Hmm are we using computers correctly?

Abspielen

A skateboard for our minds

The computer is "a bicycle for our minds," as Steve Jobs once said.

Do you ever watch those velodrome events in the Olympics? They either have a rolling start, or they have to have someone holding them up for a standing start. The bikers look silly and helpless until they get moving. And then they go in a loop, round and round, very, very fast. If you turn a little too hard your wheels slide out from under you and you eat it. When bikers crash in the velodrome the road rash is horriffic and their paper-thin costumes are torn the shreds.

What if we thought of the computer as a "skateboard for the mind?" What would a "skateboard" computer be like? How do we get there?

The Cuckoo's Egg

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson

I brought this up on the last episode, but I'm reading a book called "The Cuckoo's Egg," and it's making me very jealous of how much agency this guy has over his machines. In 1989!

The Unix Philosophy

Smalltalk

Wearables

I don't want to brag but I've been thinking about how we use computers, and how I'm disappointed by how we use computers, for a while. Here's a piece I wrote about the history of wearable computers in 2012, and how I was pretty sure Google Glass was the wrong direction.

Dyson sphere

Along the lines of affective computing, another piece I wrote even longer ago attempted to explain how much our computers are dropping on the floor when they interact with us.

My comparison was to a Dyson sphere. Here's the Wikipedia definition:

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output.

Wrap-up

There are some really cool people in the computer industry who are challenging the assumptions of inherent complexity. Jonathan Blow, Casey Muratori, Raph Levien. Sometimes they might come across and curmudgeons on Twitter. But I think they're fighting the good fight.

There's also a really good talk about what's gone wrong in computing called called "The Mess We're In" by Joe Armstrong, RIP.

Finally, I recommend the On The Metal podcast for a dive into this from fairly technical perspective. There's a whole battle raging just to make it simpler and more secure to boot a computer. I know not everyone can dip into this particular battle usefully, but it's at least cool to know it's happening.

I love riding my bike. And I'm actually really bad at skateboarding. But I want to get better.

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