User:Natasa Siencnik/notes/goldberg/

Abstract

Alan Kay / Adele Goldberg: Personal Dynamic Media (1977). In: Noah Wardrip-Fruin / Nick Montfort: The New Media Reader, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003.

1. Introduction
   • Learning Research Group at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
   • communication and manipulation of knowledge
   • Dynabook as an interactive memory for storage and manipulation of data
2. Humans and Media
   • device for communicating ideas and feelings
   • devices have been existing for 1,000 of years
   • media has been non-conversational and passive
   • message as a simulation of some idea
   • new "metamedium" is active, two-way conversation
3. Dynabook
   • Dynamic medium for creative thought
   • self-contained knowledge manipulator in a portable package
   • size and shape of an ordinary notebook
   • envision a device as small and portable as possible
   • can both take and give out information
   • comparison to a music instrument
4. Design Background
   • first attempt at designing this metamedium in 1967–69
   • lacked expressive power to be useful to an ordinary user
   • focusing on children as "user community"
   • if the "medium is the message" the message of low-bandwidth timesharing is "blah"
5. Interim Dynabook
   • systems have been written in a new medium for communication
   • Smalltalk programming language
   • self-contained system, small box in which a disk memory can be inserted
   • each disk contains about 1,500 page-equivalents of manipulable storage
   • input devices: typewriter keyboard, "chord" keyboard, pointing device (mouse)
   • visual output through a display (high-res b/w CRT or lower-res color display)
   • auditory output to auditory standard hi-fi amplifier and speakers
6. Remembering, Seeing and Hearing
   • dynabook can be used as an interactive memory or file cabinet
   • context can be entered through a keyboard
   • displayed on demand in a font of publishing quality
   • drawing and painting using a pointing device and iconic editor
7. Different Fonts
   • computer displays used to be superior in matters of dynamic writing and erasure
   • but they failed in contrast, resolution, or ease of viewing
   • different fonts create different moods (aura)
   • dynamobook supplied with a number of fonts on file storage
8. Editing
   • every description or object in the Dynabook can be displayed / edited
   • multiple windows allow a document to be created / viewed simultaneously
9. Filing
   • way to store and retrieve related information
   • able to cross-file several thousand multi field records
10. Drawing / Painting
    • many small dots for displaying high-quality characters
    • also allow sketching-quality drawing, "halftone painting" and animation
11. Animation / Music
    • Smalltalk as common framework for expressing ideas
    • animation, music, programming have structural similarities
12. Simulation Examples
    • animation system programmed by animators
    • drawing / painting system programmed by a child
    • hospital simulation programmed by a decision-theorist
    • audio animation system programmed by musicians
    • musical score capture system programmed by musician
    • electronic circuit design by a high school student
13. Conclusion
    • What happens in a world in which everyone had a Dynabook?
    • a new kind of medium, a metamedium,
    • wide range of already-existing and not-yet-invented media
    • 3D-simulated space for architects
    • patient file system for doctors
    • score writing for musicians
    • working simulation of a company for business men
    • complex historical inter-relationships for teachers
    • simulation of laboratory experiments
    • Will it collapse of trying to be too many different things?