Tools, Computing, and Research Labs
Originally published Summer ’19
This page is a bit out of date. More soon… Some of the links might not work — try the Wayback Machine if needed.
“Computers aren’t the thing. They’re the thing that gets us to the thing.” —From Halt and Catch Fire
Collections
Aggregations of interesting or important content.
- Computing History Hub (Molly Mielke)
- Classic HCI Demos (Jack Rusher)
- The Overedge Catalog
- Computer Utopias (Chris Novello - RISD) ⭐️
- Alan Kay's Quora ⭐️
- Alan Kay's Reading List (See Also: Forgotten Books) ⭐️
- Bret Victor’s Bookshelf (See Also: Transcription) ⭐️
- Quotes (Bret Victor)
- Hacker News AMA with Alan Kay
- Alan Kay's HN Comments
- Ted Nelson's YouTube Channel ⭐️
- 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.
- "What made Xerox PARC special? Who else today is like them?" (Alan Kay) ⭐️
- Excerpts from Alan Kay's Emails (Bret Victor) ⭐️
- How To Invent The Future Part I (Alan Kay) ⭐️
- How To Invent The Future Part II (Alan Kay) ⭐️
- CHI 2016 Plenary: Alan Kay in conversation with Vishal Sikka ⭐️
- 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)
- “Would you like to see an invisible sculpture?” (eleVR)
- 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 LP
- 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) ⭐️
- Dynamicland
- Realtalk Tech Preview (Bret Victor) ⭐️
- YC Research
- 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)
- Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums (Stewart Brand)
- MIT Tangible Media Group
Miscellaneous
Still need to categorize these.
- Tribute to Ted Nelson at "Intertwingled" Fest (Alan Kay)
- The Center of "Why?" (Alan Kay) ⭐️
- Panel with Alan Kay, Ted Nelson, Tim Berners-Lee & Doug Engelbart ⭐️
- 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) ⭐️
- Magazine Interview with Alan Kay
- 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)
- A Visit to Fujitsu Laboratories
- Neuralink Launch Event
- General Magic The Movie
- Diary of a Disaster: General Magic Goes Poof (Richard Doherty)
- The Bit Player Movie
- 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)
- Hu.ma.ne
- 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)
- Utopian Hacks
- 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)
- Stripe’s Negative Emissions Commitment ⭐️
- Project Wren ⭐️
- The Arc of Collaboration (Kevin Kwok)
- Introducing Mercury OS (Jason Yuan)
- The Desktop Metaphor Must Die (Jason Yuan)
- Chromachron, A Radically New Approach to Time (Hodinkee)
- Cyborg Botany (MIT Media Lab) ⭐️
- Elowan (MIT Media Lab) ⭐️
- The Secret Lab in Tuxedo Park (HV Mag)
- How to Work Together (Kevin Hale)
- Research Progress Report 1 (Oscar Rosello)
- How to make almost anything (Oscar Rosello)
- Buster's timeline
- 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)
- Dr. Bert Freudenberg
- 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)
- Stripe Envrionment
- Augmenting Cognition (Michael Nielson) ⭐️
- At Dynamicland, The Building is The Computer (Carl Tashian)
- Cloudflare's Approach to Research
- Laser Socks (Dynamicland)
- Is it really complex, or did we just make it complicated? (Alan Kay)
- Richard Hamming: The Art of Doing Science and Engineering (Lectures)
- Introducing Jelly Labs
- Asteroid AR
- How do people get new ideas? (Issac Asimov)
- The Neuroscientist who might hold the key to true AI (Wired)
- Silk Pavilion (Mediated Matter Group)
- How can we develop transformative tools for thought? (Michael Nielsen & Andy Matuschak)
- Monogram: Productivity tools for creative pros
- Futureland (InternetVin) ⭐️
- Interview with Sam Altman and Greg Brockman
- Teaching the Long Now
New Tools for Thinking
- The 1968 Demo (Doug Engelbart)
- Enlightened Imagination for Citizens (Alan Kay)
- Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction (Bret Victor)
- An Ill-Advised Personal Note about "Media for Thinking the Unthinkable" (Bret Victor)
- Stop Drawing Dead Fish (Bret Victor)
- Responses to A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design (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)
- Soulver
- Causal
- Aula - interactive social learning platform
- 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) ⭐️
- The Senses: Design Beyond Vision ⭐️
- 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)
- Art and Innovation: The Xerox PARC Artist-in-Residence Program (Craig Harris)
Design & HCI
- The Qualities of Great Design (WWDC)
- 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)
- Layers Conference
- 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.
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