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I spent a few years trying to build a Xanadu-two-way-hyperlinks-but-with-Javascript kind of a thing and I eventually started to wonder, like, if you watch a lot

I spent a few years trying to build a Xanadu-two-way-hyperlinks-but-with-Javascript kind of a thing and I eventually started to wonder, like, if you watch a lot of Ted's videos he's got this idea of a kind of potential for what computers could be like-- he often makes reference to this experience he had as a kid that motivated his work-- it kind of seems to me that with what's possible today you could make something that goes far beyond either World Wide Web or Xanadu or anything really conceived yet-- something so fluid and adaptable and humane that it becomes an real extension of the fluid way we think with all of the advantages that come from it being a, "computer interface" (ability to recall past states, discrete calculation, ect) The real question is-- given the enormous economic potential for the creation of, "next generation" computers why isn't that we can't create groups like SRI, Xerox PARC, ARPA (..) in the modern age to create modern, "Engelbartesque" problem solving machines? Why is it that people like Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbar have issues having their ideas realized when by comparison every dogshit computer company in the world has had a metaphorical step up to plate in terms of potential for investment in broad horizon R&D projects? Apple has enough money to, "Manhattan Project" big breakthroughs (so does Google, Microsoft, Meta...) so why don't they? What holds back, "real" innovation? Why the hell can't I buy a Apple Nelson-Engelbartron at Wal-Mart? What gives Tim Cook? It seems like whatever kind of, "held Xanadu back" is the same thing that held back the Engelbart stuff which held back the Alan Kay/Dan Ingalls Scratchland/E-Toys stuff which relatedly holds back the Seymour Papert/LOGO stuff. It seems like neoliberalism creates a kind of, "censorship by appeal to market forces" where there's so much demand for, "meh" (simulations of paper documents/office processes and video games which didn't exist commercially until the passing of the Mansfield Amendment; neat coincidence) that, "big ideas" aren't able to catch on in the nascent culture. If you look at this historically it's really rather unexceptional-- it's generally a small percentage of the total population that is, "highly literate" and this doesn't seem to be any different in the age of personal computers despite the lofty ideals that surround open source and the World Wide Web. Until you can build an, "adult Dynabook" which solves social inequality it seems like it's going to stay the same. Panem et circenses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses "You program computers for a living and you think this is the best design for universal problem solving machines? Do you have no imagination? No grasp of the history of these machines?!"

kragen 5y ago
Compatibility is part of it. The VPRI project to build a personal computing experience in 20kloc never proposed to include a web browser because it'd take dramatically more code than that to support all the crap in HTML5. And that's without even getting into USB, my God, or GPUs. Or fucking ACPI. And, Jesus, those fucking Broadcom Wi-Fi cards. Even keybindings are a compatibility problem; Engelbart didn't have to worry about whether his users were conditioned to use control-W to delete the last word while he was using it to close a window, because his users weren't conditioned to use computers at all yet. And did you know that PDF files can embed TrueType fonts, which include hinting programs for a bytecode virtual machine? You have to interpret those too. Also, JavaScript. Secrecy is another part of it. Speaking of GPUs, NVIDIA won't tell you their instruction set, and they're busily trying to sabotage your attempts to run code on their GPUs they don't approve of, such as cryptocurrency miners. Only the Raspberry Pi is fully documented as hardware, and that requires giant undocumented GPU blobs to even boot. Intel was founded by a group of deserters from Fairchild, which was founded by a group of deserters from Shockley; today they'd end up in prison like Anthony Levandowski, who tried to do the same thing. A lot of what we know about the history of computing comes from papers engineers took home and kept when they left their companies; nowadays that too could send them to prison. Did you know there was a time when signing NDAs wasn't a routine part of taking a new tech job? And you could just walk into the offices at HP and start helping out? But a third part of it, and I think the biggest, is that people stopped believing in progress. Up until about 01769 if someone got themselves killed trying to fly or heating up the wrong kinds of rocks together, if they were lucky their neighbors would just write it off to stupidity getting its due; if they were unlucky their family might be burned at the stake for bringing down the wrath of the gods with their impiety and witchcraft. Roughly from 01770 to 01970, they would instead be lauded as martyrs to the noble cause of human progress; kids grew up wanting to be "inventors" and "engineers". But, in part due to the actual Manhattan Project, since about 01970 progress has become unfashionable again; people dismiss as naive the idea that you can just make up new rules for how things work and make them work that way, or that this activity makes people better off, or even that it is a coherent idea for people in general to be better off than before in absolute terms (as opposed to some people being better off than others). And so we see political obstructionism; people like Aaron Swartz getting prosecuted; nuclear power plants no longer getting built; mass homelessness; Beechcraft going bankrupt; endless wars against abstractions like "terror", "poverty", and "drugs"; ruinous regulatory burdens that amount to paying some people to dig holes and other people to fill them in --- and no new Engelbarts.

kragen 5y ago

Compatibility is part of it. The VPRI project to build a personal computing experience in 20kloc never proposed to include a web browser because it'd take dramatically more code than that to support all the crap in HTML5. And that's without even getting into USB, my God, or GPUs. Or fucking ACPI. And, Jesus, those fucking Broadcom Wi-Fi cards. Even keybindings are a compatibility problem; Engelbart didn't have to worry about whether his users were conditioned to use control-W to delete the last word while he was using it to close a window, because his users weren't conditioned to use computers at all yet. And did you know that PDF files can embed TrueType fonts, which include hinting programs for a bytecode virtual machine? You have to interpret those too. Also, JavaScript. Secrecy is another part of it. Speaking of GPUs, NVIDIA won't tell you their instruction set, and they're busily trying to sabotage your attempts to run code on their GPUs they don't approve of, such as cryptocurrency miners. Only the Raspberry Pi is fully documented as hardware, and that requires giant undocumented GPU blobs to even boot. Intel was founded by a group of deserters from Fairchild, which was founded by a group of deserters from Shockley; today they'd end up in prison like Anthony Levandowski, who tried to do the same thing. A lot of what we know about the history of computing comes from papers engineers took home and kept when they left their companies; nowadays that too could send them to prison. Did you know there was a time when signing NDAs wasn't a routine part of taking a new tech job? And you could just walk into the offices at HP and start helping out? But a third part of it, and I think the biggest, is that people stopped believing in progress. Up until about 01769 if someone got themselves killed trying to fly or heating up the wrong kinds of rocks together, if they were lucky their neighbors would just write it off to stupidity getting its due; if they were unlucky their family might be burned at the stake for bringing down the wrath of the gods with their impiety and witchcraft. Roughly from 01770 to 01970, they would instead be lauded as martyrs to the noble cause of human progress; kids grew up wanting to be "inventors" and "engineers". But, in part due to the actual Manhattan Project, since about 01970 progress has become unfashionable again; people dismiss as naive the idea that you can just make up new rules for how things work and make them work that way, or that this activity makes people better off, or even that it is a coherent idea for people in general to be better off than before in absolute terms (as opposed to some people being better off than others). And so we see political obstructionism; people like Aaron Swartz getting prosecuted; nuclear power plants no longer getting built; mass homelessness; Beechcraft going bankrupt; endless wars against abstractions like "terror", "poverty", and "drugs"; ruinous regulatory burdens that amount to paying some people to dig holes and other people to fill them in --- and no new Engelbarts.