Personal Computing: Historic Beginnings

[Moryton]

I love Alan's blurb: "Ideas are so easy because they have no mass and they are not affected by gravity." @1:27:00

[Moryton]

Having followed Kay's various talks for some time, I believe the gist of it all is that; every good idea in computing had already been exhausted at the very start of computing. Instead of using these ideas (optimizing hardware for abstraction, for one), the market fragmented and followed the path of least resistance, using narrow ideas inherited from rudimentary hardware architecture. In this context, optimization has been evil. While SW gets more abstract today, the HW is getting slower.

[jjpcondor]

Magnificent insight. J. C. R. Licklider had background in physics, mathematics and psychology, and an MA in psychology was in October 1962 appointed head of the Information Processing Techniques Office at DARPA. He had convinced his associates that an all-encompassing computer network is a important concept to be developed. J. C. R. Licklider INVENTED INTERNET in DARPA.

[notbored12]

I find it disturbing that technology like GRAIL and Sketchpad just sat on the shelf and instead of being developed further for 40 years, and is basically just starting to be reinvented now.

[journeyquest1]

One laptop per landfill. My Compaq burned up (CPU) after a little over a year. And since the cpu is part of the mo bo it would cost more to fix than it cost new. And thats just the price of the part. Laptops need better cooling capacities.

[Jezzamezzamy]

@journeyquest1 But don't you think the more reasonable method for reducing heat would be to design more efficient processors and programs?

[buredtx]

thanks for posting the video.....

[haxorDLX]

OMG LONGEST VIDEO EVER!!!

[masterduksh]

i hope 2 be like them

[0oziyado0]

I hope this dream come true.

[2scanner]

cool!

[Islandjerry]

Excellent documentary and very interesting.