14 ms·

Dynamicland 2024

590 points by Pulcinella 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Pulcinella 2y ago
Home page has been updated as well, though I am unable to submit that as I have previously submitted the same URL when the site launched back in 2017. https://dynamicland.org/ https://dynamicland.org/
- dang 2y ago
  Fixed now. Thanks!
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
kkukshtel 2y ago
Great to see this project continuing to progress!
hasbot 2y ago
I watched the new intro video and I have no idea what this is other than lots and lots and lots of cards with dots on them. It looks soo complex!
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
  Some of the people in the video have that expression on their face too.
gffrd 2y ago
I love the ambitions and values in this work: that programs are physical so are shared and discoverable, that things are learnable through play, that the goal is people together. It's as if you asked someone to redesign the computer (as a concept) based on the technology and knowledge we have now, and designed around the tasks most fundamentally human. Always inspiring, always a gut check if I'm doing work that's valuable.
hemogloben 2y ago
Have they open sourced any of it?
- mintplant 2y ago
  Only in the sense that you can walk into the space and check out the source in-person.
  - RodgerTheGreat 2y ago
    ...if you know the right person and are invited.
- flovec 2y ago
  I remember this offshoot from a few years back: https://github.com/tinylanders/tinyland https://github.com/tinylanders/tinyland
- dcre 2y ago
  https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/#Is_Realtalk_open_source https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/#Is_Realtalk_open_source
- skadamat 2y ago
  Not yet. There are some offshoot projects if you want to play & experience: - https://folk.computer/ https://folk.computer/ - http://tablaviva.org/ http://tablaviva.org/
- sanxiyn 2y ago
  You can look at the code of a substantial project in text, as well as in action, here. https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/ https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/
acyou 2y ago
I love the bookshelf interface. It is as good as a regular bookshelf for browsing and inspires me to explore. However, I hit the back button as soon as I click a link, where with a physical bookshelf I would probably crack the book and flip through, no comparison there.
- kdamica 2y ago
  Reminds me of the Packard Bell Navigator UI from the 90s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Bell_Navigator https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Bell_Navigator
  - miek 2y ago
    Thanks for taking me back. This felt so futuristic at the time to my younger self.
xipho 2y ago
Inspiring stuff. TLDR, AFAICT, no, you can not do this on your own without participating IRL and taking away what you learned. Am inspired that it keeps growing, am disappointed that an indoctrination of a sorts is the only (apparent) route in. That said, sign me up please.
jedberg 2y ago
Can someone who has six minutes to watch the intro give those of us who don't a TL;DW?
- skadamat 2y ago
  The analogy I use is pro cooking vs home cooking. We mostly only have professional cooking in the world of computing. What if we created tools and environments for everyone to become a home cook? - What types of things might a home cook compute-r create, share, and remix? - How can individual home cook compute-rs get more agency and freedom over their programs? What would that world look like? - What if we could incorporate all the ways we think when we compute? Our amazing skills in touching, feeling, grasping, moving, etc that we evolved Dynamicland (as I see it) is exploring & researching what that world look like by building increasingly more powerful and capable computing environments.
  - jedberg 2y ago
    Thank you. I still don't exactly get it though. What's with the books on a shelf?
    - azeirah 2y ago
      The books are the books that are recommended to read if you want to understand what they're doing and what prior work they're building on. Bret mentioned computer literacy on the website. The books you can consider as "the curriculum" or "the theory" or what have you.
    - zamadatix 2y ago
      It might be more time-understanding efficient to watch the video if/when you have enough time to mull what they show in it over. I'm not sure I would have gotten a useful take on this particular thing in a set of short text summaries and I'm usually one very biased towards that kind of consumption.
      - jedberg 2y ago
skadamat 2y ago
I have the physical 2017 zine and it's a beauty to have a giant folded sheet of poster paper you can expand and read on a table, like a newspaper
dack 2y ago
i'm always super impressed by brett victor and highly admire his work. that said, I have to admit that it doesn't really feel "right" based on what I've seen. there's so many limitations to the physical world that a virtual space doesn't have. i get that physical objects can participate in the UI and that arranging things in 3D space is sometimes nicer than using a mouse/keyboard. However, the fact that there is still code written on pieces of paper, and that the projector can only show a 2D image (which is only primitively interactable) just looks super awkward. and the question of "what can you do" when you're staring at a blank table seems tough again, it's super cool research but i wonder if he has plans to resolve some of these fundamental issues with mixing real and virtual
- skadamat 2y ago
  IMO the goal here isn't to replace traditional software engineering. It's to bring computing to spaces. Museums, classrooms, town halls, etc, which requires a different approach. The mental model I use is professional cooking in a kitchen vs home cooking. Different scale, tools, and approaches but some overlap in core ideas. A pro cook can criticize a home cook's workflow and tools, but the goals are different!
  - bobajeff 2y ago
    I think their goal is similar to what smalltalk's goal originally was: To allow for regular people to do complex things with a computer. Ultimately, it didn't succeed in that goal but I believe inventing the first spreadsheet software can be counted as achieving some success there. I admire this project and hope they can one day move beyond simply typing code on a sheet of paper to creating tools that actually make our compilers/IDEs look like using punch cards.
    - samatman 2y ago
      Without Smalltalk, there would have been no HyperCard, and HyperCard definitely succeeded in that goal to a significant degree. It's a pity there's never been a modern reboot with the right factors aligned to continue that work.
modeless 2y ago
Very cool. I do believe physical embodiment of computers is the future and the current screen/GUI paradigm will decline, but the embodiment will be different. The physically embodied computer of the future will be a humanoid robot, and we will interact with it the same way we do with humans: by gesturing and speaking. There will always be a place for screens, just as there is still a place for books, but we will have less reason to use them when we can accomplish what we want to do in more natural collaboration with physically embodied computers in the form of humanoid robots, alongside other humans.
- shortrounddev2 2y ago
  I feel that mobile screens and AR are going to be the future
  - modeless 2y ago
    Mobile screens are the present, in the form of phones. Unfortunately there are fundamental physics problems that make AR too limited and too cumbersome to entirely replace screens for the foreseeable future. I highly recommend Karl Guttag's blog to learn about the problems that will hold back AR for a long, long time: https://kguttag.com/2023/06/03/slides-from-presentation-at-awe-2023-on-optical-versus-passthrough-mr/ https://kguttag.com/2023/06/03/slides-from-presentation-at-a...
    - shortrounddev2 2y ago
      Yes, I think that mobile screens will continue to be our present, but in the future! I think that touch screens are the preferred medium for computation for technology users who started using computers regularly for personal use after c. 2011. Personally, I hate the things but I can see that for people who are not technical users, the mobile phone is a natural way to compute. I know of many people who don't even own a laptop or desktop; they just use their phone for all computation
      - carlosneves 2y ago
reaperman 2y ago
I assume this hasn't been "released" yet, but still thought I'd ask if the source code for the operating system (or "computing environment", in Dynamicland-speak) is available anywhere and also if there yet exists any DIY hardware guides for building your own to play with at my own location (far from the Oakland/Berkeley Dynamicland facility). I believe the FAQ confirms that this is not possible at the moment: > Where can I get Realtalk? >> At present, Realtalk exists in Dynamicland spaces and in the spaces of our collaborators, where we can carefully grow and tend in-person communities of practice. In the short term, additional spaces will be started by people who have contributed significantly to an existing space and have internalized the culture and its values. Long term, we intend to distribute the ideas in the form of kits+games which will guide communities through building their own computing environments that they fully understand and control. Long long term, computing may be built into all infrastructure as electric light is today. This would also require an extensive network of educational support.
- asolove 2y ago
  There are some similar-ish systems with alpha-level install instructions: https://folk.computer/pilot https://folk.computer/pilot
- dingnuts 2y ago
  >In the short term, additional spaces will be started by people who have contributed significantly to an existing space and have internalized the culture and its values there's something ominous, weird, and sort of damning about being protective of your "culture and values" in this way and to this extent. If Dynamicland offered a truly novel computing paradigm, it should be one that is accessible by other cultures. If it offers a valuable culture and worthwhile values, those values should be viral on their merits. They should be broadcast, rather than kept closely guarded. If you have to carefully indoctrinate new users into your culture in order to protect it and keep out the Others who might ruin your culture with wrongthink, maybe what you actually have is a cult.
  - Juliate 2y ago
    > there's something [...] about being protective of your "culture and values" in this way and to this extent Yes, AND it may also be because it's kind of innovation in the open, before it's really ready or that all the critical angles are fixed, and they might not want spoil specifics they would like to make flourish and present to the whole world, and see them ... let's say half-assed, or misunderstood enough that it does not "jell". In the end, it will be embraced in some way. But it's understandable that they have a specific idea in mind. See it as a trailer for a movie where post-prod is not yet fully done, perhaps.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
skadamat 2y ago
The best thing about this website is that it was made in Dynamicland, which is the most bootstrapp-y & Dynamicland thing ever: https://x.com/worrydream/status/1831035663703212350 https://x.com/worrydream/status/1831035663703212350
- latexr 2y ago
  I’m surprised Bret is still on Twitter, which is an ever more closed non-communal system. It’s values seem to go against everything Dynamicland upholds.
  - infinite8s 2y ago
    I think he just used it as a place to announce the new site. If you look at his posting history he's only made 1 per year for the past few years.
    - latexr 2y ago
      > If you look at his posting history Can’t, as I don’t have an account. That’s part of my point. But thank you for letting me know.
alabhyajindal 2y ago
The intro video looks very cool! I would love to try it but I doubt that'll be possible.
hazn 2y ago
whenever i'll teach newcomers computing, i will now adopt the approach laid out here. it's easy to forget how painful learning computing is, how much you need to know about the internet to make a single http request and read out it's response. user @simonw talked about this recently on twitter [0][1] absolute beautiful point about needing a different kind of literacy in the modern age at the end of the video. i wish, with all my heart, that this and similar projects develop a loving community which will enable other communities to learn computing in an accessible, cheap and memorable way. [0] https://x.com/simonw/status/1829195655006531661 https://x.com/simonw/status/1829195655006531661 (original twitter link) [1] https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01j6z4cj87f5ky3c6ese0thscw https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01j6z4cj87f5ky3c6ese0thscw (backup because twitter is not the future of computing)
bsimpson 2y ago
I had the good fortune of taking a field trip there in 2018. The video is a very good overview of the project. One interesting artifact of "the real world simulates itself" is version control. At Dynamicland, each version of a program is a sheet of paper (with a unique set of fiducials along the edges). If you want to edit a program, you grab a keyboard and point it at the program. A text editor comes up; you make your changes, and hit commit. When you do, it spits out a new piece of paper with your changes. Put it in the view of the camera to use the new version. Take it away and use the old paper to roll the change back.
- breck 2y ago
  > with a unique set of fiducials along the edges I suspect each piece of paper, if examined with a good enough camera, has a unique fingerprint, like a snowflake, and perhaps this could be used in the future for an "Isomer Addressed Filesystem". In other words, all pieces of paper ship with a UUID already, woven into their atoms.
  - shoxidizer 2y ago
    I would suggest instead convincing every printer manufacturer to embed in every printer a routine that encodes a unique identifier on every print and then reading that using more typical cameras. The hard part has already been done. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
    - jf 2y ago
      I'm pretty sure that I mentioned the printer tracking dots to the researchers at the lab and certainly mentioned DataGlyphs. So they were aware of alternatives. The trick is to get a workable system with cameras that have the resolution to pick out those details from a dozen feet away, as well as a software stack that can recognize them at ~60fps. The goal has always been to move away from the dots, you can see this in the progress report: https://dynamicland.org/2019/Progress_report/ https://dynamicland.org/2019/Progress_report/ That said, and this is purely my opinion, the system works well enough as it is, and there is so much fun stuff to build on top of what works, that it's hard to prioritize a better object recognition system over the myriad of other interesting things to be done.
abeppu 2y ago
I think the overall idea here is really cool. But ... to me the idea of printing stanzas of code onto paper and then putting them on a board so they can be OCRed back into text and then re-parsed seems circuitous. Like as a demonstration that in principle you can work this way on code as well as on more spatially-native concepts, it seems fine, but is that actually the best way for all kinds of work? Or can we acknowledge that this makes more sense for some things than for others?
- bsimpson 2y ago
  It's not OCR. Those colored dots along the periphery are fiducials. They're how Realtalk recognizes a program. Every object that you can interact with in Realtalk has a unique set of fiducials. When the camera sees one, it looks up its behavior and projects it accordingly.
  - modeless 2y ago
    So if you physically copy and paste code, or edit it with a pen, that won't work, right? The embodiment feels superficial.
    - jf 2y ago
      Correct, that doesn't work in the system as implemented. But my understanding is that there has been a goal from the start to _eventually_ get physical code editing to work. I recall hearing the researchers talking about wanting to eventually get handwriting recognition working, so you could edit code by hand.
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      Cameras good enough to do that kind of work aren't really available right now. It does still make the code more accessible by making it immediately visible on the object so if you want to know how a thing works you can just pick it up.
  - abeppu 2y ago
    ... so in the intro video at like 2:37, it says that a program can be in language, or an arrangement of components, or a hand-drawn diagram, because anything you can write an interpreter for is a program. The "arrangement of components" and the "hand-drawn diagram" shots show stuff drawn on a whiteboard, which seems like it can be edited by redrawing. Are you saying that a hand-drawn diagram program can be freely edited by changing the diagram, but a language-based program cannot be edited by changing the representation of its code? That seems ... worse. I would think that you'd want a fiducial marker on code-printouts to identify that a piece of code has a language and a namespace perhaps (i.e. "this page contains a kotlin definition that lives in com.acme.foo"), but that the contents should be modifiable. Otherwise, what's the point? If to edit the code you're gonna pull up a keyboard and screen (or project an editor window) ... then this seems like what we already have, plus you have to print stuff out.
bsimpson 2y ago
For those unfamiliar, the founder is Bret Victor. He made a name for himself working on human interfaces at Apple in the Steve Jobs iPad era. In 2012, he gave a couple of influential talks: Inventing on Principle, and Stop Drawing Dead Fish. Bret's take on being a visionary/futurist is fascinating. He imagines the near-future world he wants to live in, prototypes enough of it to write a talk about, and gives the talk with the hopes that someone in the audience will be inspired to make it a reality. He gives ideas away with the hope that he'll be paid back with a world where those ideas have been realized. https://worrydream.com/ https://worrydream.com/
- sigmonsays 2y ago
  that approach seems so off... i'm curious how it's justified. like countless hundreds of quotes on execution vs ideas, here is one: "Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does." anyways, i'm gonna spend a little more time this evening to really dig in.
  - jacobolus 2y ago
    It's pretty hard for one person or even one small team to both (a) do advanced green-field research in whichever uncertain direction they feel most exited to explore, and (b) make a complete and polished saleable product which best meets the needs of a well-defined set of customers. The skills, personalities, organizing principles, and methods involved are substantially different, and focusing on making a product has a tendency to cut off many conceptually valuable lines of inquiry based on financial motivations. Notice that Bret Victor's goal (like most researchers) is not to become as rich as possible. Whether researchers or product developers ultimately have more leverage is something of a chicken-and-egg question. To make an analogy, it's like asking who was more influential, Karl Marx or Otto von Bismarck.
    - skadamat 2y ago
      The world needs powerful new ideas and people willing to bring those ideas to everyone through creation of products and services. We need BOTH but it's getting harder to build a career focusing on inventing and discovering new ideas nowadays unfortunately. This is documented super well in this book (published by Stripe Press!): https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Freedom-Civilization-Donald-Braben/dp/0578675919 https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Freedom-Civilization-Donal...
whywhywhywhy 2y ago
Victor's previous work has all been huge inspirations to me, but after many years of this project that I initially was hyped for there are just some big red flags to me that this isn't the way forward really or even a good use of his talent. Big talk about solving the worlds problems out in the room and not on the phone I agree with in sentiment but I feel all that big talk falls completely flat on it's face when the project you're pouring money and most importantly time only exists in one space and only benefits a small group of academics and then that issue being gushed over as if its a benefit when really it just means you're not actually building in the real world at all you're building a fake thing in a fake world for the 0.01% of people to larp with. Think the world of computing could greatly benefit from Brett but almost in his success it means he'll just be able to play pretend in the world of "non-profit"/academia meaning the output will be citations + grants not value and there will be no real benefit to computing from that work. Maybe I'd feel different if the intro video ended with a repo and a list of hardware to build your own Dynamicland, I almost think the fact it doesn't is a tactic for the project to never have to really prove its value...
breck 2y ago
I'm building my own implementation to understand how this works. No idea what I'm doing yet. Let's build together! I'm livestreaming here: https://youtube.com/live/02-wJ7Od9Bo?feature=share https://youtube.com/live/02-wJ7Od9Bo?feature=share (Warning: I have yet to shower today).
Uehreka 2y ago
As cool as Dynamicland is, I still don’t get why they won’t open source it or at least release it in some form. I’ve heard various people give roundabout excuses, but none of them hold water. They often fall into one of the following categories: - “People won’t get the core ideas and will use it to make things that go against the core ideas” — People who care about Bret Victor’s work will take the time to learn the ideas. People who don’t might try and make something Bret doesn’t like, but currently the world is full of things Bret doesn’t like, so I don’t get how that would be different than the status quo. - “It’s actually ‘anti-internet’, reimagining computers as objects in physical space, without the intangible connections provided by the internet” — Cool! I’d like to use it to make an airgapped little lab thing for people in my city to play and experiment in, but I can’t do that unless it’s released to the community. - “Yeah but remember it’s ‘anti-internet’, releasing it open source on the internet would violate the core principles.” — This feels too cute by half. I don’t consider this a legitimate objection. - “Just come to Oakland, you’ll understand when you get here and use it.” — That’s way out of many people’s budgets. I also get the feeling that I wouldn’t come around just by seeing it, I think I’d want one in my city even more. - “You’re not entitled to other people’s work.” — True, but most stuff done in this sort of research space is done with the intent of spreading an idea or increasing the public good. It seems kind of odd that the Dynamicland folks keep talking about what a revolutionary concept it is while preventing 99.9% of people from actually experiencing it. Overall it just seems like such a weird attitude. I get that they’re worried about the world misunderstanding their ideas, but at this point there are tons of people who have been eating up Bret Victor’s work and have immense respect for his ideas, and would gladly watch, listen to or read whatever instructions would be necessary to help someone who’s already bought in “play by the rules” and get the best possible experience.
- jdougan 2y ago
  > - “People won’t get the core ideas and will use it to make things that go against the core ideas” — People who care about Bret Victor’s work will take the time to learn the ideas. People who don’t might try and make something Bret doesn’t like, but currently the world is full of things Bret doesn’t like, so I don’t get how that would be different than the status quo. I think the problem is like what happened to "agile" after the manifesto. People took a term with a meaning, and ignored that meaning in promoting their own stuff, thus confusing the terminology and messing up discussion of the concepts.
0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
Wow I really like my keyboard
geraldalewis 2y ago
This seems to me like the apotheosis of Jef Raskin's Humane Interface - super cool!
koolala 2y ago
I'm hopeful VR programming with standardized programming languages and AI will create a Dynamicland-like software environment one day. Social spatial programming just needs to be made fun like building in a game.
- jdboyd 2y ago
  Why VR instead of projectors?
  - koolala 2y ago
    Hehe because VR is unlimited. It's only recently the resolution of VR displays is even good enough for text. The final need is comfort. I'm currently trying to figure out a efficient text rendering algorithm designed for 3D.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    VR comes with the person using it instead of needing many projectors to cover a room at sufficient resolution to display text. There are an open projects that is trying to recreate Dynamicland and their numbers are 50-200 per square foot of covered area between the cameras, projectors and compute required. It doesn't take much space to make equipping multiple people with VR with good pass through competitively priced.
    - koolala 2y ago
      I'm most excited for collaborative software spaces to be online in virtual space as well as with pass-through VR AR. Would make programming online with people so much more fun and homey!
- Philpax 2y ago
  Have you seen Resonite? That's probably the closest to that today.
  - koolala 2y ago
    Yes, I am a big Anyland fan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g50f6Sjle5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g50f6Sjle5o The goal to me is standard programming languges of all kinds. Lisp VR, Js VR, C VR, LogiX ect. Wasm is almost a polyglot. How we interact with Text and Code Execution is expandable in my mind.
rparet 2y ago
I was fortunate enough to visit back in 2018. It’s so nice to see this persevere.
thatguymike 2y ago
I spent quite a lot of time at Dynamicland Oakland. It's great fun and the people are just wonderful. I think of Realtalk as adding another layer to programs, the Physical Layer. Program behavior can be determined and controlled by physical layout as well as code. It's not completely unlike a frontend/backend distinction, and in fact you could make a Realtalk simulator using a javascript canvas much more easily than building the camera/projector setup. Just like building full stack software, there's a large amount of nonobvious skill in dictating your separations of concerns between the physical layer and software layer. Good programs are flexible, remixable, modular, intuitive, and let non-programmers make nontrivial interactions and enhancements via the physical layer. Bad programs require you to have the physical objects in a particular configuration, or break completely if one piece of paper is lost. I found these programming design questions a really interesting part of playing at Dynamicland. A solid limitation of the system is that the pieces of programs aren't actually modular. You can't take a Cat from one program and a Dog from another program and have the dog interact with the cat. This is obvious in software - that's why we design APIs - but it's frustrating when all your programs exist in the same space (that's the whole selling point) and when bringing part of Program A into Program B is so intuitive and, when you have dozens of these programs lying around the room, inevitable. I'd love to see them explore (wait for it...) using AI. Incorporating object recognition could remove the need for pasting dots onto every object by defining rules like "when you see a car, color it Red". It could allow for inter-program interoperability via the shared language of object recognition. And it could even determining logical interactions in a fun and surprising way: what _should_ happen when I take the cactus from this program and put it on top of the balloon from that program?
- jes5199 2y ago
  it should be possible to make objects that are general-purpose, you end up with a bunch of low-code reusable things like "dog" or "car", and they have stable representations than can be used as data in multiple other programs
- miffing 2y ago
  related: https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/#What_is_Realtalks_relationship_to_AI https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/#What_is_Realtalks_relation...
_dain_ 2y ago
Alright someone has to be the skeptic: there's no fucking god damned way this works as well as the video suggests. There has to be enormous amounts of behind-the-scenes work to support this thing; the idea that it's self-hosting all in one room is an absolutely extraordinary claim. It's a big red flag that they only invite specific people who are good "culture fits", and don't have any public code. They can't risk people seeing the puppet wires. It's some Wizard of Oz / Potemkin village / confidence trick. That's why nothing has been released after a decade -- there's nothing to release. It's vapor, this generation's Xanadu.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  They ran an open space for a few years. The things being done aren't that wild. You have cameras tracking fiducials, running an associated script every frame that can either just be text or can pull from the computer to act on things not explicitly on a page in a frame. None of that is conceptually that wild or heavy and people have made versions of this that you can actually see the source of. PaperPrograms is one and Folk Computer is another.
soulofmischief 2y ago
This is a pretty neat idea. Watched through a few talks. I love cyberphysical programming, live programming, involving the audience in the computation, so Bret's work with Dynamicland speaks to me. I do however think the card system could use a rethink in terms of ergonomics. Wish I still lived in California so I could check out the system in person! Watching the development of this project with keen interest... sure, a lot of the ideas might not end up catching on, but that's the nature of research.
tgbugs 2y ago
One of the most striking things about this for me is how clearly it demonstrates the fact that community and sharing are not the same thing. Building tools that enable communities to share effectively seems like another additional challenge, and the fact that virtual spaces and digital spaces are dismissed seems like it might prove a major roadblock to connecting and sharing in a larger inclusive community. Given the interest in leveraging this for doing science it also seems that this is at risk for empowering individual labs while leaving all interfaces to the rest of the larger scientific community dependent on the current utterly broken system of publication.
fjfaase 2y ago
I wonder whether someone already has build away to create modular synthesizer using block with knobs on the table. A line on the top of the knob would signal its position. (In the video I saw some shots that looked like sequencers.) You would also need some mechanism to connect the modules together. I played around with VCV Rack [1], but adjusting knobs with a mouse feels very different than using your hands to turn a physical knob. Also, I would like to have more freedom in arranging modules more freely as you could do on a table, instead of using patch cables that go into all kinds of directions. Especially for newbies, it would be an interesting way to see if they want to go into real modular synths based on Eurorack [2], AE Modular [3] or microrack [4]. [1] https://vcvrack.com/ https://vcvrack.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurorack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurorack [3] https://www.tangiblewaves.com/ https://www.tangiblewaves.com/ [4] https://microrack.org/ https://microrack.org/
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  Reactable's main use seemed to be as a synth. Different effort but related, predates. https://www.dancemusicnw.com/awesome-instrument-youve-never-heard-reactable/ https://www.dancemusicnw.com/awesome-instrument-youve-never-...
- miffing 2y ago
  related: https://dynamicland.org/archive/2023/MIDI https://dynamicland.org/archive/2023/MIDI
- dbspin 2y ago
  Patchblocks used to exist (and have a very cool party house in Belfast) - but looks like their IP was acquired http://patchblocks.com/page2.html http://patchblocks.com/page2.html Roli Blocks is also somewhat similar https://midi.org/roli-blocks-modular-wireless-midi-touch-system https://midi.org/roli-blocks-modular-wireless-midi-touch-sys...
hulium 2y ago
I think the cool part about this is that you can easily build a user interface from physical objects, so you can skip some of the digital frontend and design and focus more on the computational backend. This frees you up for more explorative, improvised coding, which is great for research and art but maybe also many other situations where fixed user interfaces get into the way too much. Based on what they show about their biology lab project, it seems to be surprisingly useful.
teleforce 2y ago
Kudos to Bret and all the best to the communal computing community (pun intended) hopefully this takes the cyber physical system including IoT and machine-to-machine to another (useful) level. >Anyone can change any program at any time, and see the changes immediately Not sure what programming language Bret implementing the system but recently there's discussion how difficult and how slow to parse/compile some of the popular programming languages including C++ and Rust. In this case D is a unique anomaly where it has immediate rdmd REPL facility although it's a complex and a compiled language [1]. For creative, inventive, intuitive and comprehensive programming cyber physical system that involve hardware with fast sensing, control and immediate responses, D language is hands down the best programming there is [2]. The D authors however don't believe in any killer applications but this Dynamicland of communal computing most probably the niche that D is looking for to propel it for more wider adoption. [1] Parsing Awk Is Tricky: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41422283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41422283 [2] D Features Overview: https://dlang.org/comparison.html https://dlang.org/comparison.html
- galaxyLogic 2y ago
  Smalltalk. I used to run a server in Smalltalk and if it had an error it would halt, I could debug where it halted, I could change the code and restart. The client would not know, unless my fixing it took too long.
cyberax 2y ago
I hate that website design. It doesn't answer the basic question: WTF is "dynamicland"?
nsonha 2y ago
I used to think Bret Victor's work is cool but how exactly do we build all these seemingly ad-hoc interactions into systems? one-by-one? Maybe generative code AI can do it on-demand one day?
cbreynoldson 2y ago
For those criticizing, think of this updated website more from the lens of art, less pragmatics. The Doug Engelbart "Mother of All Demos" functioned in this way as well. Can you imagine scoffing at Engelbart in the same way? There are quite a few deep ideas in this presentation of Dynamicland, many of which are subtle and take some effort to find and appreciate, much like art. Yes, it is intended to be useful to many one day, and they claim it "actually works" _now_, but if you read carefully (and you should!), they are trying very hard to maintain (and gradually grow) a beautiful little flame of a vision. PARC, on the other hand, had 10 years. Afterwards, industry ran with the ideas they wanted, and Alan Kay has been beating the "you missed the big ideas!" drum since. The Dynamicland group is trying to learn from this lesson of history. Kudos to the group.
motohagiography 2y ago
what an important set of ideas. if I'm interpreting correctly it's an instance of a pattern language for organizing people aided by tech. the idea seems to have moved past the constraints of goal oriented methodologies and on to modular blocks of logic for coordination. i wonder if a coarse analogy for it might include roberts rules in a related category of ideas, and then with some concepts from tech around versioning and then it's something else entirely, but they seem to approach some of the same coordination problems.
rtkwe 2y ago
This feels like something you could get a whole lot more traction and experimentation in quickly if it also existed as a room in something like VRChat or added to people's rooms in a VR passthrough mode. You'd lose some of the benefits of being in a shared physical space but you would also lose some of the limitations around the tracking resolution and stability of the fiducial markers on the page and open it up to people who can't make it to the location in person. A 2.0 version could even merge the two versions slightly, tracking irl people into the virtual space (with pose and position estimates?) and programs (? I don't know the lingo off hand, but I mean the paper sheets everything revolves around) and in the opposite direction project the programs from VR onto the real table. I've been interested in it for years so I'm very glad to see it's still moving forwards and alive. There were years where I couldn't find any actual new information coming out of the project.
- i_am_jl 2y ago
  > if it also existed as a room in something like VRChat or added to people's rooms in a VR passthrough mode I dunno. Someone in VR can't manipulate the same physical objects that people in the real world can. You are forced to compromise physicality so that VR users aren't second-class users, or you build two different experiences for VR and non-VR users which goes against the idea of a shared experience. I think what you're describing has value, but I also think you're removing the fundamental piece of what makes this unique and special.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    Yeah the VR to physical is a limitation for sure, there are things like omnidirectional conveyors [0] that could make it possible for virtual users to move the physical program cards, at least around a flat table. It's also not a problem in a purely virtual version. I do get that it's a bit of a side step but it's also currently completely inaccessible unless you happen to be a part of one of the labs it's moved to since the other public space closed during the COVID shutdowns. Right now there's not even a physical space one could go to if they could make the trek out, unless I'm misreading the intro video. Also I hate to see the neat idea of RealTalkOS locked into probable obscurity because Bret's wholistic vision requires very expensive physical spaces when we could build and improve the tech at the core of it until projectors and cameras get cheaper than the 50-200 USD per sq foot some more open implementations estimate for costs. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAokGOEjAFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAokGOEjAFs
d--b 2y ago
This has gone a long way from the first demos, but in a way it kind of fell back to a fairly standard model of computing: ie this looks like a reactive visual programming environment with a real-world user interface sitting on top of it. Looking at the demos, the real world objects look mostly like standard user input on a computer (knobs, buttons, textarea, pointers, etc.) - using actually 3d printed models of houses in a wind simulation is fun, but would you print another house for each iteration of the design? what's the point here? - and the papers laid out really are Observable cells. This aimed to be some kind of paradigm change, but it just ends up being Excel-on-a-table. Being a fan of Excel/Observable myself, I see it as something great though, just not ground-breaking.
subjectsigma 2y ago
I really like Bret’s talks and I think Dynamicland is a great experiment which I’m happy to see moving forward. However in this video he came off less as an engineer and designer and more of a preacher. He seemed to care more about convincing people that his politics and ideas are just so gosh darn great without talking about any specifics. (When I say “politics” I mean more like “the nature of reality and the role of humans”, not Red vs Blue.) I would really like to hear more about how Realtalk actually works. It seems like there are several glaring problems that Bret has either solved or is at least working on, but he doesn’t talk about the solutions much. (Indicator collision, portability of indicators between Dynamicland instances, and debugging are just a few off the top of my head.)
Aardwolf 2y ago
I didn't want to watch videos while at work so had to do it with the text, and trying to figure out what it was was hard. First thing I encountered a few times was this sentence: "An independent nonprofit research lab, whose mission is to enable universal literacy in a humane dynamic medium." That said literally NOTHING about what this project is. Only later on I found this text: "The entire website is made in Realtalk, which means that everything on it physically exists. (Even this sentence.) It’s not a rendering of a virtual space — it’s a real place." And FINALLY I sort of understood what the interesting thing here is!
- latexr 2y ago
  > "An independent nonprofit research lab, whose mission is to enable universal literacy in a humane dynamic medium." > That said literally NOTHING about what this project is. That’s a strange complaint. The sentence wasn’t meant to say what the project is but to present the mission of the organisation which guides the project. The mission describes the core values of the organisation. The project can change or be replaced. For another example, the Mozilla foundation describes itself as “a non-profit organization that promotes openness, innovation and participation on the Internet”. That doesn’t say “we make a web browser”, which would be too limiting.
vellum 2y ago
I had always been curious as to what his thoughts were on generative AI, but he stopped posting a while back. Now, you can find his thoughts in the Dynamicland FAQ. tl;dr - he's not a fan. https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/ https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/ https://dynamicland.org/archive/2017/Is_this_the_civilization_we_really_want%3F https://dynamicland.org/archive/2017/Is_this_the_civilizatio... https://worrydream.com/quotes/?search=kerosene https://worrydream.com/quotes/?search=kerosene
082349872349872 2y ago
Pleasantly surprised to see a video with footnotes. Up until today, I'd only encountered this practice on A Capella Science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvxPSQNMGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvxPSQNMGc
AlphaWeaver 2y ago
If you're looking for something like this that's under more active development, (and with available source code,) check out Folk [0]. It's being developed by some folks who visited/worked at Dynamicland but this is entirely in the open. They even have an open house in Brooklyn monthly where you can visit and check everything out! [0]: https://folk.computer https://folk.computer
- infinite8s 2y ago
  Slight correction - Omar (one of the main developers of folk) worked at DynamicLand for a few years.
  - AlphaWeaver 2y ago
    Thanks! My mistake.
- randito 2y ago
  There's also: Paper Programs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkwSoJrVWAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkwSoJrVWAY https://github.com/janpaul123/paperprograms https://github.com/janpaul123/paperprograms There's also a dead-project: Tiny lands https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26751374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26751374 Here are some of my notes for Dynamicland: https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/ https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/ https://twitter.com/redblobgames/status/907253802931126272 https://twitter.com/redblobgames/status/907253802931126272 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJc2esBVwAAnj4X?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJc2esBVwAAnj4X?format=jpg https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/nicky-case-programming.jpg https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/nic...
teucris 2y ago
That Bret keeps Dynamicland and Realtalk so closed to others while touting it as “more open than open source” is really frustrating. I get it. Opening it up means losing control. I really appreciate the desire to specifically not share it on traditionally engineer-centric spaces like GitHub as that will skew the vision towards engineering and possibly shut out non-programmers. I even get that Dynamicland isn’t really code that can be shared anyway. But you have to give people something more than a general description and a vague invitation to visit your space. Otherwise it isn’t really open at all. Some ideas: - A document for how to experiment with domain exploration using tangibles and people in a way that leverages insights gleaned from Dynamicland - A codebase for a “toy” computational system (named completely differently from Realtalk/Dynamicland so it’s clear that it is not actually part of Dynamicland) that shows how it’s possible to link physical properties to computational agents
whazor 2y ago
This would make so much sense on a interactive whiteboards and class rooms. Teachers could print new class material they find on the internet
iAMkenough 2y ago
Unable to navigate this website since I have a disability that requires keyboard focus.
yellowapple 2y ago
While Dynamicland/Realtalk and its ethos have tended to strike me as... pretentious, to say the least, the 2024 video has a key quote that really resonates with how I've been thinking about software lately: "Anything you can make an interpreter for is a program." Thinking of data not as something to be processed by code, but as code in and of itself, is one of those mindsets that pops up independently in various circles, but a lot of mainstream programming styles and tools and techniques seem to be borderline antithetical to that sort of mindset. I think the recent renaissance-of-sorts of AI might help contribute to making code/data equivalence more mainstream, since that seems to be how your average AI model operates: as a bunch of neurons that encode code and data as a single blob. Unfortunately, that "blob" tends to be opaque and inscrutable; I wouldn't be surprised if the next big leap in software engineering coincides with bringing data-as-code-friendly programming environments into the mainstream, such that said inscrutable blobs could be made, well, scrutable.
spit2wind 2y ago
Is there a list of the books at the bottom given somewhere? The resolution is low and some books are too thin to see clearly
- virtualneuro 2y ago
  These ones maybe: https://dynamicland.org/2024/Roots/ https://dynamicland.org/2024/Roots/
violetwhitney 2y ago
If it helps... https://spatialpixel.com/procession/ https://spatialpixel.com/procession/ We were very inspired by Dynamicland. We're aiming to build a kit that uses more natural language inputs, gesture, and higher level programming. We're building this up as an open environment/kit so people will be able to make their own programmable spaces. Please reach out if you know of folks building similar spaces or efforts.

Dynamicland 2024

590 points by Pulcinella 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Home page has been updated as well, though I am unable to submit that as I have previously submitted the same URL when the site launched back in 2017. https://dynamicland.org/ https://dynamicland.org/

dang 2y ago
Fixed now. Thanks!
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

kkukshtel 2y ago

Great to see this project continuing to progress!

hasbot 2y ago

I watched the new intro video and I have no idea what this is other than lots and lots and lots of cards with dots on them. It looks soo complex!

0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
Some of the people in the video have that expression on their face too.

gffrd 2y ago

I love the ambitions and values in this work: that programs are physical so are shared and discoverable, that things are learnable through play, that the goal is people together. It's as if you asked someone to redesign the computer (as a concept) based on the technology and knowledge we have now, and designed around the tasks most fundamentally human. Always inspiring, always a gut check if I'm doing work that's valuable.

hemogloben 2y ago

Have they open sourced any of it?

mintplant 2y ago
Only in the sense that you can walk into the space and check out the source in-person.
- RodgerTheGreat 2y ago
  ...if you know the right person and are invited.
flovec 2y ago
I remember this offshoot from a few years back: https://github.com/tinylanders/tinyland https://github.com/tinylanders/tinyland
dcre 2y ago
https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/#Is_Realtalk_open_source https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/#Is_Realtalk_open_source
skadamat 2y ago
Not yet. There are some offshoot projects if you want to play & experience: - https://folk.computer/ https://folk.computer/ - http://tablaviva.org/ http://tablaviva.org/
sanxiyn 2y ago
You can look at the code of a substantial project in text, as well as in action, here. https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/ https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/

acyou 2y ago

I love the bookshelf interface. It is as good as a regular bookshelf for browsing and inspires me to explore. However, I hit the back button as soon as I click a link, where with a physical bookshelf I would probably crack the book and flip through, no comparison there.

kdamica 2y ago
Reminds me of the Packard Bell Navigator UI from the 90s: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Bell_Navigator https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packard_Bell_Navigator
- miek 2y ago
  Thanks for taking me back. This felt so futuristic at the time to my younger self.

xipho 2y ago

Inspiring stuff. TLDR, AFAICT, no, you can not do this on your own without participating IRL and taking away what you learned. Am inspired that it keeps growing, am disappointed that an indoctrination of a sorts is the only (apparent) route in. That said, sign me up please.

jedberg 2y ago

Can someone who has six minutes to watch the intro give those of us who don't a TL;DW?

skadamat 2y ago
The analogy I use is pro cooking vs home cooking. We mostly only have professional cooking in the world of computing. What if we created tools and environments for everyone to become a home cook? - What types of things might a home cook compute-r create, share, and remix? - How can individual home cook compute-rs get more agency and freedom over their programs? What would that world look like? - What if we could incorporate all the ways we think when we compute? Our amazing skills in touching, feeling, grasping, moving, etc that we evolved Dynamicland (as I see it) is exploring & researching what that world look like by building increasingly more powerful and capable computing environments.
- jedberg 2y ago
  Thank you. I still don't exactly get it though. What's with the books on a shelf?
  - azeirah 2y ago
    The books are the books that are recommended to read if you want to understand what they're doing and what prior work they're building on. Bret mentioned computer literacy on the website. The books you can consider as "the curriculum" or "the theory" or what have you.
  - zamadatix 2y ago
    It might be more time-understanding efficient to watch the video if/when you have enough time to mull what they show in it over. I'm not sure I would have gotten a useful take on this particular thing in a set of short text summaries and I'm usually one very biased towards that kind of consumption.
    - jedberg 2y ago

skadamat 2y ago

I have the physical 2017 zine and it's a beauty to have a giant folded sheet of poster paper you can expand and read on a table, like a newspaper

dack 2y ago

i'm always super impressed by brett victor and highly admire his work. that said, I have to admit that it doesn't really feel "right" based on what I've seen. there's so many limitations to the physical world that a virtual space doesn't have. i get that physical objects can participate in the UI and that arranging things in 3D space is sometimes nicer than using a mouse/keyboard. However, the fact that there is still code written on pieces of paper, and that the projector can only show a 2D image (which is only primitively interactable) just looks super awkward. and the question of "what can you do" when you're staring at a blank table seems tough again, it's super cool research but i wonder if he has plans to resolve some of these fundamental issues with mixing real and virtual

skadamat 2y ago
IMO the goal here isn't to replace traditional software engineering. It's to bring computing to spaces. Museums, classrooms, town halls, etc, which requires a different approach. The mental model I use is professional cooking in a kitchen vs home cooking. Different scale, tools, and approaches but some overlap in core ideas. A pro cook can criticize a home cook's workflow and tools, but the goals are different!
- bobajeff 2y ago
  I think their goal is similar to what smalltalk's goal originally was: To allow for regular people to do complex things with a computer. Ultimately, it didn't succeed in that goal but I believe inventing the first spreadsheet software can be counted as achieving some success there. I admire this project and hope they can one day move beyond simply typing code on a sheet of paper to creating tools that actually make our compilers/IDEs look like using punch cards.
  - samatman 2y ago
    Without Smalltalk, there would have been no HyperCard, and HyperCard definitely succeeded in that goal to a significant degree. It's a pity there's never been a modern reboot with the right factors aligned to continue that work.

modeless 2y ago

Very cool. I do believe physical embodiment of computers is the future and the current screen/GUI paradigm will decline, but the embodiment will be different. The physically embodied computer of the future will be a humanoid robot, and we will interact with it the same way we do with humans: by gesturing and speaking. There will always be a place for screens, just as there is still a place for books, but we will have less reason to use them when we can accomplish what we want to do in more natural collaboration with physically embodied computers in the form of humanoid robots, alongside other humans.

shortrounddev2 2y ago
I feel that mobile screens and AR are going to be the future
- modeless 2y ago
  Mobile screens are the present, in the form of phones. Unfortunately there are fundamental physics problems that make AR too limited and too cumbersome to entirely replace screens for the foreseeable future. I highly recommend Karl Guttag's blog to learn about the problems that will hold back AR for a long, long time: https://kguttag.com/2023/06/03/slides-from-presentation-at-awe-2023-on-optical-versus-passthrough-mr/ https://kguttag.com/2023/06/03/slides-from-presentation-at-a...
  - shortrounddev2 2y ago
    Yes, I think that mobile screens will continue to be our present, but in the future! I think that touch screens are the preferred medium for computation for technology users who started using computers regularly for personal use after c. 2011. Personally, I hate the things but I can see that for people who are not technical users, the mobile phone is a natural way to compute. I know of many people who don't even own a laptop or desktop; they just use their phone for all computation
    - carlosneves 2y ago

reaperman 2y ago

I assume this hasn't been "released" yet, but still thought I'd ask if the source code for the operating system (or "computing environment", in Dynamicland-speak) is available anywhere and also if there yet exists any DIY hardware guides for building your own to play with at my own location (far from the Oakland/Berkeley Dynamicland facility). I believe the FAQ confirms that this is not possible at the moment: > Where can I get Realtalk? >> At present, Realtalk exists in Dynamicland spaces and in the spaces of our collaborators, where we can carefully grow and tend in-person communities of practice. In the short term, additional spaces will be started by people who have contributed significantly to an existing space and have internalized the culture and its values. Long term, we intend to distribute the ideas in the form of kits+games which will guide communities through building their own computing environments that they fully understand and control. Long long term, computing may be built into all infrastructure as electric light is today. This would also require an extensive network of educational support.

asolove 2y ago
There are some similar-ish systems with alpha-level install instructions: https://folk.computer/pilot https://folk.computer/pilot
dingnuts 2y ago
>In the short term, additional spaces will be started by people who have contributed significantly to an existing space and have internalized the culture and its values there's something ominous, weird, and sort of damning about being protective of your "culture and values" in this way and to this extent. If Dynamicland offered a truly novel computing paradigm, it should be one that is accessible by other cultures. If it offers a valuable culture and worthwhile values, those values should be viral on their merits. They should be broadcast, rather than kept closely guarded. If you have to carefully indoctrinate new users into your culture in order to protect it and keep out the Others who might ruin your culture with wrongthink, maybe what you actually have is a cult.
- Juliate 2y ago
  > there's something [...] about being protective of your "culture and values" in this way and to this extent Yes, AND it may also be because it's kind of innovation in the open, before it's really ready or that all the critical angles are fixed, and they might not want spoil specifics they would like to make flourish and present to the whole world, and see them ... let's say half-assed, or misunderstood enough that it does not "jell". In the end, it will be embraced in some way. But it's understandable that they have a specific idea in mind. See it as a trailer for a movie where post-prod is not yet fully done, perhaps.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

skadamat 2y ago

The best thing about this website is that it was made in Dynamicland, which is the most bootstrapp-y & Dynamicland thing ever: https://x.com/worrydream/status/1831035663703212350 https://x.com/worrydream/status/1831035663703212350

latexr 2y ago
I’m surprised Bret is still on Twitter, which is an ever more closed non-communal system. It’s values seem to go against everything Dynamicland upholds.
- infinite8s 2y ago
  I think he just used it as a place to announce the new site. If you look at his posting history he's only made 1 per year for the past few years.
  - latexr 2y ago
    > If you look at his posting history Can’t, as I don’t have an account. That’s part of my point. But thank you for letting me know.

alabhyajindal 2y ago

The intro video looks very cool! I would love to try it but I doubt that'll be possible.

hazn 2y ago

whenever i'll teach newcomers computing, i will now adopt the approach laid out here. it's easy to forget how painful learning computing is, how much you need to know about the internet to make a single http request and read out it's response. user @simonw talked about this recently on twitter [0][1] absolute beautiful point about needing a different kind of literacy in the modern age at the end of the video. i wish, with all my heart, that this and similar projects develop a loving community which will enable other communities to learn computing in an accessible, cheap and memorable way. [0] https://x.com/simonw/status/1829195655006531661 https://x.com/simonw/status/1829195655006531661 (original twitter link) [1] https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01j6z4cj87f5ky3c6ese0thscw https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01j6z4cj87f5ky3c6ese0thscw (backup because twitter is not the future of computing)

bsimpson 2y ago

I had the good fortune of taking a field trip there in 2018. The video is a very good overview of the project. One interesting artifact of "the real world simulates itself" is version control. At Dynamicland, each version of a program is a sheet of paper (with a unique set of fiducials along the edges). If you want to edit a program, you grab a keyboard and point it at the program. A text editor comes up; you make your changes, and hit commit. When you do, it spits out a new piece of paper with your changes. Put it in the view of the camera to use the new version. Take it away and use the old paper to roll the change back.

breck 2y ago
> with a unique set of fiducials along the edges I suspect each piece of paper, if examined with a good enough camera, has a unique fingerprint, like a snowflake, and perhaps this could be used in the future for an "Isomer Addressed Filesystem". In other words, all pieces of paper ship with a UUID already, woven into their atoms.
- shoxidizer 2y ago
  I would suggest instead convincing every printer manufacturer to embed in every printer a routine that encodes a unique identifier on every print and then reading that using more typical cameras. The hard part has already been done. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
  - jf 2y ago
    I'm pretty sure that I mentioned the printer tracking dots to the researchers at the lab and certainly mentioned DataGlyphs. So they were aware of alternatives. The trick is to get a workable system with cameras that have the resolution to pick out those details from a dozen feet away, as well as a software stack that can recognize them at ~60fps. The goal has always been to move away from the dots, you can see this in the progress report: https://dynamicland.org/2019/Progress_report/ https://dynamicland.org/2019/Progress_report/ That said, and this is purely my opinion, the system works well enough as it is, and there is so much fun stuff to build on top of what works, that it's hard to prioritize a better object recognition system over the myriad of other interesting things to be done.

abeppu 2y ago

I think the overall idea here is really cool. But ... to me the idea of printing stanzas of code onto paper and then putting them on a board so they can be OCRed back into text and then re-parsed seems circuitous. Like as a demonstration that in principle you can work this way on code as well as on more spatially-native concepts, it seems fine, but is that actually the best way for all kinds of work? Or can we acknowledge that this makes more sense for some things than for others?

bsimpson 2y ago
It's not OCR. Those colored dots along the periphery are fiducials. They're how Realtalk recognizes a program. Every object that you can interact with in Realtalk has a unique set of fiducials. When the camera sees one, it looks up its behavior and projects it accordingly.
- modeless 2y ago
  So if you physically copy and paste code, or edit it with a pen, that won't work, right? The embodiment feels superficial.
  - jf 2y ago
    Correct, that doesn't work in the system as implemented. But my understanding is that there has been a goal from the start to _eventually_ get physical code editing to work. I recall hearing the researchers talking about wanting to eventually get handwriting recognition working, so you could edit code by hand.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    Cameras good enough to do that kind of work aren't really available right now. It does still make the code more accessible by making it immediately visible on the object so if you want to know how a thing works you can just pick it up.
- abeppu 2y ago
  ... so in the intro video at like 2:37, it says that a program can be in language, or an arrangement of components, or a hand-drawn diagram, because anything you can write an interpreter for is a program. The "arrangement of components" and the "hand-drawn diagram" shots show stuff drawn on a whiteboard, which seems like it can be edited by redrawing. Are you saying that a hand-drawn diagram program can be freely edited by changing the diagram, but a language-based program cannot be edited by changing the representation of its code? That seems ... worse. I would think that you'd want a fiducial marker on code-printouts to identify that a piece of code has a language and a namespace perhaps (i.e. "this page contains a kotlin definition that lives in com.acme.foo"), but that the contents should be modifiable. Otherwise, what's the point? If to edit the code you're gonna pull up a keyboard and screen (or project an editor window) ... then this seems like what we already have, plus you have to print stuff out.

bsimpson 2y ago

For those unfamiliar, the founder is Bret Victor. He made a name for himself working on human interfaces at Apple in the Steve Jobs iPad era. In 2012, he gave a couple of influential talks: Inventing on Principle, and Stop Drawing Dead Fish. Bret's take on being a visionary/futurist is fascinating. He imagines the near-future world he wants to live in, prototypes enough of it to write a talk about, and gives the talk with the hopes that someone in the audience will be inspired to make it a reality. He gives ideas away with the hope that he'll be paid back with a world where those ideas have been realized. https://worrydream.com/ https://worrydream.com/

sigmonsays 2y ago
that approach seems so off... i'm curious how it's justified. like countless hundreds of quotes on execution vs ideas, here is one: "Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does." anyways, i'm gonna spend a little more time this evening to really dig in.
- jacobolus 2y ago
  It's pretty hard for one person or even one small team to both (a) do advanced green-field research in whichever uncertain direction they feel most exited to explore, and (b) make a complete and polished saleable product which best meets the needs of a well-defined set of customers. The skills, personalities, organizing principles, and methods involved are substantially different, and focusing on making a product has a tendency to cut off many conceptually valuable lines of inquiry based on financial motivations. Notice that Bret Victor's goal (like most researchers) is not to become as rich as possible. Whether researchers or product developers ultimately have more leverage is something of a chicken-and-egg question. To make an analogy, it's like asking who was more influential, Karl Marx or Otto von Bismarck.
  - skadamat 2y ago
    The world needs powerful new ideas and people willing to bring those ideas to everyone through creation of products and services. We need BOTH but it's getting harder to build a career focusing on inventing and discovering new ideas nowadays unfortunately. This is documented super well in this book (published by Stripe Press!): https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Freedom-Civilization-Donald-Braben/dp/0578675919 https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Freedom-Civilization-Donal...

whywhywhywhy 2y ago

Victor's previous work has all been huge inspirations to me, but after many years of this project that I initially was hyped for there are just some big red flags to me that this isn't the way forward really or even a good use of his talent. Big talk about solving the worlds problems out in the room and not on the phone I agree with in sentiment but I feel all that big talk falls completely flat on it's face when the project you're pouring money and most importantly time only exists in one space and only benefits a small group of academics and then that issue being gushed over as if its a benefit when really it just means you're not actually building in the real world at all you're building a fake thing in a fake world for the 0.01% of people to larp with. Think the world of computing could greatly benefit from Brett but almost in his success it means he'll just be able to play pretend in the world of "non-profit"/academia meaning the output will be citations + grants not value and there will be no real benefit to computing from that work. Maybe I'd feel different if the intro video ended with a repo and a list of hardware to build your own Dynamicland, I almost think the fact it doesn't is a tactic for the project to never have to really prove its value...

breck 2y ago

I'm building my own implementation to understand how this works. No idea what I'm doing yet. Let's build together! I'm livestreaming here: https://youtube.com/live/02-wJ7Od9Bo?feature=share https://youtube.com/live/02-wJ7Od9Bo?feature=share (Warning: I have yet to shower today).

Uehreka 2y ago

As cool as Dynamicland is, I still don’t get why they won’t open source it or at least release it in some form. I’ve heard various people give roundabout excuses, but none of them hold water. They often fall into one of the following categories: - “People won’t get the core ideas and will use it to make things that go against the core ideas” — People who care about Bret Victor’s work will take the time to learn the ideas. People who don’t might try and make something Bret doesn’t like, but currently the world is full of things Bret doesn’t like, so I don’t get how that would be different than the status quo. - “It’s actually ‘anti-internet’, reimagining computers as objects in physical space, without the intangible connections provided by the internet” — Cool! I’d like to use it to make an airgapped little lab thing for people in my city to play and experiment in, but I can’t do that unless it’s released to the community. - “Yeah but remember it’s ‘anti-internet’, releasing it open source on the internet would violate the core principles.” — This feels too cute by half. I don’t consider this a legitimate objection. - “Just come to Oakland, you’ll understand when you get here and use it.” — That’s way out of many people’s budgets. I also get the feeling that I wouldn’t come around just by seeing it, I think I’d want one in my city even more. - “You’re not entitled to other people’s work.” — True, but most stuff done in this sort of research space is done with the intent of spreading an idea or increasing the public good. It seems kind of odd that the Dynamicland folks keep talking about what a revolutionary concept it is while preventing 99.9% of people from actually experiencing it. Overall it just seems like such a weird attitude. I get that they’re worried about the world misunderstanding their ideas, but at this point there are tons of people who have been eating up Bret Victor’s work and have immense respect for his ideas, and would gladly watch, listen to or read whatever instructions would be necessary to help someone who’s already bought in “play by the rules” and get the best possible experience.

jdougan 2y ago
> - “People won’t get the core ideas and will use it to make things that go against the core ideas” — People who care about Bret Victor’s work will take the time to learn the ideas. People who don’t might try and make something Bret doesn’t like, but currently the world is full of things Bret doesn’t like, so I don’t get how that would be different than the status quo. I think the problem is like what happened to "agile" after the manifesto. People took a term with a meaning, and ignored that meaning in promoting their own stuff, thus confusing the terminology and messing up discussion of the concepts.

0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago

Wow I really like my keyboard

geraldalewis 2y ago

This seems to me like the apotheosis of Jef Raskin's Humane Interface - super cool!

koolala 2y ago

I'm hopeful VR programming with standardized programming languages and AI will create a Dynamicland-like software environment one day. Social spatial programming just needs to be made fun like building in a game.

jdboyd 2y ago
Why VR instead of projectors?
- koolala 2y ago
  Hehe because VR is unlimited. It's only recently the resolution of VR displays is even good enough for text. The final need is comfort. I'm currently trying to figure out a efficient text rendering algorithm designed for 3D.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  VR comes with the person using it instead of needing many projectors to cover a room at sufficient resolution to display text. There are an open projects that is trying to recreate Dynamicland and their numbers are 50-200 per square foot of covered area between the cameras, projectors and compute required. It doesn't take much space to make equipping multiple people with VR with good pass through competitively priced.
  - koolala 2y ago
    I'm most excited for collaborative software spaces to be online in virtual space as well as with pass-through VR AR. Would make programming online with people so much more fun and homey!
Philpax 2y ago
Have you seen Resonite? That's probably the closest to that today.
- koolala 2y ago
  Yes, I am a big Anyland fan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g50f6Sjle5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g50f6Sjle5o The goal to me is standard programming languges of all kinds. Lisp VR, Js VR, C VR, LogiX ect. Wasm is almost a polyglot. How we interact with Text and Code Execution is expandable in my mind.

rparet 2y ago

I was fortunate enough to visit back in 2018. It’s so nice to see this persevere.

thatguymike 2y ago

I spent quite a lot of time at Dynamicland Oakland. It's great fun and the people are just wonderful. I think of Realtalk as adding another layer to programs, the Physical Layer. Program behavior can be determined and controlled by physical layout as well as code. It's not completely unlike a frontend/backend distinction, and in fact you could make a Realtalk simulator using a javascript canvas much more easily than building the camera/projector setup. Just like building full stack software, there's a large amount of nonobvious skill in dictating your separations of concerns between the physical layer and software layer. Good programs are flexible, remixable, modular, intuitive, and let non-programmers make nontrivial interactions and enhancements via the physical layer. Bad programs require you to have the physical objects in a particular configuration, or break completely if one piece of paper is lost. I found these programming design questions a really interesting part of playing at Dynamicland. A solid limitation of the system is that the pieces of programs aren't actually modular. You can't take a Cat from one program and a Dog from another program and have the dog interact with the cat. This is obvious in software - that's why we design APIs - but it's frustrating when all your programs exist in the same space (that's the whole selling point) and when bringing part of Program A into Program B is so intuitive and, when you have dozens of these programs lying around the room, inevitable. I'd love to see them explore (wait for it...) using AI. Incorporating object recognition could remove the need for pasting dots onto every object by defining rules like "when you see a car, color it Red". It could allow for inter-program interoperability via the shared language of object recognition. And it could even determining logical interactions in a fun and surprising way: what _should_ happen when I take the cactus from this program and put it on top of the balloon from that program?

jes5199 2y ago
it should be possible to make objects that are general-purpose, you end up with a bunch of low-code reusable things like "dog" or "car", and they have stable representations than can be used as data in multiple other programs
miffing 2y ago
related: https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/#What_is_Realtalks_relationship_to_AI https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/#What_is_Realtalks_relation...

_dain_ 2y ago

Alright someone has to be the skeptic: there's no fucking god damned way this works as well as the video suggests. There has to be enormous amounts of behind-the-scenes work to support this thing; the idea that it's self-hosting all in one room is an absolutely extraordinary claim. It's a big red flag that they only invite specific people who are good "culture fits", and don't have any public code. They can't risk people seeing the puppet wires. It's some Wizard of Oz / Potemkin village / confidence trick. That's why nothing has been released after a decade -- there's nothing to release. It's vapor, this generation's Xanadu.

rtkwe 2y ago
They ran an open space for a few years. The things being done aren't that wild. You have cameras tracking fiducials, running an associated script every frame that can either just be text or can pull from the computer to act on things not explicitly on a page in a frame. None of that is conceptually that wild or heavy and people have made versions of this that you can actually see the source of. PaperPrograms is one and Folk Computer is another.

soulofmischief 2y ago

This is a pretty neat idea. Watched through a few talks. I love cyberphysical programming, live programming, involving the audience in the computation, so Bret's work with Dynamicland speaks to me. I do however think the card system could use a rethink in terms of ergonomics. Wish I still lived in California so I could check out the system in person! Watching the development of this project with keen interest... sure, a lot of the ideas might not end up catching on, but that's the nature of research.

tgbugs 2y ago

One of the most striking things about this for me is how clearly it demonstrates the fact that community and sharing are not the same thing. Building tools that enable communities to share effectively seems like another additional challenge, and the fact that virtual spaces and digital spaces are dismissed seems like it might prove a major roadblock to connecting and sharing in a larger inclusive community. Given the interest in leveraging this for doing science it also seems that this is at risk for empowering individual labs while leaving all interfaces to the rest of the larger scientific community dependent on the current utterly broken system of publication.

fjfaase 2y ago

I wonder whether someone already has build away to create modular synthesizer using block with knobs on the table. A line on the top of the knob would signal its position. (In the video I saw some shots that looked like sequencers.) You would also need some mechanism to connect the modules together. I played around with VCV Rack [1], but adjusting knobs with a mouse feels very different than using your hands to turn a physical knob. Also, I would like to have more freedom in arranging modules more freely as you could do on a table, instead of using patch cables that go into all kinds of directions. Especially for newbies, it would be an interesting way to see if they want to go into real modular synths based on Eurorack [2], AE Modular [3] or microrack [4]. [1] https://vcvrack.com/ https://vcvrack.com/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurorack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurorack [3] https://www.tangiblewaves.com/ https://www.tangiblewaves.com/ [4] https://microrack.org/ https://microrack.org/

jauntywundrkind 2y ago
Reactable's main use seemed to be as a synth. Different effort but related, predates. https://www.dancemusicnw.com/awesome-instrument-youve-never-heard-reactable/ https://www.dancemusicnw.com/awesome-instrument-youve-never-...
miffing 2y ago
related: https://dynamicland.org/archive/2023/MIDI https://dynamicland.org/archive/2023/MIDI
dbspin 2y ago
Patchblocks used to exist (and have a very cool party house in Belfast) - but looks like their IP was acquired http://patchblocks.com/page2.html http://patchblocks.com/page2.html Roli Blocks is also somewhat similar https://midi.org/roli-blocks-modular-wireless-midi-touch-system https://midi.org/roli-blocks-modular-wireless-midi-touch-sys...

hulium 2y ago

I think the cool part about this is that you can easily build a user interface from physical objects, so you can skip some of the digital frontend and design and focus more on the computational backend. This frees you up for more explorative, improvised coding, which is great for research and art but maybe also many other situations where fixed user interfaces get into the way too much. Based on what they show about their biology lab project, it seems to be surprisingly useful.

teleforce 2y ago

Kudos to Bret and all the best to the communal computing community (pun intended) hopefully this takes the cyber physical system including IoT and machine-to-machine to another (useful) level. >Anyone can change any program at any time, and see the changes immediately Not sure what programming language Bret implementing the system but recently there's discussion how difficult and how slow to parse/compile some of the popular programming languages including C++ and Rust. In this case D is a unique anomaly where it has immediate rdmd REPL facility although it's a complex and a compiled language [1]. For creative, inventive, intuitive and comprehensive programming cyber physical system that involve hardware with fast sensing, control and immediate responses, D language is hands down the best programming there is [2]. The D authors however don't believe in any killer applications but this Dynamicland of communal computing most probably the niche that D is looking for to propel it for more wider adoption. [1] Parsing Awk Is Tricky: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41422283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41422283 [2] D Features Overview: https://dlang.org/comparison.html https://dlang.org/comparison.html

galaxyLogic 2y ago
Smalltalk. I used to run a server in Smalltalk and if it had an error it would halt, I could debug where it halted, I could change the code and restart. The client would not know, unless my fixing it took too long.

cyberax 2y ago

I hate that website design. It doesn't answer the basic question: WTF is "dynamicland"?

nsonha 2y ago

I used to think Bret Victor's work is cool but how exactly do we build all these seemingly ad-hoc interactions into systems? one-by-one? Maybe generative code AI can do it on-demand one day?

cbreynoldson 2y ago

For those criticizing, think of this updated website more from the lens of art, less pragmatics. The Doug Engelbart "Mother of All Demos" functioned in this way as well. Can you imagine scoffing at Engelbart in the same way? There are quite a few deep ideas in this presentation of Dynamicland, many of which are subtle and take some effort to find and appreciate, much like art. Yes, it is intended to be useful to many one day, and they claim it "actually works" _now_, but if you read carefully (and you should!), they are trying very hard to maintain (and gradually grow) a beautiful little flame of a vision. PARC, on the other hand, had 10 years. Afterwards, industry ran with the ideas they wanted, and Alan Kay has been beating the "you missed the big ideas!" drum since. The Dynamicland group is trying to learn from this lesson of history. Kudos to the group.

motohagiography 2y ago

what an important set of ideas. if I'm interpreting correctly it's an instance of a pattern language for organizing people aided by tech. the idea seems to have moved past the constraints of goal oriented methodologies and on to modular blocks of logic for coordination. i wonder if a coarse analogy for it might include roberts rules in a related category of ideas, and then with some concepts from tech around versioning and then it's something else entirely, but they seem to approach some of the same coordination problems.

rtkwe 2y ago

This feels like something you could get a whole lot more traction and experimentation in quickly if it also existed as a room in something like VRChat or added to people's rooms in a VR passthrough mode. You'd lose some of the benefits of being in a shared physical space but you would also lose some of the limitations around the tracking resolution and stability of the fiducial markers on the page and open it up to people who can't make it to the location in person. A 2.0 version could even merge the two versions slightly, tracking irl people into the virtual space (with pose and position estimates?) and programs (? I don't know the lingo off hand, but I mean the paper sheets everything revolves around) and in the opposite direction project the programs from VR onto the real table. I've been interested in it for years so I'm very glad to see it's still moving forwards and alive. There were years where I couldn't find any actual new information coming out of the project.

i_am_jl 2y ago
> if it also existed as a room in something like VRChat or added to people's rooms in a VR passthrough mode I dunno. Someone in VR can't manipulate the same physical objects that people in the real world can. You are forced to compromise physicality so that VR users aren't second-class users, or you build two different experiences for VR and non-VR users which goes against the idea of a shared experience. I think what you're describing has value, but I also think you're removing the fundamental piece of what makes this unique and special.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  Yeah the VR to physical is a limitation for sure, there are things like omnidirectional conveyors [0] that could make it possible for virtual users to move the physical program cards, at least around a flat table. It's also not a problem in a purely virtual version. I do get that it's a bit of a side step but it's also currently completely inaccessible unless you happen to be a part of one of the labs it's moved to since the other public space closed during the COVID shutdowns. Right now there's not even a physical space one could go to if they could make the trek out, unless I'm misreading the intro video. Also I hate to see the neat idea of RealTalkOS locked into probable obscurity because Bret's wholistic vision requires very expensive physical spaces when we could build and improve the tech at the core of it until projectors and cameras get cheaper than the 50-200 USD per sq foot some more open implementations estimate for costs. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAokGOEjAFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAokGOEjAFs

d--b 2y ago

This has gone a long way from the first demos, but in a way it kind of fell back to a fairly standard model of computing: ie this looks like a reactive visual programming environment with a real-world user interface sitting on top of it. Looking at the demos, the real world objects look mostly like standard user input on a computer (knobs, buttons, textarea, pointers, etc.) - using actually 3d printed models of houses in a wind simulation is fun, but would you print another house for each iteration of the design? what's the point here? - and the papers laid out really are Observable cells. This aimed to be some kind of paradigm change, but it just ends up being Excel-on-a-table. Being a fan of Excel/Observable myself, I see it as something great though, just not ground-breaking.

subjectsigma 2y ago

I really like Bret’s talks and I think Dynamicland is a great experiment which I’m happy to see moving forward. However in this video he came off less as an engineer and designer and more of a preacher. He seemed to care more about convincing people that his politics and ideas are just so gosh darn great without talking about any specifics. (When I say “politics” I mean more like “the nature of reality and the role of humans”, not Red vs Blue.) I would really like to hear more about how Realtalk actually works. It seems like there are several glaring problems that Bret has either solved or is at least working on, but he doesn’t talk about the solutions much. (Indicator collision, portability of indicators between Dynamicland instances, and debugging are just a few off the top of my head.)

Aardwolf 2y ago

I didn't want to watch videos while at work so had to do it with the text, and trying to figure out what it was was hard. First thing I encountered a few times was this sentence: "An independent nonprofit research lab, whose mission is to enable universal literacy in a humane dynamic medium." That said literally NOTHING about what this project is. Only later on I found this text: "The entire website is made in Realtalk, which means that everything on it physically exists. (Even this sentence.) It’s not a rendering of a virtual space — it’s a real place." And FINALLY I sort of understood what the interesting thing here is!

latexr 2y ago
> "An independent nonprofit research lab, whose mission is to enable universal literacy in a humane dynamic medium." > That said literally NOTHING about what this project is. That’s a strange complaint. The sentence wasn’t meant to say what the project is but to present the mission of the organisation which guides the project. The mission describes the core values of the organisation. The project can change or be replaced. For another example, the Mozilla foundation describes itself as “a non-profit organization that promotes openness, innovation and participation on the Internet”. That doesn’t say “we make a web browser”, which would be too limiting.

vellum 2y ago

I had always been curious as to what his thoughts were on generative AI, but he stopped posting a while back. Now, you can find his thoughts in the Dynamicland FAQ. tl;dr - he's not a fan. https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/ https://dynamicland.org/2024/FAQ/ https://dynamicland.org/archive/2017/Is_this_the_civilization_we_really_want%3F https://dynamicland.org/archive/2017/Is_this_the_civilizatio... https://worrydream.com/quotes/?search=kerosene https://worrydream.com/quotes/?search=kerosene

082349872349872 2y ago

Pleasantly surprised to see a video with footnotes. Up until today, I'd only encountered this practice on A Capella Science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvxPSQNMGc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObvxPSQNMGc

AlphaWeaver 2y ago

If you're looking for something like this that's under more active development, (and with available source code,) check out Folk [0]. It's being developed by some folks who visited/worked at Dynamicland but this is entirely in the open. They even have an open house in Brooklyn monthly where you can visit and check everything out! [0]: https://folk.computer https://folk.computer

infinite8s 2y ago
Slight correction - Omar (one of the main developers of folk) worked at DynamicLand for a few years.
- AlphaWeaver 2y ago
  Thanks! My mistake.
randito 2y ago
There's also: Paper Programs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkwSoJrVWAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkwSoJrVWAY https://github.com/janpaul123/paperprograms https://github.com/janpaul123/paperprograms There's also a dead-project: Tiny lands https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26751374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26751374 Here are some of my notes for Dynamicland: https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/ https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/ https://twitter.com/redblobgames/status/907253802931126272 https://twitter.com/redblobgames/status/907253802931126272 https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJc2esBVwAAnj4X?format=jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DJc2esBVwAAnj4X?format=jpg https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/nicky-case-programming.jpg https://omar.website/posts/notes-from-dynamicland-geokit/nic...

teucris 2y ago

That Bret keeps Dynamicland and Realtalk so closed to others while touting it as “more open than open source” is really frustrating. I get it. Opening it up means losing control. I really appreciate the desire to specifically not share it on traditionally engineer-centric spaces like GitHub as that will skew the vision towards engineering and possibly shut out non-programmers. I even get that Dynamicland isn’t really code that can be shared anyway. But you have to give people something more than a general description and a vague invitation to visit your space. Otherwise it isn’t really open at all. Some ideas: - A document for how to experiment with domain exploration using tangibles and people in a way that leverages insights gleaned from Dynamicland - A codebase for a “toy” computational system (named completely differently from Realtalk/Dynamicland so it’s clear that it is not actually part of Dynamicland) that shows how it’s possible to link physical properties to computational agents

whazor 2y ago

This would make so much sense on a interactive whiteboards and class rooms. Teachers could print new class material they find on the internet

iAMkenough 2y ago

Unable to navigate this website since I have a disability that requires keyboard focus.

yellowapple 2y ago

While Dynamicland/Realtalk and its ethos have tended to strike me as... pretentious, to say the least, the 2024 video has a key quote that really resonates with how I've been thinking about software lately: "Anything you can make an interpreter for is a program." Thinking of data not as something to be processed by code, but as code in and of itself, is one of those mindsets that pops up independently in various circles, but a lot of mainstream programming styles and tools and techniques seem to be borderline antithetical to that sort of mindset. I think the recent renaissance-of-sorts of AI might help contribute to making code/data equivalence more mainstream, since that seems to be how your average AI model operates: as a bunch of neurons that encode code and data as a single blob. Unfortunately, that "blob" tends to be opaque and inscrutable; I wouldn't be surprised if the next big leap in software engineering coincides with bringing data-as-code-friendly programming environments into the mainstream, such that said inscrutable blobs could be made, well, scrutable.

spit2wind 2y ago

Is there a list of the books at the bottom given somewhere? The resolution is low and some books are too thin to see clearly

virtualneuro 2y ago
These ones maybe: https://dynamicland.org/2024/Roots/ https://dynamicland.org/2024/Roots/

violetwhitney 2y ago

If it helps... https://spatialpixel.com/procession/ https://spatialpixel.com/procession/ We were very inspired by Dynamicland. We're aiming to build a kit that uses more natural language inputs, gesture, and higher level programming. We're building this up as an open environment/kit so people will be able to make their own programmable spaces. Please reach out if you know of folks building similar spaces or efforts.