I can't concur enough. We don't teach, "how to design computers and better methods to interface with them" we keep hashing over the same stuff over and over again. It gets worse over time and the effect is that what Engelbart called, "intelligence augmenters" become, "super televisions that cause you political and social angst."
How far we have fallen but so great the the reward if we could, "lift ourselves up again." I have hope in people like Bret Victor and Brenda Laurel.
Hey - tried to reply this to the earlier thread on Mansfield, but evidently there's a timeout on reply-to's. Anyway appreciated your response (my not responding is often just me contemplating..:) ) Grokipedia found this on Mansfield which I've found is adding additional context about Mansfield's motiviations: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.169.3943.356 (can read in sci-hub) . The Vietnam war thematic background was helpful - Google Gemini agreed with you and the Grokipedia article seems to add support to it as well, (though not directly tying to Sen. Mansfield's motivations).
It's funny, my impression had been that Mansfield was legislating from a heavily right-wing standpoint, of 'Why are we tax-and-spending into something that won't help protect the sanctity of my private property?" I was pleased to see the motivations were different. The fact that so few have articulated why the invoke Mansfield underscores why I was able to adopt such an orthogonal interpretation of Mansfield's amendment prior to this discussion. All the best AfterHIA. -ricksunny
It might be an aside but it would be, "really groovy" if the general public started to realize that, "democracy" is a way of life and a set of considerations that furthers an open public discourse and attempts to maximize human felicity and reduce cruelty. In an oxymoronic sense it's the public voting on things that actually kills real democracy.
No. Democracy is not about reducing cruelty, or any other vaguely activists points of views. It is about having people choose where they want to go. It might be that these choices unveil that humanity, statistically speaking, is actually a cruel bunch. And, what you think is cruel, might be just fair to someone else. Democracy is about surfacing the human nature.
I can't edit my previous comment so I'll continue:
This isn't and has never been true in a universal sense. Athens was democratic plutocracy with slaves. The United States didn't have popular democracy until well until the 20th century and it's worth noting that it was the Southern Democrats which wanted to restrict the basic political rights of blacks in the name of, "popular sentiment." The Fukuyamist position which takes a naive view of western democracy as totalizing in a historical sense is being rapidly called into question all over the world. People (almost) universally want the expansion of the their quality of living and political autonomy in a sense which includes but also transcends the ability to cast a paper ballot. We see with Trump that this naive notion has, "serious flaws." In the 1930's the Nazis came to power under a democratically elected conservative government. Democracy means pragmatism. Pragmatism means something about, "having a superior conversation about what we would like to be." The ability to cast a vote is an extension of this sentiment-- it isn't its foundation. We see that in the general experience of the Chinese middle class. They live under a totality but neighborhood associations and not actively being managed by the CCP results in many reporting feeling freer under this system than under ancillaries geopolitically.
Maybe I misinterpreted your original comment, but I wholeheartedly agree with this on. I miss people seeing the nuances in politics. The only rebutal most people seem to have against shortcomings of democracy is "it is the best system we have", which is sort of a final argument killing the discussion then and there.
John Von Neumann famously questioned the value of compilers. Eventually we get the keyboard kids that have dominated computing since the early 70's in some form or another whether in a forward thinking way like Dan Ingalls or in an idealic way like the gcc/Free Software crowd. In parallel to this you have people like Laurel, Sutherland, Nelson who live in lateral thinking land.
The real issue is that we've been in-store for a big paradigm shift in how we interact with computers for decades at this point. SketchPad let us do competent, constraints based mathematics with images. Video games and the Logo language demonstrate the potential for programming using, "kinetics." In the future we won't code with symbols we'll dance our intent into and through the machine.
I just want competent search of my history. I just want some way of exporting my history in a visually appealing way so I can share my research paths with colleagues in a meaningful way. Vannevar Bush described features like this in 1949 and we still only have partially realized any of this.
I just want to know what website I was on even i clicked a link , like the hierarchy of tree tabs. A chronological list is only so useful, I want to see my click journey
Computer Lib by Ted Nelson. This used to be the, "Bible" before Nelson fell into relative obscurity. Ted Nelson was the first to coin the term, "Hypertext" in the 1960s after reading a famous article by Vannevar Bush
Mindstorms by Seymour Papert. Introduction to, "interfaces as pedagogy." This lays a foundation for, "what computer interfaces look like when you can use human intuition to work through them."
Jef Raskin was the original head of the Macintosh team. This treatise on humane design is invaluable and has been largely ignored. Any person that takes these ideas and makes them work will be a proverbial father of, "the next generation of computing."
Douglas Engelbart who is often regard as, "the inventor of the mouse" founded his working philosophy by describing an operation paradigm for continued exponential improvement in groups. In some sense it's a masterwork in, "computer ethics."
Early article describing Hyperlinking and aspects of the Internet some of which haven't been or have been under-realized. Imagine what, "social histories for extending research" would look like if taken seriously.
Computers As Theatre by Brenda Laurel; "think of the computer not as a tool but a medium." Brenda is an actress that applied Aristotle's Poetics to computer design. An absolute foundational classic.
Worthy mention: Alan Kay's Quora. This is a literal goldmine of insights into the history of programming languages and computing paradigms. He'll answer your question if it's meaningful.
Remember: computer paradigms have changed every few decades. We started with pontifications by philosophers about the foundations of mathematics to mechanical machines to vacuum tube machines to (skipping some things) huge mainframes to mini-computers to linked personal computers (Engelbart) to the Xerox Alto. We now live in a world of castrated, linked post-Altos and a failed realization of portable computers in the form of b̶r̶a̶i̶n̶w̶a̶s̶h̶i̶n̶g̶-̶o̶u̶t̶r̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶c̶h̶i̶n̶e̶s̶ smartphones. Ask yourself-- what comes next? How can we significantly improve computers for human beings?
As pointed out by Scotty Kilmer on YouTube we currently lack the infrastructure both in terms of mechanics trained to work on EVs and the necessary electricity infrastructure to make a full transition possible. The answer isn't, "new types of cars" it's building the, "you don't necessarily need a car" society the Europeans and the Japanese enjoy.
How far we have fallen but so great the the reward if we could, "lift ourselves up again." I have hope in people like Bret Victor and Brenda Laurel.