This is a real problem. When Vannevar Bush conceived the Memex system, his goal was to facilitate the exchange of scientific research. Later, Doug Englebart built on Bush's ideas as did Ted Nelson (the guy who coined the term "hypertext") and Tim Berners-Lee. While the web today has become a vast sinkhole of pop-up ads, crappy web stores and inane blogs it is important to not forget that its inception was in aiding scientific research.
Yet, that is not possible without some kind of permanence. Probably what is needed is some way to integrate the web into university library collections. If there was some way of indexing web pages the way libraries currently use the Library of Congress scheme to index their physical collections, then web pages could be uniquely numbered with this number incorporated into the URL. If then universities and the Library of Congress itself were to mirror (permanently) these pages, if the original URL were to become unavailable, one could try just about any manjor university or the LOC and retrieve the page. Of course, with the current political climate here in the US I don't forsee this ever happening.
Well, actually, in a way, that was my point or at least a corrolary to my point.
We can do really cool things to manage complexity and still make computers useful tools for the general populace. I agree with Simonyi's arguement that more needs to be done in this area.
However, at some point, people must be ready to accept the fact that power brings with it complexity and if they wish to do grander things then they need to be willing to learn. Most people aren't willing to do so. Yet for the few who are, the tools should be there.
ROTFL! No, it wasn't intentional! I hope you know I meant present. You'll have to excuse me, I'm doing Slashdot today like Rush Limbaugh does his radio show -- I'm taking hyrdrocodone for a knee injury. On top of it all, I have this miserable stinking cold!
Surely it must be recognized that you are just moving the complexity problem to a different layer with this approach, PLUS losing the ability to gain low level access when needed.
I don't know if that necessarily has to be the case. Back in the old 8 bit CP/M days I got my introduction to Forth through an application named KAMAS, which stood for Knowledge And Mind Amplification System. Lofty sounding name aside, KAMAS was really an outlining tool. A very good one at that. A few years later after the PC and DOS had taken over a whole slew of these outlining tool programs appeared and all claimed the ability to revolutionize the way you worked with information. For the most part, this was all bunk but in a way KAMAS almost stood up to its self-aggrandized promotion.
What made KAMAS different, IMHO, was that it was based on a FORTH like language that was at the core of the product and its author (Adam Trent) left that programmability exposed. Yet, he was able to organize the program in such a way that the average user didn't have to interact with the language at all or even know it was there if they didn't want to. Heck, you didn't even have to use it as an outliner -- if you wanted it could just act as a simple To Do list.
As the owners' manual stated, KAMAS was arranged in rings,like a Venn diagram, with the outliner at the outermost ring. However, if the user wanted they could issue a command that would expose the next inner layer ofr complexity and do simple programming tasks on their outlines. Because of its' Forth heritage, the programming was interactive and could easily be undone? Screw up a word definition? Just tell the interpreter to FORGET it.
For the true geek crowd, another word could be issued (only while inside the programming layer) that would then expose the inner-most layer and open up access to the all the words defined. At this point, the user/prorammer would have access to basically a full Forth programming environment and actually change or extend the outliner tool by rewriting it! At this point, if one wished to devote the time to learning how to program in a stack based threaded interpreted environment, your computer was wide open to you. It was like have the keys to the gates of heaven laid at your feet.
Later on, when I started playing around with Forth proper, I was still impressed with what KAMAS's author (whatever became of Adam Trent anyway?) had done and felt that this managing of complexity was the true power of Forth based systems. However, even I have to admit that Forth is far from ideal given its' RPN and stack based roots -- at least for Joe Everyuser. More time passed and I discovered Smalltalk and Alan Kay and his idedas for Dynabook and lately, Squeak.
Smalltalk, Squeak and OOP share with KAMAS the idea of bringing the power of the computer to leverage the mind to the everyday user. And, as with KAMAS and Forth too, they are able to prevent a useful, simplified environment at the surface, but still making the power and complexity available to those who want to use it.
So, in short, I think you're wrong here. One does not have to lose the ability to gain low level access in order to mask complexity from the average user. What I do question after all these years is how many users will actually want access to the power hidden at the core of systems such as Squeak and KAMAS before it? I mean, come on, I live in a country (US) where a sizeable portion of the population can't identify the Pacific ocean on a map! I think its likely that in the end we'll end up with just about the same mix of truly technical users to clueless lusers that we have now.
As depressing as that may be, and the thought does depress me, I still think it's important to implement Charles Simonyi's ideas (as well as Alan Kay's and Doug Englebart's and Steve Wozniak's and all the others who believe that the computer can serve as a tool to liberate people). If only for the sake of providing a migration path for people to make that crossing from clueless luser to someone who is able to effectively use the computer as a "Knowledge and Mind Amplification Tool."
I'd love to know where you heard 30 years. That would be a dream come true. Too bad it's not likely...
Why is this not likely? What makes you say this? I will turn 37 years old in just a couple months. In my first six years I was privileged to see humankind's first tentative steps into space. The advancement that has been made in technology since I turned 7 years old has been mind boggling to say the least. Now, here we are just a few years into the 21st century and just the assured advances in current technology alone will cause us to requestion our humanity (see Ray Kurzweil).
The only thing I can see standing in our way between clean, affordable fusion power is will power. When humans want something they tend to go out and make it. Yeah, I know, there's plenty of research into fusion already, but I would argue its' all been half-assed. If there was a concensus reached that fusion was not only something we should do, but something we must do, and the funds were allocated to developing it, then it would be done. History proves this over and over.
Whenever humankind becomes envious of their gods, they steal their gods' powers. We don't kill our gods we become them -- or at least that's the way it used to be. Now it seems we just use our technological advantage to bully third world countries.
I live in upstate NY and I swear there's some bizarre meterological reason that requires it to be 100% overcast up here every time an interesting astronomical phenomenon occures.
OK. I have just one question. If you are supposed to enter your pets' names so that they can be displayed on secure browser pages to convince you that the page really is secure, then what do you enter that is displayed on the page where you enter your pets' names so to convince you that the pet name entry form is secure and how do you tell if that page is secure?
With libraries offering free internet _access_, pretty much anyone who is willing to get off their butts and head over to a public library can have the access.
In rural areas this is often not possible. Rural citizens can live man miles from a public library. Furthermore, cable access is almost always non-existent in rural areas. Yes, there is usually dial-up, but because the quality of the phone lines in rural areas are usually no the greatest, it's easy to find oneself stuck at 28Kb/s or less on a dial-up connection.
However, once again you need that computer. Many people are not aware of the $300 machines, because, last I knew anyway, Walmart was only selling them online. Finally, $300 + $10-$20 monthly is usually a lot of money for a rural family. You make mention of the poor kid from the ghetto, but rural poverty is rampant and perhaps more common than urban poverty.
so what? you have a constitutional right to be sleazy.
Hmmm... I don't recall that being in the Bill of Rights.
I've already stated that what this company did was legal, and I agree 100% that they had a right to do this. Come on though, in academic circles this would be called plagiarism. As it is, it's a documentary, a type of journalism. Public domain or not, it would have been polite to mention where the original creation of this film lay. I don't know, maybe they did that. If so, then I see no ethical problem and then there would be nothing sleazy in what they did.
Ever see the broadway show The Mystery of Edwin Drood? Thing is, once it's in the PD, you can do exactly that.
Heh -- when I used Dickens in my example I wasn't thinking about Edwin Drood. Still... I see that more as a reinterpretation. Much the same as Dolly Parton covering Stairway to Heaven. Which, while it may be frightening just doesn't strike me as being the same thing as what this company did. However, as I said above, they had the right to do it and this suit should be thrown out.
Now what's really sleazy, is Patrtick McGoohan accepting a voice role in Treasure Planet.
I just read the Yahoo! News! article! and while I am a stalwart advocate for a strong and vibrant public commons, the company that used Fox's original video footage (and audio too I suppose, from the way the article reads) did something that is really sleazy.
Basically, for those who haven't read the article, this small startup video company takes an 8 hour long documentary based on Eisenhower's memoirs, cuts an hour of footage, and adds a half hour of (the article says new, but considering the way this company operates, probablly also recycled) footage then retitles it with an amazingly similar title and dumps it into discount stores' cheap video bins at a fraction of the cost the original documentary sells for.
Was it public domain? Yes. I would defend them on their right to use the footage. Was it ethical? No. I don't beleive so. They were using the work of a whole host of other people -- filmographers, recording engineers, writers, etc. -- to gain a cheap entry into the business. This is the equivalent of taking a novel by, say, Charles Dickens, editing it and perhaps adding another chapter, changing the title and claiming it as a new novel written by yourself. Really sleazy, IMHO.
Still... in no way should Fox be given another copyright on this material. It's in the public domain, and Fox allowed it to enter the public domain and that's where it should stay.
Thank you! I've long wondered how Jobs managed to get inside PARC. I'd never known that Xerox held a large portion of Apple shares. Fumbling The Future is one of those books that is on my "list" along with about 500 others.
It really is amazing that Xerox never could realize the potential in what it had. The Star, 3 years ahead of the Mac, was amazing. IIRC, and I apologize if my memory is faulty, you guys at Xerox AI Systems did a lot of work in making practical expert systems. Astounding. Xerox has all this brainpower producing such beautiful stuff and completely and totally blows it.
I'm not sure whether you are trying to troll or if you're just a little igonorant about the history of the computer.
Back in the early 1970s, GUIs were not a natural evolution for computers. They only appear so in retrospect because Steve Jobs happened to get a tour of Xerox PARC and decided that GUIs should be the next step in the evolution of computers. I daresay that Jobs (and Woz's) experiences growing up playing (and later writing) video games influenced the decision to base the Lisa and then the Mac's OS around a GUI but had Jobs not had his little tour about PARC it's arguable that the PC revolution would never have happened and the CLI would still be dominant today.
Alan Kay and his fellow researchers at Xerox PARC and preceeded by Doug Englebart at SRI are the real thing - true visionaries. It's easy to knock their accomplishments 35+ years out (Englebart et. al. developed NLS in 1967!) because we've had that long for their ideas to percolate into mass culture. Yeah, I know, the Mac has only been with us since 1984 but really, Englebart and later Kay were subtly but powerfully through their work and demonstrations preparing the way for the dominance of the GUI. Also, as I made allusion to before, don't forget the powerful role that video games had in preparing the kids of the 70s and 80s in ways that would make GUIs seem second nature.
So yeah, I've got to agree, this interview was pretty weak. However, if you want to see where Kay really envisioned that we'd be right now, take a look at the copious information out there regarding Dynabook, Smalltalk and his work at Xerox PARC. Then take a swing by squeak.org, download a copy and play around with it for a while. It's hard not to be impressed. As far as where we go next, that's up to all of us, including you. Personally, I'd like to start working in some strong AI and humaniform robots, but that's my hangup. Perhaps you have a different destination in mind.
Note: I'm not sure of Steve Jobs actual role at Xerox PARC. I've read differing accounts ranging from the tourist picture I paint above to his actually being a researcher there. Can anybody clarify?
Actually, you make an important point. Books highlighting the "science" of science fiction could be an invaluable aid in such a course, especially considering how little science high schoolers are exposed to. I'm not talking texts here, but stuff like Lawrence Krauss' The Physics of Star Trek (knock it all you like because of the title, but this is an excellent book), John Allen Paulos' Innumeracy, Ray Kurzweil's Age of Intelligent Machines or James Gleick's Chaos: Making of A New Science are all highly appropriate and complementary to a wide array of science fiction literature.
Wow. Big question and sort of hard to answer since you don't state what the course objectives are. With that in mind, here's what I would do if I were you...
I would base the reading around various big themes that are relevant to adolescents who are trying to figure out theirselves and their relation to the world. Fortunately, Science Fiction excels in looking at these "big picture" issues. Some examples:
Robot stories - excellent for exploring ideas such as "how do we define human?" and "what does it mean to be human?" Asimov's robot novels (especially those with R. Daneel Olivaw) or Philip Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) or Fred Pohl (Man Plus).
Future society stories - great for examining both the positives and negatives of our own society in light of the one(s) presented in the story. Also great for looking at things like alternate political ideologies and issues such as social stagnation. Again Asimov (for his Foundation trilogy), but also Arthur C. Clarke (Childhood's End) or Fred Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth (Merchants of Venus).
Messiahnic (sp?) stories - Likely to get you into trouble with parents and the administration, but unless it gets you fired, I'd say worth the trouble. These kinds of tales are wonderful for looking at topics ranging from predestination vs. free-will to mob mentality to (again) human nature. Frank Herbert's Dune is the biggy here, but also Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land (will almost definitely get you fired unless you're in a very liberal school district) and Walter Miller's A Canticle For Leibowitz.
Fun - please don't forget to include some reading that (while it could be argued as having scholarly merit) is just plain fun, such as Douglas Adams Hitch-hiker's Guide and Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat.
There's so much you can do here both in terms of education and engendering a life-long appreciation for literature (and I certainly believe that Science Fiction is literature). As some others have mentioned, I wouldn't worry too much about grade-level appropriate reading here, unless you are dealing with more of a middle-school crowd. Good Science Fiction is naturally challenging, and the kids (yound adults really) will appreciate being challenged.
I would like to think that all Sierra needs to do to come back into the mainstream is release another Gabriel Knight adventure. Given GK's rabid fanbase (which includes me!) this one game alone would put an infusion of cash into the company. The storyline in the original GK was epic and GK II was the only full motion video game out there that got it right IMHO. GK III was criticized for its overinvolved puzzles (remember the cat hair bit?) and the 3D graphics were pretty crude, but again good gameplay and a killer storyline. Please Sierra... one more Gabriel Knight game, do it right and you will be well rewarded.
Common Dreams is absolutely incredible. Pulls together progressive news and opinion from newspapers and magazines all around the world. You truly will be exposed to news that you will never see if you stick with the New York Times. Don't let the word 'progressive' scare you either. While I would agree there is a lot of what many would consider "liberal" opinion, the emphasis is on hard news. Just as I would never discount something that's been labelled 'conservative' out of hand, allow yourself the same liberty with this fine site and do yourself the favor of truly broadening your perspective. This is what the internet was meant for.
As far as I know, the highest altitude a high powered model rocket has achieved has been roughly 100,000 feet (about 19 miles)? Yet, you're claiming 180,000 feet(about 34 miles). Also, as far as I know, high powered rocket launches do not require military clearance. Besides, the article is talking about plain old model rocketry where the largest motors regularly used are D or E size (although F & G also qualify) and the rocket can not contain metal components and must weigh no more than 16 oz.
Although not necessarily a joke, I always found the anecdote about Niklaus Wirth's (creater of Pascal) response to a question about how to pronounce his name funny...
"You can either call me by name, pronouncing it 'Veert', or call me by value, 'Worth.'"
Another really old (and dated) Pascal joke that I still find humourous is...
Q: What do Ronald Reagan and Pascal have in common?
Would I be right in assuming that this basically means that all composers who sign contracts with U.S. companies are now no more than indentured servants who will never be able to own the rights to their own creations unless they become rich enough to buy back the copyright on their work from the record companies? I realize that it was basically this way before, but now it seems the record companies have unlimited control.
Would any artist in their right mind ever sign with a U.S. label again? Why not just find a label in a country with much saner copyright laws, say... Canada? Seriously, if enough artists get pissed and just bypass American media corporations altogether, this could be the beginning of the downfall of the U.S. corporations control of the music industry. This idea could work for other types of artists as well, such as screenwriters.
Then again, musicians could just self-publish their work and retain their copyright fromt he beginning.
Is this idea naive? Yes. Is it unrealistic? Yes. Could it ever work? Probably not, but I'm not quite so jaded as to give up hope.
Whoever rated my previous comment -1, Troll, can you please explain why? How is the above trolling? The commenter I was responding to made a truly humourous remark, and I pointed out that it should be modded up. Furthermore, since it referenced a great piece of computer folklore, I pointed out the origins of the joke for those who might not have encountered it before. Again, this is a troll how?
Slashdot Mirror
I, of course, don't mean to suggest that every web page be indexed and stored in this manner, but rather just pages deemed important by their author.
This is a real problem. When Vannevar Bush conceived the Memex system, his goal was to facilitate the exchange of scientific research. Later, Doug Englebart built on Bush's ideas as did Ted Nelson (the guy who coined the term "hypertext") and Tim Berners-Lee. While the web today has become a vast sinkhole of pop-up ads, crappy web stores and inane blogs it is important to not forget that its inception was in aiding scientific research.
Yet, that is not possible without some kind of permanence. Probably what is needed is some way to integrate the web into university library collections. If there was some way of indexing web pages the way libraries currently use the Library of Congress scheme to index their physical collections, then web pages could be uniquely numbered with this number incorporated into the URL. If then universities and the Library of Congress itself were to mirror (permanently) these pages, if the original URL were to become unavailable, one could try just about any manjor university or the LOC and retrieve the page. Of course, with the current political climate here in the US I don't forsee this ever happening.
It is too sad I know this...
I believe you are referring to America and not Bread.
Bread is known for such luninous tracks as...
Pity me not for knowing this, but for actually having CDs from both groups on my shelf.
Well, actually, in a way, that was my point or at least a corrolary to my point.
We can do really cool things to manage complexity and still make computers useful tools for the general populace. I agree with Simonyi's arguement that more needs to be done in this area.
However, at some point, people must be ready to accept the fact that power brings with it complexity and if they wish to do grander things then they need to be willing to learn. Most people aren't willing to do so. Yet for the few who are, the tools should be there.
ROTFL! No, it wasn't intentional! I hope you know I meant present. You'll have to excuse me, I'm doing Slashdot today like Rush Limbaugh does his radio show -- I'm taking hyrdrocodone for a knee injury. On top of it all, I have this miserable stinking cold!
I don't know if that necessarily has to be the case. Back in the old 8 bit CP/M days I got my introduction to Forth through an application named KAMAS, which stood for Knowledge And Mind Amplification System. Lofty sounding name aside, KAMAS was really an outlining tool. A very good one at that. A few years later after the PC and DOS had taken over a whole slew of these outlining tool programs appeared and all claimed the ability to revolutionize the way you worked with information. For the most part, this was all bunk but in a way KAMAS almost stood up to its self-aggrandized promotion.
What made KAMAS different, IMHO, was that it was based on a FORTH like language that was at the core of the product and its author (Adam Trent) left that programmability exposed. Yet, he was able to organize the program in such a way that the average user didn't have to interact with the language at all or even know it was there if they didn't want to. Heck, you didn't even have to use it as an outliner -- if you wanted it could just act as a simple To Do list.
As the owners' manual stated, KAMAS was arranged in rings,like a Venn diagram, with the outliner at the outermost ring. However, if the user wanted they could issue a command that would expose the next inner layer ofr complexity and do simple programming tasks on their outlines. Because of its' Forth heritage, the programming was interactive and could easily be undone? Screw up a word definition? Just tell the interpreter to FORGET it.
For the true geek crowd, another word could be issued (only while inside the programming layer) that would then expose the inner-most layer and open up access to the all the words defined. At this point, the user/prorammer would have access to basically a full Forth programming environment and actually change or extend the outliner tool by rewriting it! At this point, if one wished to devote the time to learning how to program in a stack based threaded interpreted environment, your computer was wide open to you. It was like have the keys to the gates of heaven laid at your feet.
Later on, when I started playing around with Forth proper, I was still impressed with what KAMAS's author (whatever became of Adam Trent anyway?) had done and felt that this managing of complexity was the true power of Forth based systems. However, even I have to admit that Forth is far from ideal given its' RPN and stack based roots -- at least for Joe Everyuser. More time passed and I discovered Smalltalk and Alan Kay and his idedas for Dynabook and lately, Squeak.
Smalltalk, Squeak and OOP share with KAMAS the idea of bringing the power of the computer to leverage the mind to the everyday user. And, as with KAMAS and Forth too, they are able to prevent a useful, simplified environment at the surface, but still making the power and complexity available to those who want to use it.
So, in short, I think you're wrong here. One does not have to lose the ability to gain low level access in order to mask complexity from the average user. What I do question after all these years is how many users will actually want access to the power hidden at the core of systems such as Squeak and KAMAS before it? I mean, come on, I live in a country (US) where a sizeable portion of the population can't identify the Pacific ocean on a map! I think its likely that in the end we'll end up with just about the same mix of truly technical users to clueless lusers that we have now.
As depressing as that may be, and the thought does depress me, I still think it's important to implement Charles Simonyi's ideas (as well as Alan Kay's and Doug Englebart's and Steve Wozniak's and all the others who believe that the computer can serve as a tool to liberate people). If only for the sake of providing a migration path for people to make that crossing from clueless luser to someone who is able to effectively use the computer as a "Knowledge and Mind Amplification Tool."
Why is this not likely? What makes you say this? I will turn 37 years old in just a couple months. In my first six years I was privileged to see humankind's first tentative steps into space. The advancement that has been made in technology since I turned 7 years old has been mind boggling to say the least. Now, here we are just a few years into the 21st century and just the assured advances in current technology alone will cause us to requestion our humanity (see Ray Kurzweil).
The only thing I can see standing in our way between clean, affordable fusion power is will power. When humans want something they tend to go out and make it. Yeah, I know, there's plenty of research into fusion already, but I would argue its' all been half-assed. If there was a concensus reached that fusion was not only something we should do, but something we must do, and the funds were allocated to developing it, then it would be done. History proves this over and over.
Whenever humankind becomes envious of their gods, they steal their gods' powers. We don't kill our gods we become them -- or at least that's the way it used to be. Now it seems we just use our technological advantage to bully third world countries.
Manimal!
I live in upstate NY and I swear there's some bizarre meterological reason that requires it to be 100% overcast up here every time an interesting astronomical phenomenon occures.
OK. I have just one question. If you are supposed to enter your pets' names so that they can be displayed on secure browser pages to convince you that the page really is secure, then what do you enter that is displayed on the page where you enter your pets' names so to convince you that the pet name entry form is secure and how do you tell if that page is secure?
In rural areas this is often not possible. Rural citizens can live man miles from a public library. Furthermore, cable access is almost always non-existent in rural areas. Yes, there is usually dial-up, but because the quality of the phone lines in rural areas are usually no the greatest, it's easy to find oneself stuck at 28Kb/s or less on a dial-up connection.
However, once again you need that computer. Many people are not aware of the $300 machines, because, last I knew anyway, Walmart was only selling them online. Finally, $300 + $10-$20 monthly is usually a lot of money for a rural family. You make mention of the poor kid from the ghetto, but rural poverty is rampant and perhaps more common than urban poverty.
Hmmm... I don't recall that being in the Bill of Rights.
I've already stated that what this company did was legal, and I agree 100% that they had a right to do this. Come on though, in academic circles this would be called plagiarism. As it is, it's a documentary, a type of journalism. Public domain or not, it would have been polite to mention where the original creation of this film lay. I don't know, maybe they did that. If so, then I see no ethical problem and then there would be nothing sleazy in what they did.
Heh -- when I used Dickens in my example I wasn't thinking about Edwin Drood. Still... I see that more as a reinterpretation. Much the same as Dolly Parton covering Stairway to Heaven. Which, while it may be frightening just doesn't strike me as being the same thing as what this company did. However, as I said above, they had the right to do it and this suit should be thrown out.
Now what's really sleazy, is Patrtick McGoohan accepting a voice role in Treasure Planet.
I just read the Yahoo! News! article! and while I am a stalwart advocate for a strong and vibrant public commons, the company that used Fox's original video footage (and audio too I suppose, from the way the article reads) did something that is really sleazy.
Basically, for those who haven't read the article, this small startup video company takes an 8 hour long documentary based on Eisenhower's memoirs, cuts an hour of footage, and adds a half hour of (the article says new, but considering the way this company operates, probablly also recycled) footage then retitles it with an amazingly similar title and dumps it into discount stores' cheap video bins at a fraction of the cost the original documentary sells for.
Was it public domain? Yes. I would defend them on their right to use the footage. Was it ethical? No. I don't beleive so. They were using the work of a whole host of other people -- filmographers, recording engineers, writers, etc. -- to gain a cheap entry into the business. This is the equivalent of taking a novel by, say, Charles Dickens, editing it and perhaps adding another chapter, changing the title and claiming it as a new novel written by yourself. Really sleazy, IMHO.
Still... in no way should Fox be given another copyright on this material. It's in the public domain, and Fox allowed it to enter the public domain and that's where it should stay.
Somebody please mod the parent up!
Thank you! I've long wondered how Jobs managed to get inside PARC. I'd never known that Xerox held a large portion of Apple shares. Fumbling The Future is one of those books that is on my "list" along with about 500 others.
It really is amazing that Xerox never could realize the potential in what it had. The Star, 3 years ahead of the Mac, was amazing. IIRC, and I apologize if my memory is faulty, you guys at Xerox AI Systems did a lot of work in making practical expert systems. Astounding. Xerox has all this brainpower producing such beautiful stuff and completely and totally blows it.
If anybody is interested, I highly recommend Bruce Damer's Personal Histories of the Desktop User Interface.
I'm not sure whether you are trying to troll or if you're just a little igonorant about the history of the computer.
Back in the early 1970s, GUIs were not a natural evolution for computers. They only appear so in retrospect because Steve Jobs happened to get a tour of Xerox PARC and decided that GUIs should be the next step in the evolution of computers. I daresay that Jobs (and Woz's) experiences growing up playing (and later writing) video games influenced the decision to base the Lisa and then the Mac's OS around a GUI but had Jobs not had his little tour about PARC it's arguable that the PC revolution would never have happened and the CLI would still be dominant today.
Alan Kay and his fellow researchers at Xerox PARC and preceeded by Doug Englebart at SRI are the real thing - true visionaries. It's easy to knock their accomplishments 35+ years out (Englebart et. al. developed NLS in 1967! ) because we've had that long for their ideas to percolate into mass culture. Yeah, I know, the Mac has only been with us since 1984 but really, Englebart and later Kay were subtly but powerfully through their work and demonstrations preparing the way for the dominance of the GUI. Also, as I made allusion to before, don't forget the powerful role that video games had in preparing the kids of the 70s and 80s in ways that would make GUIs seem second nature.
So yeah, I've got to agree, this interview was pretty weak. However, if you want to see where Kay really envisioned that we'd be right now, take a look at the copious information out there regarding Dynabook, Smalltalk and his work at Xerox PARC. Then take a swing by squeak.org, download a copy and play around with it for a while. It's hard not to be impressed. As far as where we go next, that's up to all of us, including you. Personally, I'd like to start working in some strong AI and humaniform robots, but that's my hangup. Perhaps you have a different destination in mind.
Note: I'm not sure of Steve Jobs actual role at Xerox PARC. I've read differing accounts ranging from the tourist picture I paint above to his actually being a researcher there. Can anybody clarify?
That's what's so great about science fiction -- there's something there to offend everyone! :-)
Actually, you make an important point. Books highlighting the "science" of science fiction could be an invaluable aid in such a course, especially considering how little science high schoolers are exposed to. I'm not talking texts here, but stuff like Lawrence Krauss' The Physics of Star Trek (knock it all you like because of the title, but this is an excellent book), John Allen Paulos' Innumeracy, Ray Kurzweil's Age of Intelligent Machines or James Gleick's Chaos: Making of A New Science are all highly appropriate and complementary to a wide array of science fiction literature.
Wow. Big question and sort of hard to answer since you don't state what the course objectives are. With that in mind, here's what I would do if I were you...
I would base the reading around various big themes that are relevant to adolescents who are trying to figure out theirselves and their relation to the world. Fortunately, Science Fiction excels in looking at these "big picture" issues. Some examples:
There's so much you can do here both in terms of education and engendering a life-long appreciation for literature (and I certainly believe that Science Fiction is literature). As some others have mentioned, I wouldn't worry too much about grade-level appropriate reading here, unless you are dealing with more of a middle-school crowd. Good Science Fiction is naturally challenging, and the kids (yound adults really) will appreciate being challenged.
I would like to think that all Sierra needs to do to come back into the mainstream is release another Gabriel Knight adventure. Given GK's rabid fanbase (which includes me!) this one game alone would put an infusion of cash into the company. The storyline in the original GK was epic and GK II was the only full motion video game out there that got it right IMHO. GK III was criticized for its overinvolved puzzles (remember the cat hair bit?) and the 3D graphics were pretty crude, but again good gameplay and a killer storyline. Please Sierra... one more Gabriel Knight game, do it right and you will be well rewarded.
Common Dreams is absolutely incredible. Pulls together progressive news and opinion from newspapers and magazines all around the world. You truly will be exposed to news that you will never see if you stick with the New York Times. Don't let the word 'progressive' scare you either. While I would agree there is a lot of what many would consider "liberal" opinion, the emphasis is on hard news. Just as I would never discount something that's been labelled 'conservative' out of hand, allow yourself the same liberty with this fine site and do yourself the favor of truly broadening your perspective. This is what the internet was meant for.
Amateur rockets or high power rockets?
As far as I know, the highest altitude a high powered model rocket has achieved has been roughly 100,000 feet (about 19 miles)? Yet, you're claiming 180,000 feet(about 34 miles). Also, as far as I know, high powered rocket launches do not require military clearance. Besides, the article is talking about plain old model rocketry where the largest motors regularly used are D or E size (although F & G also qualify) and the rocket can not contain metal components and must weigh no more than 16 oz.
Although not necessarily a joke, I always found the anecdote about Niklaus Wirth's (creater of Pascal) response to a question about how to pronounce his name funny...
Another really old (and dated) Pascal joke that I still find humourous is...
Would I be right in assuming that this basically means that all composers who sign contracts with U.S. companies are now no more than indentured servants who will never be able to own the rights to their own creations unless they become rich enough to buy back the copyright on their work from the record companies? I realize that it was basically this way before, but now it seems the record companies have unlimited control.
Would any artist in their right mind ever sign with a U.S. label again? Why not just find a label in a country with much saner copyright laws, say... Canada? Seriously, if enough artists get pissed and just bypass American media corporations altogether, this could be the beginning of the downfall of the U.S. corporations control of the music industry. This idea could work for other types of artists as well, such as screenwriters.
Then again, musicians could just self-publish their work and retain their copyright fromt he beginning.
Is this idea naive? Yes. Is it unrealistic? Yes. Could it ever work? Probably not, but I'm not quite so jaded as to give up hope.
Whoever rated my previous comment -1, Troll, can you please explain why? How is the above trolling? The commenter I was responding to made a truly humourous remark, and I pointed out that it should be modded up. Furthermore, since it referenced a great piece of computer folklore, I pointed out the origins of the joke for those who might not have encountered it before. Again, this is a troll how?