6 ms·

“Bicycle of the Mind”

142 points by jensgk 7y ago

fit2rule 7y ago
I think we can return to the glory days of computing with one small tweak: insist that OS vendors include a lean and clean compiler in the default install. An OS that ships without tools to make apps for it is not an Operating System but rather an Appliance System. And, for those who will reply "but my disk space and all the bloat of a compiler onboard methodology" - well that'd be a next step: destroy the bloat.
- thinkingkong 7y ago
  For the % of people who care about “bloat” and think the solution is hand rolling all their own tools? This train is only going in one direction and that station was passed 35 years ago
- moksly 7y ago
  What counts as the glory days of computation? On HN it’s probably having a great deal of control and ownership over our systems. I’m not sure that’s what most people would consider glory though. I work with digitalisation in the public sector of Denmark, one of the most digitised countries in the world. We have thousands of employees and citizens who interact with our systems on a daily basis and when we benchmark them on what they want public sector software to be like they unanimously tell us they want it to be more like the iOS experience. They simply don’t want technology to get in the way, and they don’t care that the price for this is ownership and freedom. For them the glory days won’t begin until they can get completely away from the operation systems and applications of “old”.
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    Glorious: Ease of use. Imagine we had a compiler-on-board philosophy as well as a peer-to-peer-is-the-new-network purpose, and we built a new OS? I personally think such a thing would be golden.
- zazagura 7y ago
  It takes 1 minute of googling and 15 minutes of waiting to install a lean and clean compiler on any of the 3 major OSes. If this is enough to deter the glory days of computing, then just imagine having to deal with your first syntax error.
  - fit2rule 7y ago
    It should be onboard so there is zero effort in making apps for your own computer.
- fragmede 7y ago
  The world's iterated since those glory, early/pre-Internet days. These days, many (most?) computer users stay inside one application practically the entire time - a web-browser. A web browser that can access the Internet is enough to make "apps" that are online and accessible to the whole world, with the help of sites like Glitch.com. For purists, even just a web browser and a basic text editor is enough to write programs that can be run locally, and without Internet access. (Additional tooling/libraries still helps immensely though.) Having (access to) a compiler is not the missing linchpin it once was. I really liked Sugar OS[0], and its on-device access to the code running the OS on the device, and how hackable that made the resulting device. [0] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar
- jimmaswell 7y ago
  Not compiling but Windows ships with VBScript, JS, and Powershell, all with the ability to interface with the OS. I used VBScript for the first time a while ago to make a step in a batch process and it was pretty convenient.
  - jhbadger 7y ago
    And MacOS comes with Perl, Python, and Ruby in /usr/bin. Plus several UNIX shells with scripting ability.
    - jimmaswell 7y ago
      Didn't a lot of computers back then just come with a BASIC shell, not any compilers?
      - jhbadger 7y ago
        Right. But we are talking about how modern computers come with development systems too. While I'm sure the percentage of hobbyist programmers on modern machines is far smaller than in the 8-bit era, it's not like modern machines don't come with at least some development tools too.
        jimmaswell 7y ago
        Yeah, that was my point. Saying it has to be a compiler is arbitrary.
        fit2rule 7y ago
        It should be a compiler because that's the best way to write efficient, non-bloat software with your computer. All the other methods encourage bloat.
  - the_trapper 7y ago
    Also every release of the .NET framework to my knowledge ships with the "csc.exe" and "vbc.exe" compilers. So C# and Visual Basic.NET are available out of the box with modern versions of Windows as well. No IDE support, but you could whip up quick hello worlds with notepad without breaking a sweat.
ferros 7y ago
>literally in 1980 you programmed a computer if you bought one This is the biggest difference to now for me. Because computers were so new you would be getting your hands dirty with hardware and operating system level stuff. Now, you hardly leave the browser and really could stay in the browser to do almost anything you want to.
- pixl97 7y ago
  The computer may still be the bicycle of the mind, the question would be which large commercial entity is peddling it.
- fragmede 7y ago
  Human brains have scarcely changed in the interim. We still struggle to store more than a few bits of information in short-term memory and being able to multiply two two-digit numbers without having to resort to pen and paper is still tough for many. The "bicycle" has evolved into smartphones, and is a better bicycle than ever. Instead of trying to memorize a seven or ten digit number, I always have a device handy to save a phone number (or better yet, IG username). Instead of trying to run numbers in my head and getting confused, there are apps like Soulver[] that no only help with doing the math, but help ascribe meaning to the numbers. The Internet fundamentally changes computing, changing the metaphor as well. The bicycle (smartphone) lets us onto bike paths (the Internet), to visit stores (web pages). I can reach out to a dozen people and organize lunch from my phone, before I even get out of bed and go for a real morning bike ride. [0] https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/ https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/
peter303 7y ago
Even more so with the pocket smartphone.
georgewsinger 7y ago
The VR computing revolution presents the opportunity for us to get back to the "bicycle of the mind" frame of mind: where computing gives us tools to augment human intellect. For example, there are a set of office applications out there that (i) can make an office worker 10x more productive at his/her job than otherwise and (ii) are only possible to build in VR/AR. The goal for us/people in this ecosystem should be to find them and build them. https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula
- yay_cloud2 7y ago
  Do you know of any good "office" applications in the VR space?
- gallerdude 7y ago
  That's very optimistic, but it's hard for me to see at this stage in the game, how AR/VR can make someone 10x more productive, especially when it just appears to be a VR window manager.
  - fragmede 7y ago
    AR has its place, but a paperless office doesn't seem like the right fit. The factory floor does though! https://www.howtogeek.com/400963/google-glass-isnt-dead-and-its-the-future-of-industry/ https://www.howtogeek.com/400963/google-glass-isnt-dead-and-...
rusk 7y ago
The page is down, and I don’t know if this is related but there was a great clip of Steve Jobs describing computing as being a bicycle for the mind, in terms of how it comparably amplifies our capabilites. One of my all time favourite quote from the guy and an ever enduring thought for me whenever I need to be reminded about why I do the stuff I do.
- jes5199 7y ago
  i like that idea, but it seems we rarely live up to the ideal
  - rusk 7y ago
    I can do my banking in my PJs; order groceries on my way to work; check my home CCTV when in the office; turn on the heating on my way home.
    - jes5199 7y ago
      getting distracted by my bank balance while I’m trying to go to sleep makes me feel dumber, not smarter
      - rusk 7y ago
        you'll be distracted by that regardless
- lioeters 7y ago
  The metaphor is brilliant, it's simple, relatable and embodies an insight about the nature of personal computers. About "man-machine partnership" and how computers amplify the human mind, the concept goes back to Douglas Englebart's work at Stanford Research Institute, namely the paper "Augmenting the Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework" (1962). http://dougengelbart.org/content/view/138 http://dougengelbart.org/content/view/138 The influence is so direct and clear that I wish the Medium article had at least mentioned his name.
ale22 7y ago
One of the most important things for tinkerability of an OS is the shell. IMO bash has dropped the ball in the last 20 years. It's a poor programming language experience. I think we should replace bash with node.js Javascript shell, that will bring back LISP style computers back in vogue.
- lawik 7y ago
  Oh. This is a thing I've never felt. If python had better facilities for running other commands, that'd be an option for me. But I think bash has a very interesting set of conveniences and trade-offs. If built from first principles today I'm sure it would looke differentbut for me Node.js wouldnot be it. Scripting it is fine, as a shell to live in, I would find it very messy. I've been doing more things with bash recently, it has generally been a good experience.
- zazagura 7y ago
  pcj much?
  - ale22 7y ago
    pcj?
- thatfunkymunki 7y ago
  Please God no. There are so many useful and usable scripting languages, why infect our shells with JavaScript too?
  - ale22 7y ago
    You can get out of the box graphical output capabilities with javascript. So you can start outputting things in HTML if necessary.
netsharc 7y ago
Insert complain about Twitter here. Fuck multiple pages of 140^W 280 character bullet points. Fuck lazy authors who just tweet and the copy-paste instead of doing long form...
- ppod 7y ago
  At least twitter provides an outlet for short, insightful and measured comments like yours.
octosphere 7y ago
Most of the time we are programmed by the device itself. That is to say, we should program a PC instead of having it dictate our day and tell us what to do. An email inbox for example is nothing more than a todo list created by someone else and apparently we have to check each item off and reach the mythical 'inbox zero'. Then we have the browser where news comes at us randomly and we have 100 tabs open but no idea how or where those tabs come from - they are an example of how unorganized our thoughts are when we use the web. There's no curation, no attempt to organize information, because apparently its done already for us in the form of Google and other crawlers.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- entelechy0 7y ago
  We don't have to. I keep items in my inbox to remind me of various long-term action-items I need to keep afloat.
simonebrunozzi 7y ago
This was a really great article. I particularly liked the "cultural" reference at the end of this: > 19/ “Computers are such a part of life that many people believe computers don’t invade their privacy…life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is inevitably linked to a computer.” > How’s that for east coast optimism?
lcuff 7y ago
The graph showing calories per gram per kilometer is very interesting. I wonder though, for bicycling, how the energy cost of paving the surface we bicycle on is factored in, if at all? On 'natural' ground, depending on the terrain of course, bicycling can be substantially harder than walking, well-nigh impossible over rocky ground. And by analogy, what kind of negative impact does the computer bring to the process of mind. If I have to think hard about something, I typically close my eyes, not reach for my laptop. Although the fact that so much knowledge is now at my fingers tips probably trumps anything. Henry Ford wasn't nearly as smart as Leonardo da Vinci, but his access to knowledge enabled him to create vehicles Leonardo could only imagine.
- hyperpallium 7y ago
  Amplifying your mind by programming the tools you need is more like bicycling without a trail over rocky ground, walking it up steep slopes and carrying it over fallen trees, than it is like bicycling on a road. Programming is helpful for finding cases you didn't think of and remembering the details you aren't working on right now (like writing) - but only for programming. Writing is the bicycle of the mind.
  - eternauta3k 7y ago
    > Writing is the bicycle of the mind Are you thinking about Ted Chiang's "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth_of_Feeling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth_o...
    - hyperpallium 7y ago
      No, but thanks for the link - I don't think I've read that one (though I can never tell from Ted's titles). Text: https://web.archive.org/web/20140222103103/http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang https://web.archive.org/web/20140222103103/http://subterrane... Maybe I should have said "Language is the bicycle of the mind", but we didn't invent that.
throwaway081719 7y ago
So much commentary on this quote and no one mentions a possible link to LSD as inspiration? It's taboo to say it because the subject matter is illegal. But this is honestly one of the most psychedelic-sounding Steve Jobs quotes I can think of.
jsharf 7y ago
They never thought to test a condor riding a bicycle. Sounds like flawed experimental design
ManuelKiessling 7y ago
I love the whole “bicycle of the mind metaphor”, but think about what it means in the context of omnipresent smartphones: using a bike burns a lot less calories than walking , so what does it do to our minds if for so many mental-related things, instead of applying our mind to them the hard way, we use our pocket computers? What would it do to my body and my weight if for every meter I used to walk, I would instead take the bike?
bobbygoodlatte 7y ago
I wonder what Steve might say about smart phones today. They were intended to be bicycles of the mind, but perhaps they've become a 'gerbil wheel of the mind' for most consumers instead?

142 points by jensgk 7y ago

I think we can return to the glory days of computing with one small tweak: insist that OS vendors include a lean and clean compiler in the default install. An OS that ships without tools to make apps for it is not an Operating System but rather an Appliance System. And, for those who will reply "but my disk space and all the bloat of a compiler onboard methodology" - well that'd be a next step: destroy the bloat.

thinkingkong 7y ago
For the % of people who care about “bloat” and think the solution is hand rolling all their own tools? This train is only going in one direction and that station was passed 35 years ago
moksly 7y ago
What counts as the glory days of computation? On HN it’s probably having a great deal of control and ownership over our systems. I’m not sure that’s what most people would consider glory though. I work with digitalisation in the public sector of Denmark, one of the most digitised countries in the world. We have thousands of employees and citizens who interact with our systems on a daily basis and when we benchmark them on what they want public sector software to be like they unanimously tell us they want it to be more like the iOS experience. They simply don’t want technology to get in the way, and they don’t care that the price for this is ownership and freedom. For them the glory days won’t begin until they can get completely away from the operation systems and applications of “old”.
- fit2rule 7y ago
  Glorious: Ease of use. Imagine we had a compiler-on-board philosophy as well as a peer-to-peer-is-the-new-network purpose, and we built a new OS? I personally think such a thing would be golden.
zazagura 7y ago
It takes 1 minute of googling and 15 minutes of waiting to install a lean and clean compiler on any of the 3 major OSes. If this is enough to deter the glory days of computing, then just imagine having to deal with your first syntax error.
- fit2rule 7y ago
  It should be onboard so there is zero effort in making apps for your own computer.
fragmede 7y ago
The world's iterated since those glory, early/pre-Internet days. These days, many (most?) computer users stay inside one application practically the entire time - a web-browser. A web browser that can access the Internet is enough to make "apps" that are online and accessible to the whole world, with the help of sites like Glitch.com. For purists, even just a web browser and a basic text editor is enough to write programs that can be run locally, and without Internet access. (Additional tooling/libraries still helps immensely though.) Having (access to) a compiler is not the missing linchpin it once was. I really liked Sugar OS[0], and its on-device access to the code running the OS on the device, and how hackable that made the resulting device. [0] http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar
jimmaswell 7y ago
Not compiling but Windows ships with VBScript, JS, and Powershell, all with the ability to interface with the OS. I used VBScript for the first time a while ago to make a step in a batch process and it was pretty convenient.
- jhbadger 7y ago
  And MacOS comes with Perl, Python, and Ruby in /usr/bin. Plus several UNIX shells with scripting ability.
  - jimmaswell 7y ago
    Didn't a lot of computers back then just come with a BASIC shell, not any compilers?
    - jhbadger 7y ago
      Right. But we are talking about how modern computers come with development systems too. While I'm sure the percentage of hobbyist programmers on modern machines is far smaller than in the 8-bit era, it's not like modern machines don't come with at least some development tools too.
      - jimmaswell 7y ago
        Yeah, that was my point. Saying it has to be a compiler is arbitrary.
        fit2rule 7y ago
        It should be a compiler because that's the best way to write efficient, non-bloat software with your computer. All the other methods encourage bloat.
- the_trapper 7y ago
  Also every release of the .NET framework to my knowledge ships with the "csc.exe" and "vbc.exe" compilers. So C# and Visual Basic.NET are available out of the box with modern versions of Windows as well. No IDE support, but you could whip up quick hello worlds with notepad without breaking a sweat.

ferros 7y ago

>literally in 1980 you programmed a computer if you bought one This is the biggest difference to now for me. Because computers were so new you would be getting your hands dirty with hardware and operating system level stuff. Now, you hardly leave the browser and really could stay in the browser to do almost anything you want to.

pixl97 7y ago
The computer may still be the bicycle of the mind, the question would be which large commercial entity is peddling it.
fragmede 7y ago
Human brains have scarcely changed in the interim. We still struggle to store more than a few bits of information in short-term memory and being able to multiply two two-digit numbers without having to resort to pen and paper is still tough for many. The "bicycle" has evolved into smartphones, and is a better bicycle than ever. Instead of trying to memorize a seven or ten digit number, I always have a device handy to save a phone number (or better yet, IG username). Instead of trying to run numbers in my head and getting confused, there are apps like Soulver[] that no only help with doing the math, but help ascribe meaning to the numbers. The Internet fundamentally changes computing, changing the metaphor as well. The bicycle (smartphone) lets us onto bike paths (the Internet), to visit stores (web pages). I can reach out to a dozen people and organize lunch from my phone, before I even get out of bed and go for a real morning bike ride. [0] https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/ https://www.acqualia.com/soulver/iphone/

peter303 7y ago

Even more so with the pocket smartphone.

georgewsinger 7y ago

The VR computing revolution presents the opportunity for us to get back to the "bicycle of the mind" frame of mind: where computing gives us tools to augment human intellect. For example, there are a set of office applications out there that (i) can make an office worker 10x more productive at his/her job than otherwise and (ii) are only possible to build in VR/AR. The goal for us/people in this ecosystem should be to find them and build them. https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula https://github.com/SimulaVR/Simula

yay_cloud2 7y ago
Do you know of any good "office" applications in the VR space?
gallerdude 7y ago
That's very optimistic, but it's hard for me to see at this stage in the game, how AR/VR can make someone 10x more productive, especially when it just appears to be a VR window manager.
- fragmede 7y ago
  AR has its place, but a paperless office doesn't seem like the right fit. The factory floor does though! https://www.howtogeek.com/400963/google-glass-isnt-dead-and-its-the-future-of-industry/ https://www.howtogeek.com/400963/google-glass-isnt-dead-and-...

rusk 7y ago

The page is down, and I don’t know if this is related but there was a great clip of Steve Jobs describing computing as being a bicycle for the mind, in terms of how it comparably amplifies our capabilites. One of my all time favourite quote from the guy and an ever enduring thought for me whenever I need to be reminded about why I do the stuff I do.

jes5199 7y ago
i like that idea, but it seems we rarely live up to the ideal
- rusk 7y ago
  I can do my banking in my PJs; order groceries on my way to work; check my home CCTV when in the office; turn on the heating on my way home.
  - jes5199 7y ago
    getting distracted by my bank balance while I’m trying to go to sleep makes me feel dumber, not smarter
    - rusk 7y ago
      you'll be distracted by that regardless
lioeters 7y ago
The metaphor is brilliant, it's simple, relatable and embodies an insight about the nature of personal computers. About "man-machine partnership" and how computers amplify the human mind, the concept goes back to Douglas Englebart's work at Stanford Research Institute, namely the paper "Augmenting the Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework" (1962). http://dougengelbart.org/content/view/138 http://dougengelbart.org/content/view/138 The influence is so direct and clear that I wish the Medium article had at least mentioned his name.

ale22 7y ago

One of the most important things for tinkerability of an OS is the shell. IMO bash has dropped the ball in the last 20 years. It's a poor programming language experience. I think we should replace bash with node.js Javascript shell, that will bring back LISP style computers back in vogue.

lawik 7y ago
Oh. This is a thing I've never felt. If python had better facilities for running other commands, that'd be an option for me. But I think bash has a very interesting set of conveniences and trade-offs. If built from first principles today I'm sure it would looke differentbut for me Node.js wouldnot be it. Scripting it is fine, as a shell to live in, I would find it very messy. I've been doing more things with bash recently, it has generally been a good experience.
zazagura 7y ago
pcj much?
- ale22 7y ago
  pcj?
thatfunkymunki 7y ago
Please God no. There are so many useful and usable scripting languages, why infect our shells with JavaScript too?
- ale22 7y ago
  You can get out of the box graphical output capabilities with javascript. So you can start outputting things in HTML if necessary.

netsharc 7y ago

Insert complain about Twitter here. Fuck multiple pages of 140^W 280 character bullet points. Fuck lazy authors who just tweet and the copy-paste instead of doing long form...

ppod 7y ago
At least twitter provides an outlet for short, insightful and measured comments like yours.

octosphere 7y ago

Most of the time we are programmed by the device itself. That is to say, we should program a PC instead of having it dictate our day and tell us what to do. An email inbox for example is nothing more than a todo list created by someone else and apparently we have to check each item off and reach the mythical 'inbox zero'. Then we have the browser where news comes at us randomly and we have 100 tabs open but no idea how or where those tabs come from - they are an example of how unorganized our thoughts are when we use the web. There's no curation, no attempt to organize information, because apparently its done already for us in the form of Google and other crawlers.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
entelechy0 7y ago
We don't have to. I keep items in my inbox to remind me of various long-term action-items I need to keep afloat.

simonebrunozzi 7y ago

This was a really great article. I particularly liked the "cultural" reference at the end of this: > 19/ “Computers are such a part of life that many people believe computers don’t invade their privacy…life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness is inevitably linked to a computer.” > How’s that for east coast optimism?

lcuff 7y ago

The graph showing calories per gram per kilometer is very interesting. I wonder though, for bicycling, how the energy cost of paving the surface we bicycle on is factored in, if at all? On 'natural' ground, depending on the terrain of course, bicycling can be substantially harder than walking, well-nigh impossible over rocky ground. And by analogy, what kind of negative impact does the computer bring to the process of mind. If I have to think hard about something, I typically close my eyes, not reach for my laptop. Although the fact that so much knowledge is now at my fingers tips probably trumps anything. Henry Ford wasn't nearly as smart as Leonardo da Vinci, but his access to knowledge enabled him to create vehicles Leonardo could only imagine.

hyperpallium 7y ago
Amplifying your mind by programming the tools you need is more like bicycling without a trail over rocky ground, walking it up steep slopes and carrying it over fallen trees, than it is like bicycling on a road. Programming is helpful for finding cases you didn't think of and remembering the details you aren't working on right now (like writing) - but only for programming. Writing is the bicycle of the mind.
- eternauta3k 7y ago
  > Writing is the bicycle of the mind Are you thinking about Ted Chiang's "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth_of_Feeling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth_o...
  - hyperpallium 7y ago
    No, but thanks for the link - I don't think I've read that one (though I can never tell from Ted's titles). Text: https://web.archive.org/web/20140222103103/http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang https://web.archive.org/web/20140222103103/http://subterrane... Maybe I should have said "Language is the bicycle of the mind", but we didn't invent that.

throwaway081719 7y ago

So much commentary on this quote and no one mentions a possible link to LSD as inspiration? It's taboo to say it because the subject matter is illegal. But this is honestly one of the most psychedelic-sounding Steve Jobs quotes I can think of.

jsharf 7y ago

They never thought to test a condor riding a bicycle. Sounds like flawed experimental design

ManuelKiessling 7y ago

I love the whole “bicycle of the mind metaphor”, but think about what it means in the context of omnipresent smartphones: using a bike burns a lot less calories than walking , so what does it do to our minds if for so many mental-related things, instead of applying our mind to them the hard way, we use our pocket computers? What would it do to my body and my weight if for every meter I used to walk, I would instead take the bike?

bobbygoodlatte 7y ago

I wonder what Steve might say about smart phones today. They were intended to be bicycles of the mind, but perhaps they've become a 'gerbil wheel of the mind' for most consumers instead?