Tools for Thought

Tools for Thought ist eine Übung in retrospektivem Futurismus, d. h. ich habe es Anfang der 1980er Jahre geschrieben, um zu sehen, wie die Mitte der 1990er Jahre aussehen würde. Meine Odyssee begann, als ich Xerox PARC und Doug Engelbart entdeckte und feststellte, dass all die Journalisten, die sich über das Silicon Valley hermachten, die wahre Geschichte verpassten. Ja, die Geschichten über Teenager, die in ihren Garagen neue Industrien erfanden, waren gut. Aber die Idee des Personal Computers ist nicht dem Geist von Steve Jobs entsprungen. Die Idee, dass Menschen Computer zur Erweiterung ihres Denkens und ihrer Kommunikation, als Werkzeuge für intellektuelle Arbeit und soziale Aktivitäten nutzen können, war keine Erfindung der Mainstream-Computerindustrie, der orthodoxen Computerwissenschaft oder gar der Computerbastler. Ohne Leute wie J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Bob Taylor und Alan Kay hätte es das nicht gegeben. Aber ihre Arbeit wurzelte in älteren, ebenso exzentrischen, ebenso visionären Arbeiten, und so habe ich mich damit beschäftigt, wie Boole und Babbage und Turing und von Neumann – vor allem von Neumann – die Grundlagen schufen, auf denen die späteren Erbauer von Werkzeugen aufbauten, um die Zukunft zu schaffen, in der wir heute leben. Man kann nicht verstehen, wohin sich die bewusstseinsverstärkende Technologie entwickelt, wenn man nicht weiß, woher sie kommt.

howard rheingold’s | tools for thought

Tools for Thought is an exercise in retrospective futurism; that is, I wrote it in the early 1980s, attempting to look at what the mid 1990s would be like. My odyssey started when I discovered Xerox PARC and Doug Engelbart and realized that all the journalists who had descended upon Silicon Valley were missing the real story. Yes, the tales of teenagers inventing new industries in their garages were good stories. But the idea of the personal computer did not spring full-blown from the mind of Steve Jobs. Indeed, the idea that people could use computers to amplify thought and communication, as tools for intellectual work and social activity, was not an invention of the mainstream computer industry nor orthodox computer science, nor even homebrew computerists. If it wasn’t for people like J.C.R. Licklider, Doug Engelbart, Bob Taylor, Alan Kay, it wouldn’t have happened. But their work was rooted in older, equally eccentric, equally visionary, work, so I went back to piece together how Boole and Babbage and Turing and von Neumann — especially von Neumann — created the foundations that the later toolbuilders stood upon to create the future we live in today. You can’t understand where mind-amplifying technology is going unless you understand where it came from.

howard rheingold’s | tools for thought

Aardvark’d: 12 Weeks with Geeks

Aardvark’d: 12 Weeks with Geeks is a 2005 documentary film about the development of Fog Creek Copilot, a remote assistance software tool. Conceptualization of the film began when Fog Creek Software CEO Joel Spolsky announced on his blog that he was seeking a filmmaker to document the development of the product, then called Project Aardvark.[1][2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark%27d:_12_Weeks_with_Geeks

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0813987/

Hardcore Software by Steven Sinofsky

Hardcore Software is a non-fiction, first-person account of the rise and fall of the PC revolution serialized through this platform, one section at a time, once or twice a week.

https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/archive

Through this first person account of Steven Sinofsky’s time at Microsoft, he aim to convey to you an insider’s story of growing influence and corporate obstacles, the evolution of technology that changed the world, and most of all the people that made it happen.

Check out companion videos and demonstrations of legacy products on the YouTube Channel.

https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/archive

What is it like to work with Microsoft’s Dave Cutler?

Dave is one of the most inspiring people I worked with (not closely, to be clear). Not only did he lead the team that built a new OS from scratch that was still compatible with DOS-based Windows, with many features on day one that took years to arrive in competitor’s products, he personally designed and coded the portable, multithreading, multiprocessor, secure NT kernel. He was brilliant.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-with-Microsofts-Dave-Cutler

Buckling-Spring! => IBM Model M

Die Model-M-Tastatur bezeichnet eine Computertastatur-Gattung, die auf die zwischen 1984 und 1999 von IBM millionenfach hergestellte Tastatur „Model M“ zurückgeht.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Model_M

Die einzige Tatstatur mit Buckling-Spring Mechanik: Model M von Unicomp https://www.pckeyboard.com/

Alle anderen Mechanische Tastaturen arbeiten mit anderen Systemen. Mechanische Tastaturen: https://www.getdigital.de/shop/haushalt/buero/computer-zubehoer-und-hardware/mechanische-tastaturen

Insbesondere die Cherry MX switches erzeugen einen spürbaren „Rückschlag“ beim loslassen… was das original nicht macht.

https://www.bastel-bastel.de/blog/index.php/2019/01/28/ibm-model-m-die-beste-je-gebaute-tastatur/

https://www.bastel-bastel.de/blog/index.php/2020/02/13/die-perfekte-tastatur/

https://www.golem.de/news/ibms-tastaturklassiker-im-test-und-ewig-klappert-die-model-m-1705-127541-4.html

https://www.eurogamer.de/articles/2017-01-19-unicomp-buckling-spring-ultra-classic-white-model-m-keyboard-test

The Art of Code – Dylan Beattie

Dylan Beattie – programmer, musician, and creator of the Rockstar programming language – for an entertaining look at the art of code. We’ll look at the origins of programming as an art form, from Conway’s Game of Life to the 1970s demoscene and the earliest Obfuscated C competitions. We’ll learn about esoteric languages and quines – how DO you create a program that prints its own source code? We’ll discover quine relays, code golf and generative art, and we’ll explore the phenomenon of live coding as performance – from the pioneers of electronic music to modern algoraves and live coding platforms like Sonic Pi

A look back at memory models in 16-bit MS-DOS

Viele interessante details:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20200728-00/?p=104012

We called it RAID because it kills bugs dead. The history of defect tracking in the Windows team goes back to Windows 1.0, which used a text file.
After Windows 1.01 released, a bunch of people in the apps division got together and threw together a bug tracking database. Because hey, a database, wouldn’t that be neat?

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20200317-00/?p=103566

Zum stöbern alte Geschichten über Windows\Microsoft\

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/tag/history