User:Natasa Siencnik/notes/goldberg/

From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki

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?