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He loses me a bit when he starts talking about his intent. Englebart indeed demonstrated precursors to all these modern technologies, despite the author claimin

by nsxwolf 13y ago

He loses me a bit when he starts talking about his intent. Englebart indeed demonstrated precursors to all these modern technologies, despite the author claiming otherwise. So he didn't demonstrate a precursor Skype and screen sharing, just because there's only one mouse pointer to control in Skype? Ok, fine. Then he demonstrated the precursor to Screenhero, which has multiple mouse pointers and embodies Englebart's intent exactly.

asolove 13y ago
The point Bret is making is deeper: Skype and Screenhero shouldn't have to be 'applications' that dig into mucky parts of the OS to try to get screen and pointer sharing to work. And even with those applications, other applications get wonky if they are used via screen-sharing. "Sharing" (of applications, data, peripherals, and capabilities like network storage) to be a first-level primitive provided by the system and all applications ought to be designed to work with it. Consider this: we're all connected via networks and bluetooth. So why can't I, in a simple way, let your mouse control my cursor? Or send just part of my screen to part of your screen on the OS level? Or have a photo library on my NAS that smartly caches things I look at often on my iPhone, syncing changes back when I edit a photo? Or share a vim session such that my mouse and keyboard follow my vimrc and yours follow yours? Why do these things have to be built in hacky ways, over and over, specific to individual applications rather than built as reusable building-blocks? We've gone to so much trouble to bolt sharing on to "personal" computers, when that whole idea is flawed. Engelbart's goal was to create a fundamentally networked system where the combined abilities of everyone would exceed the mere sum of their capacity. If Engelbart's vision were alive, we wouldn't be excited that we have Skype and screenhero. We'd ask, now that we have these things, how can we build software that uses them to get better outcomes? A medical tool the lets two doctors interact over a patient's EMR and rotate CAT scans together in a way that increases the odds that they get the right diagnosis? A pair programming method that finds more bugs, and gets better designs, more than just one person looking over another's shoulder? A spreadsheet that lets two business founders argue about their core assumptions and business model collaboratively? Read about the early history of computing to see examples of this. One that comes to mind is the timesharing systems in the early MIT AI lab, where there were no security systems. RMS talks about copying bits of code and configuration that he found in his professors' private folders, and the way that people would snoop on each other and build complex systems out of these shared parts.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  people are not ready to be in continuous collaboration mode, i.e. in the mode there they intensively, in real-time, generate worthy ideas and constructively receive(understand), analyze, improve upon and bounce back the ideas generated by the collaborating partner(s). It is very intensive brain activity requiring matching partners and it wears you off pretty quickly. It is like tennis - possible to do for a couple hours few times a week. Or like musical jam sessions - you can do it for prolonged times only when young, and usually with help of some "energizers". It is one of the reasons why email is such a mainstay of collaboration.
  - asolove 13y ago
    Yes, "not ready" is exactly right. And this is one of Bret's points: Engelbart wasn't actually interested in technology itself. He was interested in sociology: creating groups of people who were ready to do transformative work by collaborating in new ways. Whether or not this model would work is up for debate. But that collaboration, not any particular piece of software, was what Engelbart was after.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    > people are not ready to be in continuous collaboration mode What would be the first step in getting people ready?
  - chongli 13y ago
    Maybe once we've got basic income and everybody can relax a bit more. People can start collaborating on pie-in-the-sky type projects without so much worry about productivity or their next paycheck. Then doing a collaboration for a few hours a week isn't such a big deal.
- nsxwolf 13y ago
  So is it a question of OS integration, then? At some point these technologies get borged by the OS kernel, and we end up with these features operating as first class citizens. It's hard work, so should we surprised that things start as add-on applications first? Aren't we in the process of achieving a lot of these goals in a pretty clean way? There was a lot of code to write to get to this point.

by nsxwolf 13y ago

asolove 13y ago

The point Bret is making is deeper: Skype and Screenhero shouldn't have to be 'applications' that dig into mucky parts of the OS to try to get screen and pointer sharing to work. And even with those applications, other applications get wonky if they are used via screen-sharing. "Sharing" (of applications, data, peripherals, and capabilities like network storage) to be a first-level primitive provided by the system and all applications ought to be designed to work with it. Consider this: we're all connected via networks and bluetooth. So why can't I, in a simple way, let your mouse control my cursor? Or send just part of my screen to part of your screen on the OS level? Or have a photo library on my NAS that smartly caches things I look at often on my iPhone, syncing changes back when I edit a photo? Or share a vim session such that my mouse and keyboard follow my vimrc and yours follow yours? Why do these things have to be built in hacky ways, over and over, specific to individual applications rather than built as reusable building-blocks? We've gone to so much trouble to bolt sharing on to "personal" computers, when that whole idea is flawed. Engelbart's goal was to create a fundamentally networked system where the combined abilities of everyone would exceed the mere sum of their capacity. If Engelbart's vision were alive, we wouldn't be excited that we have Skype and screenhero. We'd ask, now that we have these things, how can we build software that uses them to get better outcomes? A medical tool the lets two doctors interact over a patient's EMR and rotate CAT scans together in a way that increases the odds that they get the right diagnosis? A pair programming method that finds more bugs, and gets better designs, more than just one person looking over another's shoulder? A spreadsheet that lets two business founders argue about their core assumptions and business model collaboratively? Read about the early history of computing to see examples of this. One that comes to mind is the timesharing systems in the early MIT AI lab, where there were no security systems. RMS talks about copying bits of code and configuration that he found in his professors' private folders, and the way that people would snoop on each other and build complex systems out of these shared parts.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
VladRussian2 13y ago
people are not ready to be in continuous collaboration mode, i.e. in the mode there they intensively, in real-time, generate worthy ideas and constructively receive(understand), analyze, improve upon and bounce back the ideas generated by the collaborating partner(s). It is very intensive brain activity requiring matching partners and it wears you off pretty quickly. It is like tennis - possible to do for a couple hours few times a week. Or like musical jam sessions - you can do it for prolonged times only when young, and usually with help of some "energizers". It is one of the reasons why email is such a mainstay of collaboration.
- asolove 13y ago
  Yes, "not ready" is exactly right. And this is one of Bret's points: Engelbart wasn't actually interested in technology itself. He was interested in sociology: creating groups of people who were ready to do transformative work by collaborating in new ways. Whether or not this model would work is up for debate. But that collaboration, not any particular piece of software, was what Engelbart was after.
- saraid216 13y ago
  > people are not ready to be in continuous collaboration mode What would be the first step in getting people ready?
- chongli 13y ago
  Maybe once we've got basic income and everybody can relax a bit more. People can start collaborating on pie-in-the-sky type projects without so much worry about productivity or their next paycheck. Then doing a collaboration for a few hours a week isn't such a big deal.
nsxwolf 13y ago
So is it a question of OS integration, then? At some point these technologies get borged by the OS kernel, and we end up with these features operating as first class citizens. It's hard work, so should we surprised that things start as add-on applications first? Aren't we in the process of achieving a lot of these goals in a pretty clean way? There was a lot of code to write to get to this point.