"Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that gets us to the thing." —From Halt and Catch Fire
Library
Collections
Aggregations of interesting or important content.
Computing History Hub (Molly Mielke)
Classic HCI Demos (Jack Rusher)
Computer Utopias (Chris Novello - RISD) ⭐️
Alan Kay's Reading List (See Also: Forgotten Books) ⭐️
Bret Victor’s Bookshelf (See Also: Transcription) ⭐️
Quotes (Bret Victor)
Folklore (Andy Hertzfeld)
Bookshelf (Patrick Collison)
Labs (Patrick Collison)
Progress (Patrick Collison)
Silicon Valley History (Patrick Collison)
Future of Coding (Steve Krouse)
What Should You Do with Your Life? (Alexey Guzey)
Research Labs
How can we recapture the magic of Xerox PARC and Bell Labs? What structures and cultural attributes support great work?
TAOR: A History (Vi Hart) ⭐️ — This elegantly captures the feeling of groups like these.
Excerpts from Alan Kay's Emails (Bret Victor) ⭐️
Mervin Kelly, A Biography (John Pierce) ⭐️
Reviving Patronage and Revolutionary Industrial Research (Alexey Guzey)
The Art of Research (Vi Hart)
Art-Based Research (eleVR) ⭐️
Art as Research (eleVR)
Musical User Interfaces (Arthur Carabott)
Talk: Art-Based Research for Immersive Media (Vi Hart)
CDG Research Agenda (Bret Victor)
Crit at CDG ⭐️
The Crit (Kurt Ralske) ⭐️
See Also: The Pixar Braintrust
The Power of The Context (Alan Kay) ⭐️
STEPS Research Proposal (VPRI, Alan Kay)
A Brief History of Industrial Research (Ink & Switch)
Alan Kay Interview (Ambitious) ⭐️
Lunch with Alan Kay (Steve Krouse) ⭐️
eleVR (Vi Hart)
CDG (Bret Victor)
HARC (Y Combinator Research)
VPRI (Alan Kay)
Learning Day (OpenAI)
OpenAI Fundraising (NYT)
#define CTO OpenAI (Greg Brockman) ⭐️
My path to OpenAI (Greg Brockman)
The OpenAI Mission (Greg Brockman)
Greg (Sam Altman)
Creative Thinking (Claude Shannon)
A Rubric on Rubik Cubics (Claude Shannon) ⭐️
Realtalk Tech Preview (Bret Victor) ⭐️
The Risk of Discovery (Paul Graham)
Local-first software (Ink & Switch)
Muse Prototype Challenges (Ink & Switch)
We Need a New Science of Progress (Patrick Collison & Tyler Cowen)
Science is Getting Less Bang for its Buck (Michael Nielsen & Patrick Collison)
How Life Sciences Actually Work (Alexey Guzey)
The Independent Researcher (Nadia Eghbal)
Miscellaneous
Still need to categorize these.
The Center of "Why?" (Alan Kay) ⭐️
A Few Words on Doug Engelbart (Bret Victor)
Utopian UI Architect (Medium)
Spatial Interfaces (John Palmer) ⭐️
Leon Sans: Dynamic Typeface Made with Code (Jongmin Kim) ⭐️
Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System (Ivan Sutherland)
The Future of Programming (Bret Victor) ⭐️
Active Essays on the Web (VPRI)
Programs with Common Sense (John McCarthy)
Diary of a Disaster: General Magic Goes Poof (Richard Doherty)
The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller (John Truby) - Recommended by Brianna from Stripe Press
The Creative Habit (Twyla Tharp) - Recommended by Brianna from Stripe Press
Twelve Tones (Vi Hart)
Alan Kay is Not Impressed (Fast Company)
Recreating the Magic of Xerox PARC (Fast Company) ⭐️
Restoring the Xerox Alto (Ken Shirriff)
Creation Myth (New Yorker)
Experiment.com - Kickstarter for Scientific Research
Explorable Explanations (Vi Hart & Nicky Case)
Parable of The Polygons (Vi Hart & Nicky Case)
Bicycle for the Mind Thread (Steven Sinofsky)
Andy Hertzfeld (Tools & Craft)
Stu Card (Tools & Craft)
Ted Nelson (Tools & Craft)
LOT2046 (Vadik Marmeladov)
Lapka (Vadik Marmeladov)
Airbnb Samara (Vadik Marmeladov)
Saul Griffith Profile (Wired)
Project Wren ⭐️
The Arc of Collaboration (Kevin Kwok)
Introducing Mercury OS (Jason Yuan)
The Desktop Metaphor Must Die (Jason Yuan)
Cyborg Botany (MIT Media Lab) ⭐️
Elowan (MIT Media Lab) ⭐️
The Secret Lab in Tuxedo Park (HV Mag)
How to Work Together (Kevin Hale)
Interview with Greg Brockman & Szymon Sidor (YC Podcast)
McMaster-Carr - Recommended by Alexander from The Long Now
The Calculus of Bad Driving (Vi Hart)
Nonprofit Explorer (ProPublica)
Google AI Bets on Canada (TechCrunch)
The Whole Code Catalog (Future of Coding)
Rethinking Education (Alan Kay)
Education That Takes Us To The 22nd Century (Alan Kay)
Upgrade Your Cargo Cult (Meaningness)
Augmenting Cognition (Michael Nielson) ⭐️
At Dynamicland, The Building is The Computer (Carl Tashian)
Laser Socks (Dynamicland)
How do people get new ideas? (Issac Asimov)
Silk Pavilion (Mediated Matter Group)
How can we develop transformative tools for thought? (Michael Nielsen & Andy Matuschak)
Futureland (InternetVin) ⭐️
New Tools for Thinking
The 1968 Demo (Doug Engelbart)
Enlightened Imagination for Citizens (Alan Kay)
Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction (Bret Victor)
Stop Drawing Dead Fish (Bret Victor)
Abstraction Email (Bret Victor)
Magic Ink (Bret Victor)
The Social Dynamics of Programming Together in Dynamicland (Toby Schachman)
Notes from Dynamicland: Geokit (Omar Rizwan)
The Next Big Thing is a Room (Steve Krouse)
Personal Dynamic Media (Alan Kay & Adele Goldberg)
Doing with Images Makes Symbols (Alan Kay)
Muse (Ink & Switch) Carnegie Libraries
Longform Content & Books
As We May Think (Vannevar Bush) ⭐️
Augmenting Human Intellect (Doug Engelbart) ⭐️
Computer Lib / Dream Machines (Ted Nelson) ⭐️
The Art of Doing Science and Engineering (Richard Hamming) ⭐️
Interview with Bob Taylor (Computer History Museum)
The Dream Machine (JCR Licklider) ⭐️
A Mind at Play (Claude Shannon) ⭐️
The Idea Factory (Bell Labs)
Inventive Minds (Marvin Minsky)
You and Your Research (Richard Hamming) ⭐️
Valley of Genius (Adam Fisher) ⭐️
The Soul of A New Machine (Tracy Kidder)
Creativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull)
Mindstorms (Seymour Papert) ⭐️
The Humane Interface (Jef Raskin)
Design & HCI
Designing for Wonder (Linda Dong)
Weird Technology (Lia Napolitano)
The Future Has Hips (May-Li Khoe)
Designing with Empathy (May-Li Khoe)
Humanities and Technology (Ashley Nelson-Hornstein)
Creating Delightful Events (Jessie Char)
Dieter Rams Documentary: Overview
Graduals (Tori Hinn)
Update: a bunch of the above talks from Layers were taken down, but they’re back up on YouTube.
Questions
- How can a group of people work together most effectively?
- How can we recapture the magic of Xerox PARC and Bell Labs?
- What structures and cultural attributes support great work?
- What is the best way to fund long-term endeavors that focus on research?
- What’s the best way to nurture and identify talent?