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.

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
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
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
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"
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
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
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
Editing
- every description or object in the Dynabook can be displayed / edited
- multiple windows allow a document to be created / viewed simultaneously
Filing
- way to store and retrieve related information
- able to cross-file several thousand multi field records
Drawing / Painting
- many small dots for displaying high-quality characters
- also allow sketching-quality drawing, "halftone painting" and animation
Animation / Music
- Smalltalk as common framework for expressing ideas
- animation, music, programming have structural similarities
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
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?