amazon Glow video calling device, killed before
| AI went mainstream. I'd love to hear how to get root on one...
| exactly the hardware your project could use most effectively
| and an amazing interface for playing games remotely with the
| grandparents.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/20/23415167/amazon-glow-sup...
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I love gow creatively ai is integrated in here. Amazing.
|
| The Folk Computer people have some incredible work they've been
| doing too, that's definitely worth looking at for anyone
| interested. Their intergation of a novel display technology is
| really sweet too, allowing for good visibility in a variety of
| conditions, which I love. https://folkcomputer.substack.com/
| https://folk.computer/
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I love how creatively ai is integrated in here. Amazing.
|
| The Folk Computer people have some incredible work they've been
| doing too, that's definitely worth looking at for anyone
| interested. Their intergation of a novel display technology is
| really sweet too, allowing for good visibility in a variety of
| conditions, which I love. https://folkcomputer.substack.com/
| https://folk.computer/
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39241472 (165 points, 2
| years ago, 53 comments)
| naravara wrote:
| I was pretty excited when I saw the premise behind what Apple
| was doing with VisionPro because I figured they were steering
| towards this, but it seems they've looked away and don't really
| care about going deeper into this direction.
|
| I asked at some point if I could theoretically develop an
| application that could literally be controlled by a Fischer
| Price toy, like a little plastic car console or something. Or
| even potentially have a real keyboard that isn't connected to
| anything, but the VisionPro can just see my keypresses and
| apply them as if I was actually pressing something. The former
| case is possible, but surprisingly difficult, but the latter
| case isn't really there yet (requires too much precision and
| latency is worse than just using a Bluetooth keyboard).
|
| Either way, the idea of a computing environment that meshes
| with and directly interacts with the real, physical objects
| around you is an interesting premise I'd like to see taken
| further with "Spatial Computing"/AR. Scanning and recording
| things I'm writing on a whiteboard or in a notebook by
| recognizing that I've picked up a pen and am writing something
| down would just be getting started.
|
| Of course, if we're ambiently recording everything you're doing
| there will need to be some kind of regular process/interface to
| "sift" everything at the end of the day. This is the core of
| the Getting Things Done methodology. Everything goes into a big
| "intake list" and then you do periodic check-ins throughout the
| day where you review the list and decide whether to move those
| to a series of sub-lists to "do this now," "do this soon," or
| "do this someday."
| kamens wrote:
| this is beautiful
| muunbo wrote:
| Omg I love this, I wrote a very similar blog post last week! I
| would love to connect and chat @jsomers. Where can I message you?
|
| (My blog post btw if you're curious https://bhave.sh/make-humans-
| analog-again/)
| gobdovan wrote:
| Mandatory RealTalk/Dynamicland mention [0] [1]
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wa3nm0qcfM [1]
| https://dynamicland.org/
| fragmede wrote:
| The problem with screens is you can't get good at them, even
| after 18 years of them. Not like you could a sewing machine, a
| stick shift car, or a loom.
| anthk wrote:
| https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/paper_computer.html
|
| Also, check the spirograph too, among the slide ruler and any
| abacus.
| mentalgear wrote:
| > At least then you could mimic in software that thing you get
| from physical objects--which is that they are usually built to do
| one, and only one, thing well. My alarm clock, for instance, is
| just an alarm clock; and that's what I like about it!
|
| UNIX Principle anyone ? Do one thing, and do it well - seems like
| in this 'age of AI' the industry is rediscovering by detour best
| practices, decades old, all over again.
|
| But otherwise having 'interfaces' printed out to you and an LLM
| multi-modal later working from your notes on it sounds really
| interesting and less stressful than modern 'computing'.
|
| The Office's Michael Scott would be proud - Paper may just be the
| future of Digital after all!
| metaketa wrote:
| We are doing something related; taking the TipToi tech and
| getting it with our own pen to turn paper into interfaces that
| can control remote systems. See Https://papiro.press (the pages
| are still being redesigned, but we needed some placeholders to be
| able to talk to Chinese factories)
| cjs_ac wrote:
| > Now that we have actually good AI, I have this vision of a form
| of computing that doesn't involve me using a computer so much.
| Imagine you had the day's emails to go through. It would be nice
| if the ones that required a simple decision could be dispatched
| with a few pen-strokes: I could write down a date that would work
| for that meeting; check a box to accept that invitation; etc.
|
| This reminds me of those predictions from 1900 about the year
| 2000, when they thought we'd all live in enormous skyscrapers and
| get around by flying cars. Instead we moved out to suburbs
| because improved logistics systems meant we could buy things from
| suburban shopping centres rather than having to go into city
| centres. Revolution, not evolution.
|
| Surely the real advantage of an 'actually good AI' would be
| getting the AI to do the work itself, rather than just allowing
| the work to be done in a format with which the human is more
| comfortable. The underlying problem is that there are too many
| things vying for our attention.
| WillAdams wrote:
| To some degree, that's what one had w/ Apple's Newton
| Intelligence on the MessagePad --- it was "just" fancy pattern-
| matching, but mostly it worked, and the UI and implementation
| were quite good, and it kept me organized all through college.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Mentioning the Newton may be anathema to the discussion (it
| seems to bring up the usual jokes, etc.) but I was thinking
| too that the Macintosh (or the Xerox Alto if you like, or the
| Mother of All Demos) tried to move us in that direction by
| "skeuomorphising" the computer interface--make it look like
| the more familiar "real world". The Newton pushed further. It
| seems to have been on the mind of at least a few people at
| Apple.
|
| It sounds like the author is on the same track, has the same
| mindset. And I like.
|
| I am also reminded of the _Young Lady 's Illustrated Primer:_
| in Neil Stephenson's _Diamond Age_. It is not exactly what
| the author describes but, if the book had a computer backend,
| it also divorces the user from the computer interface we have
| come to know. Perhaps for me some future (better) local LLM
| within such a book is what I want. A kind of companion I ask
| questions of...
|
| (I mean I suppose I should just do what was posted a day or
| to ago to the _Ask HN:_ and put a local LLM behind a
| messaging app and I could just converse with it wherever I
| am. Tangent: I am kind of fascinated by the idea of a
| personal LLM that has context stretching back to my earliest
| days--were I to have started conversing with this synthetic
| companion at a young age. Imagine the lifetime of context
| where the LLM knows my habits, how I 've changed over the
| years. I suppose this is nightmare fuel for a number of you.)
| WillAdams wrote:
| Charles de Lint had an intelligent book in his fantasy
| novel _Jack the Giant Killer_ (or maybe its sequel) ---
| I've tried doing the conversing/chatting thing w/ an LLM a
| couple of times, but always got annoyed more than amused.
|
| What's the point? LLMs tend towards the mean/average --- I
| want better in my life and interactions --- it's useful
| when I need an example DXF or similar rote task, but my
| current project is a woodworking joint which has no
| precedent.
|
| Yes, the skeumorphism angle is an interesting one, and one
| which is surprisingly absent in the _ur_ description of a
| stylus equipped computing device, the slates/tablets from
| Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's _The Mote in God's Eye_
| --- this sort of thing seems to be coming back around --- a
| recent Kindle Scribe firmware update add shape recognition.
| I'd be _very_ pleased if my new Kindle Scribe Coloursoft
| could fully become a replacement for my Newton....
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I think you're right that the use case for an LLM is
| still rather niche. It's perhaps still worth exploring
| though as they may well improve over time.
|
| Regardless, I have still found them useful. Diagnosing
| the problems with a car is maybe an esoteric example but
| is still useful.
|
| For many months now I have been working through learning
| about and implementing a hobbyist analog computer with
| LLM as _engineer-confidant_. I already knew the basics of
| op-amps and analog computing but was surprised at a lot
| of the new things I discovered only by way of the LLM
| saying (for example), "Hey, here's a nice way to get
| your reference voltages..." and the project benefited
| from it (and I learned about a new
| chip/device/technique).
| WillAdams wrote:
| Yes, they do work well as a stand-in for the "competent
| technician with skill in the pertinent art and and fully
| aware of all prior art" (to use wording like to the
| patent application standard).
|
| But it's only going to allow you to avail oneself of
| prior art/techniques.
| lamasery wrote:
| Other copies of the Primer _do_ have a computer backend.
|
| There are basically three versions of the book:
|
| 1) The ones developed for a few rich kids. These are
| partially automated, but backed by gig workers. They get
| what we might call (if you'll pardon the term) "Actually
| Indians" AI (augmented by the regular type).
|
| 2) The one our protagonist gets. This is one of the books
| from #1, but the distinctive feature here is that an early
| gig worker (the book calls these "'ractors" when they're
| doing this kind of work) the protagonist draws takes a
| special interest in her and intentionally keeps drawing
| jobs for her over a period of _several years_. This
| continuity and _personal care by a single real person_ is
| what sets it apart and makes her experience so excellent.
|
| 3) The mass-market version that's entirely computerized, no
| human touch. This version brainwashes a fuckload of kids
| into becoming the "mouse army", and that's really all we
| see as far as what it can do: something really bad (if
| convenient for our protagonist).
|
| The message of the book is 100% the opposite of "automated
| learning-books are amazing". It's "tech for learning sucks
| ass and/or is outright dangerous if you rely _only_ on it,
| and a real human tutor who cares about a kid is the best
| thing around even in a crazy high-tech future-world ".
| layer8 wrote:
| Don't think of it as work, but of what a human would want to
| spend time doing. In
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47788736, a commentor
| describes how his kids love using the "paper computer"
| prototype he built. They are not working, they are playing and
| learning and experimenting and creating. Things that humans
| like to do.
| btbuildem wrote:
| > we moved out to suburbs because
|
| Because it was a profit making venture for car companies.
| Suburbs are horrifically inefficient, they survive by the
| twisted "communism" of cannibalizing the dense urban tax bases
| to support the sprawling, expensive to service and maintain,
| isolating flatlands.
| ButlerianJihad wrote:
| Not so fast: I would say that the move to suburbs was
| initially driven by a thirst for homeownership with luxurious
| lawns, coupled with electric streetcars and other rail-based
| transport.
|
| It was only later that the almighty combustion engine and
| tire companies forcibly replaced streetcars with buses and
| trucks, that cars began their hegemonic domination of
| suburbia. The National Highway System decrees didn't hurt,
| either, but highways were built in the USA with an ulterior
| motive of national defense.
| naravara wrote:
| It also happened during a period where cities were
| polluted, noisy, and the middle-class housing was largely
| cramped tenements. Basically all of this has been/is being
| mitigated these days. City-center housing now looks more
| like luxury loft living than tenements (though this gives
| us a big problem with 'missing middle' housing where
| there's very little housing available that is suitable for
| families where everything is decrepit slums or luxury 1 and
| 2 bedroom condos). Pollution has been largely mitigated
| with catalytic converters and, now, EVs. And
| electrification helps deal with noise pollution as well
| through getting rid of engine noise (especially for
| motorized appliances like leaf-blowers).
|
| Meanwhile, traffic and the stigma around drunk driving
| (which wasn't nearly as strong or strictly enforced before
| the 90s), have quickly taken much of the bloom off the rose
| of car-dependent lifestyles. I predict the growth of
| micromobility options will continue to make cities even
| more attractive as well by improving coverage for areas
| where transit can't go and generally improve the throughput
| of city streets and reduce the space needed for parking
| cars for people who live within "not-quite walking but
| feels silly to drive" distance.
|
| The big gap in the US at least is simply a lack of cities!
| Everything is still concentrated in a handful of legacy
| urban centers that survived the waves of "urban renewal"
| and it's simply too expensive to house all the people who
| want to live there without turning them into Hong Kong
| sized megalopolises, which starts to introduce new problems
| from overwhelming density. "Urban" development patterns
| need to expand out to more of the country to take demand
| pressure off the 5 or 6 American cities with decent mass
| transit.
| throwthrowuknow wrote:
| Unfortunately, I don't this will work until we have robot
| secretaries that can automate updating paper wall calendars and
| documents and books scattered around a room.
|
| The only compromise would be a limited area like a physical
| desktop that had affordances like an overhead camera and some
| form of paper output.
| thundergolfer wrote:
| I think a bigger blocker is that this is a read-only
| environment for the computer when we need readwrite.
|
| It's fantastic that computers can be so effective at this read-
| only work but so much of what I do needs write feedback from
| the machine.
| xeyownt wrote:
| Since I have a laptop, I threw away all paper support, focusing
| on the keyboard as primary information interface.
|
| Using paper and space to organize ideas is nice, but that's a
| niche use-case. And in any case, you'll have to digitalize it
| anyway afterwards, so better start on the digital version
| immediately, and be good at it. Everytime I start a new project,
| I'm tempted to take a pencil and paper, but then I refrain and
| use draw.io or the like because I know it will be winning on the
| longer run.
|
| For the rest, you can easily customize your phone / browser /
| anything to be less distracting.
|
| As for using AI just for convenience, this looks like very
| expensive in terms of resource.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| When dealing with humans irl, I try to stick to paper
| interfaces (note books etc). I feels super distracted/anti
| social when I am taking notes on my computer or phone.
| WillAdams wrote:
| This is why I was glad to purchase a Newton MessagePad (and
| before that an NCR-3125 running Go Corp. PenPoint), and all
| my devices since have had styluses (even my MacBook has a
| Wacom One display).
| technojamin wrote:
| Maybe you should interrogate that temptation to reach for
| physical interfaces? It sounds like you're ignoring your own
| psychology and shaping yourself to the machines around you
| instead of thinking of how the machines could be shaped to you.
|
| Not that I haven't done exactly the same thing as you, I never
| keep paper around and my handwriting has gotten terrible. I'm
| saying this to myself and others as well.
| lamasery wrote:
| I can jot out a system diagram on paper way better and faster
| than I can on a computer. Ditto UI design mockups. Having
| something that can translate those into a better computerized
| representation than a png is awesome. Paper ->
| graphviz/Mermaid/whatever, LOL.
|
| This holds even with really-nice drawing interfaces like
| ProCreate on a 13" iPad. Paper's still better _for some
| things_. Outside of work, the way I make maps (of just about
| any zoom-level) for RPGs I run is to sketch them on paper, take
| a photo of that and import it to pro-create, trace the lines
| there (in a new layer), and add color /texture. I get way
| better results faster, and am way less frustrated, than if I
| start with a blank "sheet" on the iPad. The paper sitting fully
| flat on my table, being able to easily and precisely turn it
| this way and that, erasing or smudging out or just X-ing
| elements I mess up, plus just messing up way less to begin
| with, all that adds up to real paper being a way better UI for
| an initial draft-sketch, for me.
| haaz wrote:
| The best way to predict the future is to look at the past. Humans
| have been living and working in the 3-D world since the dawn of
| time, we've worked with paper for thousands of years, we've only
| been working at screens for about 40 years. Technology to remove
| technology, such as this, is brilliant.
| zachh wrote:
| I've been following someone on X building a "Screenless Phone"
| that can scan to get inputs and print on receipt paper to provide
| output - very interested in how these types of experiments
| evolve!
|
| https://x.com/daviddorg/status/2037050583274954882
|
| https://x.com/daviddorg/status/2033937383012635065
|
| https://yearunplugged.com/newsletter
| alfgrimur wrote:
| There's a strong argument for paper computer, in the sense that
| we have evolved to think in space and with our body (Barbara
| Tversky's work springs to mind). The cognitive load of parsing
| our thoughts, collaborating on ideas through digital interfaces
| is not insignificant, and changes the nature of the kind of
| combinatorial thinking required to externalise and socialise
| ideas, organise thoughts and structure work. I think AI created a
| huge opportunity for this kind of ambient association with
| computational power that over time can make the interface recede
| into the analogue rather than require us to engage with the
| digital.
|
| I question the idea of pastoralism though, I would argue this is
| another kind of construct. Laurel Hatcher Ulrich's 'age of
| homespun' talks about this in detail, and how handcraft revivals
| were an expression of fear or anxiety about the radical changes
| brought about by industrialisation, and became a sort of myth
| making device for the rejection of technological overlords.
|
| In any case, Paper Computer charts neat reformulation of the
| personal computer into something more interesting. If all
| individual computing tasks become distributed back into real
| spaces, objects and physically manipulable media it becomes more
| of an interpersonal computer, and distributed computing power can
| be pushed to things that don't ordinarily engage with
| computational tasks such as wind or plants or anything within the
| shared working environment.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| This is similar to how movies and tv show productions are timed
| out over days of production.
| SamHenryCliff wrote:
| This article tries so very hard to avoid confronting reality -
| going back to analog proves its inherent advantage over AI.
| There's boatloads of research proving mind-hand-writing tool
| engagement is superior to voice recording or typing notes. I'm
| going to cite this in the future as a testament against AI,
| because that's exactly what it is when seen through an academic
| lens.
| AlphaWeaver wrote:
| If projects like this and DynamicLand interest you, it's worth
| checking out https://folk.computer/ - they've been working on
| this much more recently than DynamicLand and share their code as
| open source.
| heliumtera wrote:
| The fact the paper is only an interface and you're not depending
| any less on a computer, doesn't bother you at all?
| bottd wrote:
| I've been thinking along these lines too! My idea here is to use
| a receipt printer + scanner. In the morning the system prints a
| receipt with various widgets like weather, calendar, etc. The
| scanner takes in the marked up receipt at EOD to update the
| digital data and prepare for tomorrow's receipt.
| grimmai143 wrote:
| There is something incredibly valuable about forcing yourself to
| trace execution logic on physical paper. It builds a mental model
| of state changes and memory that you just don't fully develop
| when a modern IDE's debugger is doing all the heavy lifting for
| you.
| anthk wrote:
| Forth and Lisp, easier with S9 than Guile with tons of modules
| where some Guile libs overlap with SRFI (global standards for
| every Scheme to follow). You can almost trace Lisp functions by
| hand.
|
| Ditto with Forth dumping the memory, creating literal
| structures for numbers and whatnot. Also, the 'see' command
| among dumping literal memory bytes.
|
| Being both a REPL helps a lot. But Forth gets into a lower
| level than S9 itself.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| The author is basically advocating that they want to be an
| executive with a secretary, but they want the secretary to be AI.
| I don't use secretary in a pejorative sense, just meaning that
| the author seems to want someone/something that does simple tasks
| but lets them make decisions, as opposed to an executive
| assistant that has a little more self-agency to do things on
| their own.
|
| They just want OpenClaw with printing and scanning privileges.
| Every morning OpenClaw prints out a task list or items that need
| action, the author writes notes/responses, and places it on the
| scanner. This is basically how my program director worked at my
| last job. Every morning the secretary would have his schedule
| printed out, he'd go to meetings and write notes, and would pass
| by his secretary and stick a note or two on her desk saying "set
| up a meeting with XYZ org/team within the next few days on ABC
| topic." The secretary would also print documents/presentations
| and he'd mark them up throughout the day with changes he wanted
| made, and he'd drop the documents off when he was done going
| through them, and the secretary would distribute the documents to
| their respective POCs to make the changes.
|
| Basically the only thing the author hasn't mentioned that the
| secretary did is that the secretary also acted as a gatekeeper
| for access to the program director, either in real-time ("no, you
| can't go in, they are meeting with a higher level director") or
| would take a request for a meeting and have enough personal
| context on whether the director would want the meeting themself
| or want to see it go through a division chief first. Not sure if
| OpenClaw can do that, but just about everything else is totally
| do-able. Not sure if I really want to see someone wasting this
| much paper just to "feel analog" but I suppose it probably isn't
| a big deal since most people won't do it this way, and will stick
| to digital forms of communication with their OpenClaw secretary.
| fudged71 wrote:
| Jesse Genet has been posting some cool use cases of OpenClaw
| for homeschooling that are somewhat along these lines. Using
| the assistant to inventory the physical manipulables, the
| curriculum pages, and how they intersect. Printing pages
| automatically for certain lessons. Updating e-ink screens with
| other lessons.
| chadams wrote:
| My favorite paper computer https://pocketmod.com
| lemonberry wrote:
| Along those lines: Hipster PDA
|
| http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-...
| ifh-hn wrote:
| Doing the sort of things the author wants to do simply wouldn't
| work for me. All I end up with is a pile of screwed up paper and
| nothing to show for it. Drafting and rewriting is so much better
| when you don't have to worry about making a mess.
| marttt wrote:
| See also -- The Screenless Office: http://screenl.es/
|
| (On HN 2017, 138 comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15960056)
| chaidhat wrote:
| cool idea
| eigencoder wrote:
| I've been thinking about this too. I think it would be cool if
| you could put the interface in a pen, somehow. Like embed a tiny
| projector and camera in a pen. Then, if you want to read your
| emails, you can project them on a surface. If you want to reply,
| you write with the pen, then point the camera at it.
| econ wrote:
| >If nothing else I'd like it if operating systems and web
| browsers helped me be less distracted and frenetic, instead of
| encouraging exactly that multi-tasking freneticism. When I opened
| my phone or computer, it'd be nice if it was constrained to
| operate in a mode purpose-built for whatever task I intended to
| use it for.
|
| I've often had this though. The short answer is that it isn't
| yours.
|
| As a joke I proposed a sausage shaped phone that vibrates. That
| way if you happen to need or want a vibrator you have it in your
| hand already. It sounds stupid I know but phones are porn mags
| and slot machines too. For those with a gambling problem the
| usability of a work device that is also a casino should probably
| be expressed as a negative score. When I first held a smart phone
| I asked how to use it as an mp3 player. Today it still can't
| compete with a cheap mp3 player.
|
| ----
|
| Long ago I read a story about a family that published and printed
| a weekly newspaper [sick] just for the 5 of them. It had articles
| looking back on the previous week and ones about things scheduled
| for this week. Members of the family would submit articles and
| the mum stitched everything together into the print.
|
| I think with llm we can print a daily report? You can scan it too
| but you have to boot up a computer and launch applications which
| defeats the point.
|
| Maybe the trick is to have big buttons that connect a bootable
| medium (with a single purpous OS) and start the computer.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| I've read the other article about the 3d scanning Cat. Kind of
| get the feeling this guy has lived a privledge life and gets
| things done by other people doing it for him before he even asks.
| How many times does he have to mention he has is phone loaded up
| with social media apps and allows notifications? It must be
| really hard for him to turn these off considering his constant
| assault of convinces and people wanting to do things for him.
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