Hi Ivan, My apologies if this came through twice but I didn't receive the original post in my mailing list subscription...
Regards, Iian Sent from my iPhone Begin forwarded message: > From: Iian Neill <iian.d.ne...@gmail.com> > Date: 19 July 2012 11:10:33 AM AEST > To: fonc@vpri.org > Subject: Re: [fonc] Historical lessons to escape the current sorry state of > personal computing? > > Hi Ivan, > > Please forgive the speculativeness and abstruseness of my response to your > question ... but it's the best I can do! > > The question that's really being asked here is, 'What is the future of > computing?' -- and I'm not sure it is possible to answer that question in the > abstract, just in the same way it wasn't possible to answer the question > 'What is the future of painting?' if it had been asked in the studio of > Cimabue before Giotto turned up. Without actually answering the question, > it's possible to speculate on the potential of the medium. To my mind, the > first distinction to make is between the instrumental and the essential > nature of the medium; by that I mean, between the purposes to which the > medium can be put as a tool -- the computations that can be made with it, its > mere utility -- and the possibilities of the medium as a medium for thinking > and imagining in. So to continue the art example, the art of painting is > itself the medium, and the introduction of, say, oil paints into Italy in the > beginning of the 15th century, while it was a huge technical advance that > allowed greater expressiveness, experimentation and delicacy -- and lead to > some genres of painting that were not practical before with tempera -- it > didn't represent the birth of a new field as such. The essential advance > happened arguably centuries earlier in the art of Nicolo Pisano in sculpture > and Giotto in painting in the awareness of the possibilities of space and > form, and in the reabsorption of the Greek notions of studied rational > observation of nature. Flatness in painting -- when it isn't an aesthetic > choice but a miserable inability -- is also a kind of flatness, a weakness, a > feebleness -- a sub-realism -- from a mental point of view. Giotto's > paintings have many masterly qualities but perhaps the paradigmatic > significance was his tremendous assertion of volume. Volume represented not > just solidity, or merely an advance in making something look > three-dimensional -- it literally advanced the art of painting by a power -- > it showed that it was possible to think of forms in the round, to be aware of > their sides, even of the backs of figures, while simultaneously depicting > them from a single viewpoint. Giotto's achievement also demonstrates that > this sense of volume -- while of course it exists in potential in everybody > -- had to be first imagined by him and brought into existence by sheer force > of will. To my mind it also suggests that things like the sense of volume > can actually be regarded as 'senses' of a kind -- 'virtual senses', if you > like, willed into existence by the mind -- and I think this is literally true > if you think about a sense as not merely a sense organ but a cognitive > process for which neuronal machinery exists in the brain, which we call > cortexes. > > So what is the relevance of this to the future of computing? My point above > is that although instrumental advances are powerful and important they are > fundamentally incremental, and that paradigm shifts only occur when essential > advances are made -- and essential advances are first intuited, imagined, and > then willed into existence -- and function like 'virtual senses' in the sense > that they both perceive sense data as well as actively organise data into new > concepts. This brings us back to the question of computing as a medium in > the instrumental and essential sense, and the general question of what effect > do instruments and tools have on the ability to conceptualise. What medium > does computing represent? Oil paints and brushes are the instruments of > painting -- arguably a flat surface is the essential medium, as it is the > essential difference between painting and sculpture. Computers can of course > be used as tools to create in these media -- digital paint programs, 3D > modelling software, etc., are instrumental equivalents -- but these are > extensions of existing tools, and arguably less artistically efficient than > traditional media (paints, violins, chisels, etc). Of course, computers can > digitally manipulate images, sounds, words, etc., in ways that are cumbersome > or practically impossible traditionally and you can argue that this certainly > opens up new avenues of expression -- but not necessarily new realms of > expression. > > I think Dr. Kay has pointed out that one thing that a computer can do > uniquely that is more than an extension, refinement, or virtualisation of > what traditional tools currently do is simulation -- the ability to project > interactive information spaces, to run models through simulations, to carry > out virtual experimentation. And it's arguable that the greatest enabler of > experimentation in this space is not so much predefined software so much as > computer languages, which provide an interactive syntax for thinking in that > medium. > > Regards, > Iian > > > On 15 July 2012 05:36, Ivan Zhao <nini...@gmail.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. > > Naturally, this is just history repeating itself (a la pre-Gutenberg scribes, > Victorian plumbers). But my question is, what can we learn from these > historical precedences, in order to to consciously to design our escape path. > A revolution? An evolution? An education? > > Ivan > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > >
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