[arghbleargh]

Sounds intriguing, but after reading through the website for 5 minutes, I still have no idea how this is supposed to work.

From the pictures, it looks like they've set up some kind of system to translate certain physical movements into changes in the projected images. It seems like a non-technical user can only make superficial changes within a limited set of pre-defined behaviors. But from the description it sounds like there's a lot more to it than that...

[jf]

Right now, each piece of paper in Dymanicland is a program. You put a piece of paper down and it "runs" - the metaphor breaks down at this point though. With a little bit of code, anything in Dynamicland can become "alive" and interactive.

For me, the impressive part of Dymanicland is how physical everything is. Want to see how something works? Find the paper that the code is printed on. Need help understanding some code? Bring somebody over to the wall, table, or couch where the code is. You can annotate the paper, draw diagrams on it, cut it, fold it, tear it, put it in a book to help others learn how it works. Want to edit some code? Point an "editor" token at the paper program you want to modify, then start changing the code.

Dynamicland isn't a room with a computer, it's a room that is a computer.

[mcphage]

> Want to see how something works? Find the paper that the code is printed on.

> Want to edit some code? Point an "editor" token at the paper program you want to modify, then start changing the code.

If you edit a paper program, then won't the source on the paper be obsolete? Will that be indicated somehow? If I'm looking to see what a piece does, how can I tell if the source code on it can be trusted?

[jf]

> If you edit a paper program, then won't the source on the paper be obsolete? Will that be indicated somehow?

When a program is changed, Realtalk will print a red line over the lines that have been modified or removed. It looks a lot like the output that you'll see from a "git diff" on a file.

[mcphage]

> Realtalk will print a red line

You mean like, from the projector?

[infinite8s]

The projector is just a means of getting dynamic media. You could imagine future technologies involving e-ink paper that's as cheap as wood-pulp paper. What if we had e-ink embedded in paint? What if all physical objects could be embedded with computability?

[jf]

Yes, sorry. It will project a red line on the paper.

[mcphage]

That's good, then. Having the code right there isn't very good if you can't trust it, but if it at least indicates what's not to be trusted, that's much better.

[icc97]

What happens when the school bully rips up my piece of paper?

[icc97]

To the down voters, it was a genuine question. If the programs are pieces of paper, either they are just toy problems or otherwise you care about losing the paper.

[zardo]

You've got to fight

for your right

to compute

[orf]

> want to copy the code? Oh...

[jpm_sd]

But... when does it run? How do you trigger it? How do you step through it with a debugger? How does one program call another program? This seems like a lousy metaphor.

[lfowles]

I'm looking for more details as well, the idea fascinates me. Each program looks to be a code printout, so I'm not quite grasping how changing code works with just an "editor token".

[jf]

The "editor token" is also a program that Realtalk recognizes. It's just a small program that says "I am an editor named X" - you then point the token at the code you want to edit and then use a text editor to make those changes. I've seen people use laptops, iPads, and other Realtalk programs to make the edits.

The important thing to keep in mind is that everything in Dynamicland is, well, dynamic. Right now, editor tokens are just normal Realktalk programs printed on paper, but in the future the might be a different physical object. Right now you edit the coded using a text editor, but in the future you might use a pen to write code directly on paper, or perhaps you'd re-arrange physical objects that represented blocks of code, etc ...

[mquander]

The printed code is sort of just a documentation -- the system isn't, for example, scanning it visually to decide what to execute. Rather, each card encodes a unique ID, and the running code lives on the network at that ID, so you can point your editor at the card, read the ID, and see and edit the code at that ID. The printout is just the code that was at the ID at the time of printing.

[westoncb]

Would be cool if they projected the code onto the card rather than printing it—that way it doesn't get stale, and more re-use.

[lfowles]

Ah OK, I had to scan the page a few times to realize it wasn't a visually interpreted form of Scratch.

[mendeza]

I think the color dots are some hash/key to a program. Whenever the camera sees the code in its FOV, the system executes the program. Also, the color code seems to serve as location tracking as well, so the program is projected on the physical paper.

[icc97]

I think you can make some more sense of this if you read the piece, and watch the video on laser socks [0]. That was a game designed at the CDG lab that is the pre-cursor to Dynamicland.

[0]: http://glench.com/LaserSocks/

[acobster]

Also this: https://harc.ycr.org/project/realtalk/

[westoncb]

I've spent a decent amount of time looking at Dynamicland-related things, and it seems consistently grandiose + vague. Maybe it's just that the material they're putting out is more for investors than other hackers. Not sure. The language rubs me the wrong way though:

  Dynamicland is a communal computer,
  designed for agency, not apps,
  where people can think like whole humans.

  It's the next step in our mission to
  incubate a humane dynamic medium
  whose full power is accessible to all people.

Just take "designed for agency, not apps" for example. It's a nice rhetorical technique to contrast apps with agency like this, suggesting that apps somehow deprive one of agency and that Dynamicland can restore it—but it feels pretty disingenuous if you think about it for a minute. (There's a section on the page also titled "Agency, not apps", which brings me no closer to feeling that the use of 'agency' is justified.) In actuality each platform (traditional computing, Dynamicland) has tradeoffs in terms of what one's agency is applicable toward. I can see no reason to think Dynamicland is an increase in agency over traditional computing rather than a lateral (and perhaps complementary) change. I agree it's nice to use your body rather than just fingers, but unless I can do the same things with the 'alternative medium' (and there is no material I've found suggesting a level of generality even in the same realm as traditional computing), I'll complement my computer use with other physical activities and face the reality of fingers for input until a true alternative comes along.

I agree the problem they are addressing is epic, and their language is suitable for describing it, but from what I'm able to glean about the project, the solution so far is on the level of 'neat,' and maybe important for introducing new users to programming—but, if that's what it's for, just say it! Instead we see that the aim of the project is to 'reinvent computing for the 21st century'. So am I going to do my taxes with this? Am I going to use it write novels? To design 3D models? To conduct research? To build artificial intelligence? To discover new medicines? To call an Uber? Is there any reason to think it might attain the level of generality where it could at any point be an actual alternative to contemporary computing? Or are we supposed to take this on faith because of the people involved? How could this compete with similar systems designed in AR? It seems to me like there's more 'agency' in AR since a system like this could be replicated within it, but with AR we'd likely have a number of alternative 'physical computing platforms' like it (Of course not soon, but they're talking about a timeline of at least 50 years for this project).

It's definitely refreshing to be able to interact with 'real' objects ('physical' would be less rhetoric-laden), but I feel like the novelty and suggestive language here may tempt readers into forgetting how much power was gained through computation specifically because it didn't require fiddling with physical objects. It's a big deal, and I'm pretty sure that a legitimate alternative computational medium will require deep theoretical breakthroughs, of which I've seen no suggestion here.

[psyc]

There may well be something of value here, but if there is, this website doesn't communicate it. I'm strongly repulsed by the way this project is presented. It reads like a quasi-scam hatched by a pretentious art student. I wish they'd spared a paragraph to say what it actually is.

[juliendorra]

> write novels?

That would be one the most obvious thing to do with such a system, as writing a novel used to be a very spatial task, and current text editors are not good at helping writers organizing their novel, identifying patterns, etc.

> AR

This is AR, but with projectors —which is not novel in itself, as it has been explored in labs, during prototyping events like Museomix and by digital artists for several decades now. HP even tried to commoditize the technique with the Sprout all in one computer.

You are right that the next step is most probably to do without projectors and replace them with AR glasses.

But the manipulation techniques, the collaborative aspect need to be developed and iterated, be it with or without AR glasses, and my understanding is that’s the goal here.