New frontiers exploration needs a group of people doing heavy knowledge work with a new technology that enables it. Doug Engelbart, https://youtu.be/LpIYdyOXqkk?t=2789
“We also see this in the million startups that have reinvented the spreadsheet except constrained it to perform a particular set of things and realize: no, really, people use spreadsheets because they are unconstrained”. https://youtu.be/07j2AXC9BH8?si=aekq9ikZ-xjlaeS-&t=1037
Our Collective IQ is boosted by concurrently developing, integrating and applying knowledge. Doug Engelbart, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpIYdyOXqkk&t=880s
The sense of a lost vision of computer pioneers of the 60s and 70s. Dynamics of digital media production
[…] there was these amazing visionaries who saw the potential for computers and creativity, sort of laid out a vision way back in what seems like just the stone age's to us the 1960s and 1970s and then in some ways we lost our way. And we ended up with, I don't know, social media and kind of lockdown appliance like smartphones. And in fact, there's this glorious world of Smalltalk, Dynabook and Mother of all Demos style stuff that we still need to build, or we haven't built or something like that. Wiggins, Metamuse ep.30 Computers and Creativity with Molly Mielke 14:30, https://open.spotify.com/episode/5HoFWZzo4PAzEhF5Tn3WbD?si=AmfN5kUhQK669_VhAK9e7w
[…] let me bring the positive side, which is I totally agree that they did lay out a vision for computing. That is grounding in a world where we do seem stuck in social media consumer not exactly sure what; everything is oriented around commerce, and again things are all good: commerce entertainment, these things are fine, I consume these. But the reason I got interested in computers that are very young ages seeing their potential for creativity, and unlocking the noblest parts of the human spirit. Wiggins, Metamuse ep.30 Computers and Creativity with Molly Mielke 23:25, https://open.spotify.com/episode/5HoFWZzo4PAzEhF5Tn3WbD?si=AmfN5kUhQK669_VhAK9e7w
And it's a good reminder, to go back and look at some of this history, maybe, especially because these folks didn't have any of that prior stuff computers were still so new. Particularly personal computing was essentially, you know, they were in the process of inventing it thinking what can people do if they had access to computers with graphics and networking and all the things that nowadays we take for granted but they dreamed something very different from the world we have today and that can be very grounding to look back at that and take a bit of a blank slate from where we are today. So yeah, I personally take a lot of inspiration from all their work as well. Wiggins, Metamuse ep.30 Computers and Creativity with Molly Mielke 24:05, https://open.spotify.com/episode/5HoFWZzo4PAzEhF5Tn3WbD?si=AmfN5kUhQK669_VhAK9e7w
I also think that they were operating in an environment that was largely kind of independent from the actual business environment and like, the technology sector as we see it today. Mielke, Metamuse ep.30 Computers and Creativity with Molly Mielke 16:04, https://open.spotify.com/episode/5HoFWZzo4PAzEhF5Tn3WbD?si=5lptp_mFReqInuu1Bjsbnw
Both Mielke and McGranaghan acknowledge that it’s the political economy and the business needs that prevented computer pioneers’ vision to be materialized. But, especially McGranaghan remains uncritical of capitalism (quite the opposite basically). I think the latter is a general sense I have, not directly expressed in this partcular excerpt.
[…] a lot of this study analysis has been at the level of the tools. So it's like what's on the screen, how do you program it, what's the user interface even. But there’s an entire complex system around how software is developed and used and, like you were saying, I think the reason that the vision for the software and the reality the software don't line up is because we haven't understood or at least accounted for how that ecosystem works. Sometimes I call this the political economy of software development, there's weird path dependence, there's economic incentives; you got to understand all of that if you are going to understand how we came to where we are now. And on the flip side, if you want to predict and guide the future in that direction, you need to become a sort of of political economist of software, and get not only the interfaces in the code, but also the funding and the incentives and legal stuff and all that. McGranaghan, Metamuse ep.30 Computers and Creativity with Molly Mielke 18:57, https://open.spotify.com/episode/5HoFWZzo4PAzEhF5Tn3WbD?si=hDV9jmWRQPSyXg1tvFtVeQ
Important open problems for knowledge work primarily not tackled due to economic reasons
[McGranaghan]: Isn’t the state of the art [for rendering equations in the browser] generating PNG and sticking it in the web page? [Slim]: Not exactly but almost. So MathML, which is an XML dialect or mathematical markup language was this effort to build XML style syntax for typesetting mathematics naturally. It is only implemented in Firefox, so that's really unfortunate. So in terms of the state of the art, there are basically two libraries that you can use to typeset mathematics: there's MathJax and KaTex. MathJax supports all valid LaTex […]. The problem is that MathJax is very slow. So if you ever go on MathOverflow or another related StackExchange and you see all of these answers with weird gaps, and then as you watch before you the page starting to load all of the rendered equations bumping everything down one level at a time, that's MathJax in action. And oftentimes it is doing what you're describing where it is outputting an SVG or a PNG or something like that. And it's reflowing the page with every equation. Then you have KaTex, which was a library developed at Khan Academy where they realize that MathJax’s performance was not satisfactory for their exercises. KaTex supports a much more limited subset of all of LaTex syntax, but it does it all using CSS and it doesn't reflow the page for every equation, it’s basically instant rendering. And basically, it means that your options if you want to render math are: - Only target Firefox - Use a limited subset of math that’s supported by KaTex - Constrain yourself to extremely slow, dozens-of-reflow, full-expressive-power rendering to inline PNGs. And that's just not a great situation to be in and we haven't even gotten to the question of how people write math. So I would say that people underestimate how open this problem space is. Just take a moment of silence to like recognize the gravity of the situation. Slim Lim, Metamuse Episode 48 Rich Text with Slim Lim, 52:05, https://open.spotify.com/episode/51u2e3Ak6E4yMfqmA0NOdm?si=kKrmc0JWRdey8N1s1OXC9A
[Slim] And that goes back to something that Adam and I were chatting about earlier, which is that a lot of people gripe and complain, that LaTex is the best we have, and, you know, I'm one of them. But it really is the case that LaTex was this monumental effort by really a few people, and amount of effort that would be considered really impressive if I were to try to do the same thing but better today. Not a lot of people have spare time to do this all-in-one text formatting and packaging document representation project even though it would have a huge impact on the way people write and publish these kinds of documents. And so, in many ways, we're sort of just bottlenecked on the fact that it's hard to do incremental improvements to this particular area. We really depend on these software monoliths to keep us afloat. […] [Wiggins] And yeah, I agree. It's a monumental effort, but I mean mathematics is so important and foundational and so much of human endeavor that certainly seems like one worth investing in, although perhaps hard to reap a profit from and that makes it harder to put concentrated capital behind it. Slim Lim & Wiggins, Metamuse Episode 48 Rich Text with Slim Lim, 48:30, https://open.spotify.com/episode/51u2e3Ak6E4yMfqmA0NOdm?si=BHebRCxjQVSETJlrxi1McQ
Now that we have all these wonderful devices, it should be the goal of society to put them in the service of truth and learning. And this is the way I propose. Not through obscure forms of "information retrieval;" not through newly oppressive forms of "computer-assisted instruction;" and not through a purported science of "artificial intelligence“ that will create new personalisms to irk us. All these obstructive oddities, I think, have developed as separate ideals because of the grand preposterosity of Professionalism that has created a world-wide cult of mutual incomprehensibility and disconnected special goals. Now we need to get everybody together again. We want to go back to the roots of our civilization - the ability, which we once had, for everybody who could read to be able to read everything. We must once again become a community of common access to a shared heritage. This was of course what Vannevar Bush said in 1945 in an article everybody cites but nobody reads. Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Hypertext
This all has a certain vagueness if you do not understand how bound you are today by paper— the problems of finding it , sorting it, looking things up. (If you write, that is, write a lot, you know all too well how intractable is paper, what a damned nuisance.) With a system like Engelbart's, now, whatever is written is instantly there. Whatever you want to look up Is instantly there, simultaneously interconnected to everything else l t should be connected to - source materials, footnotes, comments and so on. A document is completed the moment it is written: no human being has to retype i t . (It need not be typed on paper at all ,if it’s just for the workshop members: a printout is only needed if it has to go to someone outside the system). In many ways, Engelbart's system is a prototype for the world of the future, I hope. ALL HANDLING OF PAPER IS ELIMINATED. Whatever you write, you write on the screens with keyboard and pointer. (No more backs of envelopes, yellow pads, file cards, typewriters.) Whatever you transmit to fellow users of the system you simply 'release' - no physical paper changes hands. The group has also worked out some remarkable techniques for collaborative endeavor. Two people - say, one in California and one in New York - can work together through their screens, plus a phone link; it's as if they were side-by-side at a magic table. Each sees on his screen what the other sees; each controls a moving dot (or "cursor") that shows where he's pointing. The effect is somewhere between a blackboard and a desk; both may call up documents, point things out in them, change them, and anything else two people might do when working on something together. Basically the system Is a large-scale setup for the storage, bringing forth, viewing and revision of documents and connections among them. Ted Nelson, Computer Lib/Dream Machines, Doug Engelbart and “The Augmentation of Intellect”