MC in basic

Jon Hylands jon at huv.com
Tue Dec 14 21:59:22 UTC 2004


On Tue, 14 Dec 2004 15:18:13 -0500, "Jeffrey T. Read" <bitwize at snet.net>
wrote:

> To me, Squeak is about breaking new ground in the world of human 
> computer interaction. The future of the computer interface is in using 
> all of your senses, especially vision and hearing and perhaps touch; 
> and kinaesthetic and motor responses. We will go from an abstract level 
> where you use the "thinking part of your brain" to get things done, to 
> a more fundamental level which is based on feeling, instinct, and 
> inspiration. Squeak is at the wavefront of this tremendous phenomenon; 
> and as such, until something better comes along to supplant them 
> (Tweak? Croquet?) Morphic, Etoys, and Wonderland are all VERY MUCH a 
> part of Squeak.

I think you're being short-sighted.

I use Squeak to do fundamental things that I can't do in other Smalltalks
-- specifically, running bit-identical on many different platforms. With
what I'm working on, I don't even need a user interface in my runtime
deployed Squeak images. Human computer interaction has nothing to do with
what I'm doing (embedded robotics controllers, if you're interested).

Squeak is a wonderful system, but its not just about multimedia.

To repeat your point:

> The future of the computer interface is in using 
> all of your senses, especially vision and hearing and perhaps touch; 
> and kinaesthetic and motor responses.

Computers can interface in this way to more than just people -- I interface
Squeak to sensors and motor actuators this way, and to try and combine
information from many sensors in novel and useful ways so the software
understands what it is looking at is a tremendous challenge.

Later,
Jon

--------------------------------------------------------------
   Jon Hylands      Jon at huv.com      http://www.huv.com/jon

  Project: Micro Seeker (Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicle)
           http://www.huv.com



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