It is the perSUasive not "pervasive" computing lab.
Persuasive tech is about "psychosocially active" computing (and other) technologies, ie. that affect motivation, persuasion etc. The paradigmatic example is "Baby think it over", the doll given to teens to make them think twice about getting pregnant. (There's even a special "crack baby" model I think.)
But in the last couple of years BJ Fogg (the guy behind persuasive tech) has completely focused on web trust, which is a lot less interesting than the original program IMHO.
Pervasive computing, in contrast, is another term (originally IBM:s I think) for Ubiquitous Computing. Something quite different in fact.
>Double-clicking is required on the mac desktop, and the file manager.
In the Finder you open an item using the File>>Open menu item; this is the basic operation for which there are two shortcuts, cmd-O and double click. Quote:
Double-clicking is a shortcut for those users who are physically able to
use it. Double-clicking must
never
be the only way to perform a given action.
Many novice users, children, and people with certain physical disabilities
may have a hard time double-clicking.
And by the way, there is nothing called a "file manager" on the Mac. Maybe you are referring to the Finder. And there is also no way in the standard MacOS to change the double-click behavior in the Finder. That would be absolutely insane from a usability standpoint.
Well the whole point of the 4:33 piece is to make the listener aware of sounds in the environment, i.e. mostly those made by the audience. So this was in effect a very modern performance of 4:33. I'm sure Cage would have been very pleased.
Recently there was a band that included a minute of silence on their CD, they have now been sued by Cage's publisher for unauthorized sampling. I kid you not.
What I would consider to be the first GUI was Sutherland's "Sketchpad" system from the early 60's. The military had similar sorts of things predating Sutherland, but nothing quite flexible enough to really be called a full blown GUI.
Sketchpad was essentially a constraint-based drawing program using a lightpen, and using object-oriented principles for its implementation. However, to call it a GUI is not quite correct. There were e.g. no UI elements represented on the screen (such as buttons, menus, or windows). A graphics app is not the same as a GUI, i.e. a UI that uses graphics.
The thesis can be found online here: (scanned, no pdf in '63:-) Sketchpad, a man-machine graphical communication system. Evidently, all the graphics in the thesis were generated by the program it described (Sketchpad). According to Alan Kay this is rare for graphics theses.
Anybody with their brains in the right place can tell you that the GUI was not invented by Xerox PARC. They may have done a great deal to push the idea, or perhaps simply been at the right place at the right time, but the basic idea of using graphics as a means to interact with a machine predates PARC by about 20 years.
The group that created Smalltalk (Learning Research Group, LRG) was set up in or about 1971, possibly the year before. 20 years before that would be the early fifties. Sketchpad was from 1963. Engelbart's system is usually dated to '65. But neither of these were GUIs by any reasonable standard. By 1973, LRG had the first Altos and created their first GUIs. I don't know how to get "twenty years earlier" from that.
All this can be read in the classic paper The Early History of Smalltalk by Alan Kay. (A chapter in History of Programming Languages II, 1996. A preprint that may be easier to find in the library is in ACM SIGPLAN Notices, March 1993.) This is probably the most readable and enjoyable scientific paper I've ever come across. And it contains so much good stuff. It is a shame it isn't available online.
Currently, Kay is in the process of donating videos of many of the pioneering systems (NLS, Sketchpad, GRAIL, Smalltalk-72, etc.) to the Computer History Museum (I think), and converting them to digital movies (mpeg, mov?). I hope they will be placed on line.
If you really wanna have some fun, check out Doug Englebart's 1968 presentation that introduced the world to the mouse, chordboard and other interesting stuff.
It should be here (all in streaming video), but I coudn't reach the site now: Doug Engelbart 1968 Demo.
It almost brings tears to my eyes when I watch it.:)
Second that. But is it the demo or the non-progress since then that makes me cry?
Well, isn't it interesting to see the self-serving comments by people trying to rewrite history, whether it is a former engineer or a former CEO, to make themselves get the credit for the success of Apple or the Mac.
There are a lot of myths out there about Apple, and especially about the birth of the Mac. Fortunately, today there is a great source of historical facts for those who are interested or just care about the truth:
Go there to find out that Apple did not "rip off" the GUI from Xerox. For example, a large piece of the truth is that the people at PARC who invented these concepts had to leave for Apple to find a company that was interested in their ideas.
Go there to find out why the Mac mouse has one button.
Go there to find out the reality behind Jef Raskin's claims that he created the Mac. Yes, he started the project. But in his vision, it should not have a GUI, neither a mouse. But he was very much concerned about it having a "programmable calculator-like programming language". Although he did want it to essentialliy have an Internet connection (in the late 70's). Engelbart's NLS was also an important inspiration.
Or just visit that archive to find out about the genuine innovations that were made at the time when a mediocre box called the IBM PC was put together. You don't have to be an Apple zealot to appreciate it, the material there has much more general relevance. But the space of a/. comment is too small to do it all justice.
Oh, and Ctrl-Alt-Delete? Bradley likes to joke that even if he invented it, it was Gates who made it famous
This guy is obviously the spiritual forefather of the Slashdot crowd.
Slashdot Mirror
It is the perSUasive not "pervasive" computing lab.
l
Persuasive tech is about "psychosocially active" computing (and other) technologies, ie. that affect motivation, persuasion etc. The paradigmatic example is "Baby think it over", the doll given to teens to make them think twice about getting pregnant. (There's even a special "crack baby" model I think.)
But in the last couple of years BJ Fogg (the guy behind persuasive tech) has completely focused on web trust, which is a lot less interesting than the original program IMHO.
Pervasive computing, in contrast, is another term (originally IBM:s I think) for Ubiquitous Computing. Something quite different in fact.
www.research.ibm.com/thinkresearch/pervasive.shtm
www.computer.org/pervasive/
p00h: imagine a beowulf cluster of these... drool.
0wl: Bah, 640 honeypots should be enough for anybody.
Ahem...
>Double-clicking is required on the mac desktop, and the file manager.
In the Finder you open an item using the File>>Open menu item; this is the basic operation for which there are two shortcuts, cmd-O and double click. Quote:
Double-clicking is a shortcut for those users who are physically able to use it. Double-clicking must never be the only way to perform a given action. Many novice users, children, and people with certain physical disabilities may have a hard time double-clicking.
And by the way, there is nothing called a "file manager" on the Mac. Maybe you are referring to the Finder. And there is also no way in the standard MacOS to change the double-click behavior in the Finder. That would be absolutely insane from a usability standpoint.
Well the whole point of the 4:33 piece is to make the listener aware of sounds in the environment, i.e. mostly those made by the audience. So this was in effect a very modern performance of 4:33. I'm sure Cage would have been very pleased.
Recently there was a band that included a minute of silence on their CD, they have now been sued by Cage's publisher for unauthorized sampling. I kid you not.
What I would consider to be the first GUI was Sutherland's "Sketchpad" system from the early 60's. The military had similar sorts of things predating Sutherland, but nothing quite flexible enough to really be called a full blown GUI.
:-) Sketchpad, a man-machine graphical communication system . Evidently, all the graphics in the thesis were generated by the program it described (Sketchpad). According to Alan Kay this is rare for graphics theses.
:)
Sketchpad was essentially a constraint-based drawing program using a lightpen, and using object-oriented principles for its implementation. However, to call it a GUI is not quite correct. There were e.g. no UI elements represented on the screen (such as buttons, menus, or windows). A graphics app is not the same as a GUI, i.e. a UI that uses graphics.
The thesis can be found online here: (scanned, no pdf in '63
Anybody with their brains in the right place can tell you that the GUI was not invented by Xerox PARC. They may have done a great deal to push the idea, or perhaps simply been at the right place at the right time, but the basic idea of using graphics as a means to interact with a machine predates PARC by about 20 years.
The group that created Smalltalk (Learning Research Group, LRG) was set up in or about 1971, possibly the year before. 20 years before that would be the early fifties. Sketchpad was from 1963. Engelbart's system is usually dated to '65. But neither of these were GUIs by any reasonable standard. By 1973, LRG had the first Altos and created their first GUIs. I don't know how to get "twenty years earlier" from that.
All this can be read in the classic paper The Early History of Smalltalk by Alan Kay. (A chapter in History of Programming Languages II, 1996. A preprint that may be easier to find in the library is in ACM SIGPLAN Notices, March 1993.) This is probably the most readable and enjoyable scientific paper I've ever come across. And it contains so much good stuff. It is a shame it isn't available online.
Currently, Kay is in the process of donating videos of many of the pioneering systems (NLS, Sketchpad, GRAIL, Smalltalk-72, etc.) to the Computer History Museum (I think), and converting them to digital movies (mpeg, mov?). I hope they will be placed on line.
If you really wanna have some fun, check out Doug Englebart's 1968 presentation that introduced the world to the mouse, chordboard and other interesting stuff.
It should be here (all in streaming video), but I coudn't reach the site now: Doug Engelbart 1968 Demo.
It almost brings tears to my eyes when I watch it.
Second that. But is it the demo or the non-progress since then that makes me cry?
There are a lot of myths out there about Apple, and especially about the birth of the Mac. Fortunately, today there is a great source of historical facts for those who are interested or just care about the truth:
Making the Macintosh: Technology and Culture in Silicon Valley at the Stanford Computer History Archives.
Go there to find out that Apple did not "rip off" the GUI from Xerox. For example, a large piece of the truth is that the people at PARC who invented these concepts had to leave for Apple to find a company that was interested in their ideas.
Go there to find out why the Mac mouse has one button.
Go there to find out the reality behind Jef Raskin's claims that he created the Mac. Yes, he started the project. But in his vision, it should not have a GUI, neither a mouse. But he was very much concerned about it having a "programmable calculator-like programming language". Although he did want it to essentialliy have an Internet connection (in the late 70's). Engelbart's NLS was also an important inspiration.
Or just visit that archive to find out about the genuine innovations that were made at the time when a mediocre box called the IBM PC was put together. You don't have to be an Apple zealot to appreciate it, the material there has much more general relevance. But the space of a /. comment is too small to do it all justice.
Oh, and Ctrl-Alt-Delete? Bradley likes to joke that even if he invented it, it was Gates who made it famous This guy is obviously the spiritual forefather of the Slashdot crowd.