The problem I see with Dynamicland and similar ideas is that the internet exists now, and there's no going back. A physical, room-sized computer system might have worked in the early 90s, but not any more. Collaborating asynchronously with people across the world is something we do regularly now, and Dynamicland doesn't lend itself well to such collaboration.
The beauty of computers is that information is not tied to any physical manifestation. Several people can work on a document, one using the screen of their phone in Palo Alto, another using a braille display in Puerto Rico and yet another using voice control in Beijing, all at the same time. Once one person updates their representation of the document, all the other representations follow. The document isn't inherently pixels or sound waves or Braille dots, those are merely manifestations of some underlying, more fundamental structure that exists purely in the digital realm.
Dynamicland takes this flexibility away. Once we start keeping code in binders in a desk, those binders effectively become the code, every other representation must ultimately be derived from the contents of those binders. More importantly, there's no way to automatically reflect the manipulations made to those alternate representations on the paper contained in the binders. This basically undoes everything the internet has given us, making technology much more elitist and harder to access.
Personally I’m desperate for anything that would let the digital creative process escape the confines of the screen and engage my body more. It has become increasingly painful to sit in front of a screen for yet another repetitive, static round of manipulating those purely digital structures through the extremely limited affordances of keyboard and cursor control.
I’ve tried the UI options that are available today for a reasonable price: stylus and touchscreen like the MS Surface, VR like the Oculus Quest. Neither solves much for me, perhaps because of lack of applications.
If Dynamicland could end up producing something that makes my private work experience tangibly better, I’d be happy to accept that the trade-off is that collaboration becomes more difficult. (I don’t do realtime collaboration today anyway, even though it’s theoretically possible.)
This misses the point. Dynamicland is not trying to eliminate the internet or stop people in Palo Alto from collaborating with people in Beijing.
It is a small research project to explore what other ideas can be found in the vast space of unexplored possibilities.
You might as well say that someone writing in their paper diary takes away the communication flexibility of Facebook, or that someone moving their curtains around with motorized legos takes away the flexibility of an Alexa/Siri automated home, or that building a go-kart takes away the flexibility of the interstate highway system.
You are right that small research projects are inherently “elitist” in the sense that not everyone in the world can devote their attention to every researcher’s every idea and project. Doing some new niche thing takes significant time and work, and most people lead busy lives and largely engage with large-scale mass-market projects, by definition.
> [...] More importantly, there's no way to automatically reflect the manipulations made to those alternate representations on the paper contained in the binders. This basically undoes everything the internet has given us, making technology much more elitist and harder to access.
I think that "automatically reflecting the manipulations made to alternate representations" is exactly a core intention of DynamicLand. They're very much all about bringing computer interaction seamlessly into the intimate physical workspaces of humans.
Admittedly, in the very few clips and info we've seen, this isn't particularly dramatic. On the surface it's sort of like an inverted augmented-reality experience where the computer asserts itself in physical space. Whereas in regular AR, we assert ourselves in cyberspace. The project of DynamicLand, IMHO, has a much larger scope than regular AR. Will it be successful? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am glad, however, that at least someone is trying this. I do hope that Brett Victor resumes his amazing lectures. They were really inspiring (this one in particular is a classic: https://youtu.be/8pTEmbeENF4).
You're using a lot of definite articles here: "the problem with Dynamicland", "the beauty of computers".
I think this is a pretty crushingly middle-brow dismissal of what is essentially a hugely ambitious tech demo that could evolve in thousands of ways and lead to all kinds of unforeseeable progress.
I mean how does Dynamicland take away from the Internet? Is the status quo the global maximum? Frankly after 2 years of WFH, I'm far from convinced that staring at screens (whether traditional or in a VR headset) is the pinnacle of collaborative computing.
The central question for Dynamicland is one of "media for thought," and therefore the specifics of this or that programming language (or "code") can't be that important.
What is important, however, is taking a more holistic approach to understanding how people think and how media can help in that process. People actually think with their whole bodies. There is a kinesthetic component to thinking that is important. Computing today -- be it the desktop or the tablet -- has given us tunnel vision in a sense.
The beauty of computers is that information is not tied to any physical manifestation. Several people can work on a document, one using the screen of their phone in Palo Alto, another using a braille display in Puerto Rico and yet another using voice control in Beijing, all at the same time. Once one person updates their representation of the document, all the other representations follow. The document isn't inherently pixels or sound waves or Braille dots, those are merely manifestations of some underlying, more fundamental structure that exists purely in the digital realm.
Dynamicland takes this flexibility away. Once we start keeping code in binders in a desk, those binders effectively become the code, every other representation must ultimately be derived from the contents of those binders. More importantly, there's no way to automatically reflect the manipulations made to those alternate representations on the paper contained in the binders. This basically undoes everything the internet has given us, making technology much more elitist and harder to access.