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Media Ecology @lemm.ee
Tehdastehdas @lemmy.world

The sick sad history of computer-aided collaboration

www.quora.com

Who invented the modern computer look and feel?
  • Visionaries:
    Vannevar Bush
    Douglas Engelbart
    Alan Kay
    Ted Nelson
    Bret Victor

versus

  • Regressives
5 comments

  • "It’s hideous and boring! Twiddling knobs is so much gayer than pressing buttons!”

    Is this satire? I can not find this quote anywhere outside of copies of this article.

    • Extreme paraphrasing everywhere to fit the story. I forgot the sources, but I follow Alan Kay (on Quora, YouTube, and elsewhere), and have read some pieces written by Douglas Engelbart and Ted Nelson.

      This says most of it:
      https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine

      Better yet, for Vannevar Bush and for many others, was that analog machines had a wonderfully evocative quality. They didn't just calculate an answer; they invited you to go in and make a tangible model of the world with your own hands, and then they acted out the unfolding reality right before your eyes. For anyone watching that process, Bush wrote, "one part at least of formal mathematics will become a live thing." Compared to that, digital computers seemed static and dead, nothing but electrons zipping invisibly through wires. That may have been why Bush himself later seemed to feel such a sense of loss as digital computing swept the world, starting in the 1950s. Certainly he never wavered in his own commitment to the analog approach. Doggedly, and without success, the Best Apparatus Man in America kept on trying to come up with a workable analog design for his Memex until his death, in 1974. And until the end, his colleagues could hear him grumbling about the "damn digital computer."

      Also used source, maybe not for that quote:
      https://www.harpercollins.com/products/dealers-of-lightning-michael-a-hiltzik

      • ok, thank you.

        So far, I find the term "computer-aided collaboration" to be uncommon?

        Google Search AI just now gave me "Computer-aided collaboration, often referred to as digital collaboration, involves using digital tools and platforms to facilitate teamwork towards a shared goal. This type of collaboration leverages technology to connect a wider network of participants, enabling them to achieve more together than they could individually. Examples of computer-aided collaboration include using online project management software, video conferencing, and shared document editing tools."

        ... and seems to limit it to "digital only", and not "analog".

        that analog machines had a wonderfully evocative quality

        Almost sounds like "electronics" more than "computing". A telephone (POTS) system can be analog electronics to facilitate collaboration... Ham radio / CB radio, etc.