The computer in the woods
A note on the iPad
Every Friday, we send an email that details what we released in Kosmik during the week, what we’re working on next week, and a little note of anything that’s been top of mind. We hope you enjoy!
When Alan Kay wrote his famous article, "A Computer for Children of All Ages," one key part of the description of the ideal computer is the lightness of the Dynabook as an object. It must be as easy to carry as a notebook, as light as possible, and as personal as possible.
The DynaBook itself (the object) is not described until page 6. Before this, Kay tries to answer another important question, what is a personal computer?
His answer would still be a great vision for a new personal computer brand today:
One would hope that it would be both a medium for and, expressing arbitrary symbolic also a. collection of useful tools for manipulating these structures, with ways to add new tools to the repertoire. Another rarely invoked constraint is that it be superior to books and printing in at least some ways without being markedly inferior in others. « Personal » also means owned by its user (need to cost no more than a TV) and portable (which to me means that the user can easily carry the device and other things at the same time).
Need we add that it be usable in the woods?
I doubt that people in the marketing department at Apple were required to read Alan Kay ‘s article (I may be wrong), but there’s one thing that strikes me every time Apple talks about the iPad.
Symbolically at least, Apple tries to push the iPad closer to the Dynabook ideal of the computer that you can use in the woods. A computer you can just grab and go, antifragile, made to be with you, not chained to a desk. Made to disappear and mimic the intimacy and immediacy of paper.
This is why Apple can also claim to own the famous "What is a computer?" question. It’s probably sincerely asking this question itself, too. The iPad is a confused device (software-wise) because the form factor can be so many things. I'm not sure people would be that happy with an iPad that runs macOS. There's more to that story than the OS.
The iPad exists before and beyond itself. The concept of the Dynabook is so strong (not was, is) that it gives meaning to all the interim stages of innovation we have to go through to realize that ideal.
In 1983, even before the Macintosh was released — along with the famous phrase "it is better to be a pirate than to join the navy" — Jobs also said that the Mac team had to "put the Mac in a book before 1986."
It is rumored that HyperCard was first dreamt as a full-blown OS for a light tablet form factor computer. I’m inclined to believe that at least some of it is true given the profusion of mock-ups from Frog Design that exemplify what a tablet-like computer could be. The Dynabook lineage is undeniable.
Those prototypes are from 1983; they were known as "bashful" in reference to the Snow White codename of the design language project.
HyperCard never became the OS of a tablet Mac but the idea of a notebook-like, pen-activated computer continued to exist at Apple and elsewhere. I’ll continue to focus on Apple here because it just makes the breadcrumbs easier to follow.
In 1985, after the release of the Mac and Steve Jobs ousting, John Sculley had serious doubts about the road ahead technologically. Apple was making money with a computer based on nearly 10-year-old technology and pushing a new standard that was winning conceptually against the IBM PC, but not financially. It would be 2 years before the Mac II and Mac SE changed this. In the midst of this identity crisis, Alan Kay came to Sculley and told him bluntly:
"Next time we won’t have Xerox." Sculley understood immediately what that message meant. Apple had to invest in radical new technologies that might be 10 years down the line now. Kay postulated that every innovative technology takes about 15 to 20 years to get from the lab and into a consumer-grade product. Kay took Sculley on a tour of the most innovative labs in the country. This motivated Sculley to invest in a radical device for the future: the Knowledge Navigator.
The Knowledge Navigator is almost here.
With GPT-4o’s recent introduction, we may finally witness the realization of one of the most influential "vaporware" concepts ever: The Knowledge Navigator.
The Knowledge Navigator video is, of course, very well-known, but more importantly, it was actually embedded within a talk given by John Sculley at Educom ’87 where Sculley talks about the significance of artificial intelligence, novel interfaces, and yes, personal hypermedia.
Here’s what Sculley said right before showing the device:
"But perhaps the most spectacular event will not be in the presentation level but lies deeper in the programming. Just a short way into the future, we will see artificial intelligence emerge as a core technology. Combined with our other core technologies, AI will boost simulations and hypermedia to new levels of realism and usefulness. We will move, for example, from building molecules in 2 and 3-dimensional spaces to building the environment in which they combine, where each molecule understands the structure and behaviors of the others."
We're almost there!
Until next week,
Paul 🧑🚀