• May 27th, 2012

    Hey Kids, Get Off My Lawn: The Once And Future Visual Programming Environment

    Seededfertilizedlawn

    When I was a graduate student at the MIT Media Lab fifteen years ago, my research group went on a retreat every year with Famous Computer Scientists from Xerox PARC. I greatly admired these people and their work. But I was young and in a hurry to get where I thought I was going. And it sometimes seemed that every time us young folks talked about our research, or showed a demo, someone would say… → Read More

    March 18th, 2012

    The Next, Next Thing

    minority-report-03

    Computers have been getting steadily “better” — faster, smaller, cheaper — for sixty years. But they get “smarter” — more capable and more broadly useful — in discrete leaps, the biggest of which don’t happen very often. We’re overdue for our next big leap.

    Working with computers is intoxicating. The price/performance curve is always moving to the right. Every year one can do more: Design… → Read More