Tools for Thought

30 Oct 2021 - 17 Jun 2023

The computer revolution has many different aspects, but the one that always excited me the most was the idea that a computer could be a tool for augmenting human intellectual processes and a new medium for thoughtful communication. I was first bequeathed my share of this vision via Ted Nelson, an early influence.

By now it's a cliche. Apple for a time adopted a variant of this as its own vision and marketing slogan ("Bicycles for the mind"), and supported efforts that fit in with it like Hypercard and Vivarium Project, but those values were swamped by powerful market forces
Why Steve Jobs killed Hypercard Loper OS http://www.loper-os.org/?p=568 – because end-user programming was antithetical to the business model
– the fact is that most people aren't interested in that sort of thing and there's more money to made in entertainment and idle social chatter.