It's a sad story... that the computer as a producer device basically died with the Sun workstation, but it kinda deserved to, since it didn't evolve at all, except for computer scientists themselves. If you were any other kind of scientist or engineer, you were a consumer
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Back to today. The only people I know of who do the kind of things I think should be done are the extreme hackers building their own from-scratch home-automation hardware to Jarvis-up their workspaces. has one... but note he's a CS PhD :D
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If you're say, an astronomer or a biologist, or a virologist researching Covid19 vaccines, you're out of luck. Your computer is basically a consumption tool designed for binge-watching videos and playing games. Just with some of your software loaded on.
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Imagine if say automobiles evolved that. ONLY automotive engineers would have anything other than a basic family sedan. If you were a construction worker or farmer, you couldn't get a pickup truck designed with your needs in mind.
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You'd have to either learn as much about cars as a Ford engineer, and then you could only get a forklift truck designed for working within automobile factories.
Farmers having to choose between a Toyota Prius or a forklift truck. No F150s or cybertrucks around.
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Some of this thread assumes a false digital dualist paradigm of a space of digital workflows and a space of physical workflows. Obviously, this can be broken/pushed. I do like some aspects of Bret Victor's thinking here (the dynamicland stuff)
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Replying to @vgr
Maybe the best computer "workshop" is the place where your home workshop itself is a computer—the pattern encompasses both the software-as-place metaphor and the space itself where the software is used. Screens are the constraint. twitter.com/kev_mcg/status
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This is a paradigm of the workspace as a single entity, with both physical and virtual elements embodied by a single space, like a room. This in my account would be like Jarvis getting overloaded into a non-dualist assistant computer who doesn't hide the digital world.
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Something about this direction feels a bit wrong to me though. The problem I describe would exist even if everything you did was information based, and you didn't need any physical stuff at all.
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Replying to
had an amazing setup, a 40 foot long desk with a chair on a rail to scoot back and forth on, in a shipping container.
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Yeah, familiar with it... haven't read the book, but watched a bunch of the video documentary based on it


