Ivan Zhao wrote:
So far, the discussion has mostly being about "how to" fix the current
situation. They are great, but I am more interesting in the
"historical precedences" that we could use as lessons and analogies.
For example, in the plumber case, the lesson could be that
standardization of the parts abstract away the need to know to forge a
facet, so my mother, probably not a technical person in any century,
could go to a hardware store and fix the problem herself.
Also, by "programming", I did not meant text, visual, or any other
forms of computer programming per say, but rather an "attitude"
towards the computing medium in general -- to less of a passive button
pusher, more a deliberate assembler and manipulator.
Two historical analogies come to mind:
1. Automobiles: In the old days, a lot more people learned how to
maintain and fix cars. Auto shop was a popular high school subject.
Today, not so much - partially because cars are a lot more complicated,
require more specialized tools, and there are fewer
repairable/rebuildable components.
2. Math: There seems to be a trend toward letting kids use calculators,
and deemphasizing memorization of multiplication tables and such.
Not that I'm suggesting that either of these is a good thing, but
perhaps there are lessons in there somewhere.
Ivan
On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 4:17 PM, Shawn Morel <shawnmo...@me.com
<mailto:shawnmo...@me.com>> wrote:
>> "45 years after Engelbart's demo, we have a read-only web and
Microsoft Word
>> 2011, a gulf between "users" and "programmers" that can't be
wider, and the
>> scariest part is that most people have been indoctrinated long
enough to
>> realize there could be alternatives."
>
> I'm not sure how to understand this. The demo is probably
somewhere on
> youtube and when I have time I will try to watch it. However,
neither
> wikipedia:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos
>
> nor wired:
>
> http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/12/dayintech_1209
>
> mention anything about programming by user. They say there were
windows,
> mouse, hypertexts, videoconferencing and other similar stuff.
Not a word
> about programming. So perhaps a gap between users and programers was
> already well established by then.
WOW! that just goes to show how much is culturally forgotten. This
is a perfect example of "news" vs "new". The people to which this
was news by definition have preconceived notions. The commentary
they write is through the lens of how they know what to explain.
They leave out things they don't have existing concepts for - much
like the story of the shaman seeing Christofer Columbus' ships for
the first time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQcBQc3oaKg The
analogy is actually a great one for all of science - what we
really observe are the ripples.
Anyway, I digress, as for the demo... The NLS (the oN Line System)
was all about end-user, domain-specific programing (albeit, not
really what we would call "programming" when viewed through the
lens of today's practices).
You have to sort jump into the context of the era. People were
talking about augmenting human intellect via machines,
"navigating thought vectors through idea space", etc. Forget "a
bicycle for the mind," the vision of Vannevar Bush and Englebart
was much closer to the post-humanist view espoused by proponents
of the singularity.
A very key element about the NLS was the ability to program into
it new scripts and commands based on the semantics of the information!
This was deeply personal but also very group work oriented as
well. The SRI team did all of their meetings and group work in
this collaborative programable space. Conference rooms had tables
organized around a set of computer monitors in the middle. You
could bring up references as part of a discussion for all others
to see. Today's Power Point and projector screens at the head of a
table are really a cheep copout
shawn
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In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
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