End-User Programming
Some links to notes and approaches on end-user programming, or the idea of software as programming environments fundamentally composable by users.
Some links to notes and approaches on end-user programming, or the idea of software as programming environments fundamentally composable by users.
(From 76 Reasonable Questions to ask about any technology by Jacques Ellul)
Early spreadsheet software, to be considered the first “killer app” for Personal Computing and the first application that convinced people to invest in whole systems (the Apple II). First software that went through a whole software career cycle, until its decline fueled by competitor “Lotus 1-2-3”. Also notable for its good documentation at that time.
1965, Side-by-side connected comparison of parallel documents
1999, PYXI viewer by Ka-Ping Yee
2014, OpenXanadu by Ted Nelson and Nicholas Levin
Key concepts
Xanalogical structure
Parallel documents / Transpointing windows
Annotation
Deep links
Deep versioning and re-use (transclusion)
Xanalinks
Stretchtext
Intertwingledness
Links
http://ted.hyperland.net
http://xanadu.com/xUniverse-D6
http://xanadu.com.au/ted/XUsurvey/xuDation.html
http://xanadu.com/XUarchive/htn8.tif
JS implementation of Stretchtext
ZigZag database system
Fidelity and minimal latency as the thresholds for analogueness of digital media?
Nice blog about medieval book culture and reading practices. Especially interesting for example a post about bookmarking techniques.
“We worry about the imaginary, supplemental alphabets starting with letter twenty-seven. This is the impulse behind our notes for a liberated computer language, to re-introduce new noisy alphabets into the rigid semantic zone of informatic networks. […] We consider there to be little difference between living informatic networks and the universal informatic languages and standards used to define and sculpt them. If the languages are finite, then so, unfortunately, are the life possibilities. Thus a new type of language is needed, a liberated computer language for the articulation of political desires in today’s hostile climate of universal informatics.” (“The Exploit: A Theory of Networks”)
Free journal for culture and theory.
http://www.culturemachine.net
“The Petabyte Age is different because more is different. Kilobytes were stored on floppy disks. Megabytes were stored on hard disks. Terabytes were stored in disk arrays. Petabytes are stored in the cloud. As we moved along that progression, we went from the folder analogy to the file cabinet analogy to the library analogy to — well, at petabytes we ran out of organizational analogies.
This is a world where massive amounts of data and applied mathematics replace every other tool that might be brought to bear. Out with every theory of human behavior, from linguistics to sociology. Forget taxonomy, ontology, and psychology. Who knows why people do what they do? The point is they do it, and we can track and measure it with unprecedented fidelity. With enough data, the numbers speak for themselves.”
“The End of Theory”, Chris Anderson in WIRED (+ weitere Kurzartikel zum Thema)
Book and website with essays about future forms of reading. Free to read online.
“A myriahedron is a polyhedron with a very large number of faces. For this reason, we call the results myriahedral projections. In step 2 and 3, this myriahedron is cut open and unfolded. The resulting maps have a large number of interrupts, but are (almost) conformal and conserve areas.”
“Each of the components of The Serendipity Engine will highlight problems observed by digital theorists, designers and technologists with the way the Web currently works – linguistic barriers, echo chambers – by proposing one vision of how the technology can be re-tooled to increase serendipitous encounters.”
“[…] the aim is to render visible other factors that could produce more inclusive digital technologies that better-represent being human in code.”
“[…] render visible the labour of knowledge making.”
http://katjungnickel.com/
http://theserendipityengine.tumblr.com/
http://alekskrotoski.com/
Friedrich Nietzsche
Labov investigated the borders of words and concepts and the working of categorization in everyday communication. In a study drawings of “containers” with different formal characteristics where shown to participants. They had to assign them with either “cup”, “bowl” or “vase”. The decision gradually changed when they where asked to imagine the object filled with flowers or mashed potatoes for example. The categorization seems to be context dependent and fuzzy. Prototype theory in general states that we imagine categories of things around a strong member or representative of the category. It often refers to Wittgenstein’s concept of “Familienähnlichkeit” (family likeness).
Theoretical occupation with diagrams, forms of order, forms of thinking and transformation in own diagrams.
“Formfragen als Ordnugsfragen” (PDF)
http://gerhard_dirmoser.public1.linz.at/
A collection of 250 situations / scenarios / pattern of problems in architecture and urban planning. Images, texts and diagrams explain each situation and propose solutions. Structured in three parts from macro to micro (towns, buildings, construction). Meant as an instruction of modular solutions with the effort to enable more lively, integrated and beautiful architecture.
Alexander Gerner in “Diagrammatic Thinking” in “Atlas of Transformation”
Multiplied photographs used as a method to constitute “deviant” social groups in the 19th century. Francis Galton for example tried to construct visual evidence of universal physiognomic characteristics of jewish or criminally accused people to argue for his problematic theory of inheritance. Visual methods are exploited to construct and affirm a social order.
In his essay Alexander distinguishes to structural principles, the rigid “tree” and the “semilattice”, that allows for intersections between elements. He argues that people tend to reduce complex issues conceptually on trees, that it’s even impossible to think in the “semilattice”. He is concerned about the dangers of this conceptual reduction he also sees in architecture and design projects.
“die Tiere, die sich wie folgt gruppieren:
a) Tiere, die dem Kaiser gehören,
b) einbalsamierte Tiere,
c) gezähmte,
d) Milchschweine,
e) Sirenen,
f) Fabeltiere,
g) herrenlose Hunde,
h) in diese Gruppierung gehörige,
i) die sich wie Tolle gebärden,
k) die mit einem ganz feinen Pinsel aus Kamelhaar gezeichnet sind,
l) und so weiter,
m) die den Wasserkrug zerbrochen haben,
n) die von weitem wie Fliegen aussehen”
Aus “Die analytische Sprache des John Wilkins”, 1966
Zitiert im Vorwort zu Foucaults “Die Ordnung der Dinge”, 1974
“Something about how maps can reveal everyday practices of power.” Some examples of critical projections and mapping techniques.
“Es wird gespielt, getrickst und getan — und zwar mit allerhand Werkzeug. Wann wird aus einem Gestalter ein Ingenieur der nur auf Grund seiner Apparaturen, Erfindungen und Kniffe ein Versprechen auf Individualität abgeben kann? Ist die Herstellung einer Maschine, einer definierten Herangehensweise der konzeptionelle Befreiungsschlag gegen eine glattgedachte Allgemeingestaltung? Oder ist sie bloss ein Kunstgriff um sich aus der Verantwortung zu stehlen? Sind Gestalter moderne Alchimisten? Wie kritisch auch immer man sich diesem Thema nähern mag, unbestritten bleibt, dass diese Toys, Tricks und Tools eine Faszination ausstrahlen die weit über die simple Stilsicherheitsfrage hinausreichen.”