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#personalcomputing

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Memoirs of the CP/M creator released:

“Our father, Gary Kildall, was one of the founders of the personal computer industry, but you probably don’t know his name. Those who have heard of him may recall the myth that he ‘missed’ the opportunity to become Bill Gates by going flying instead of meeting with IBM. Unfortunately, this tall tale paints Gary as a ‘could-have-been,’ ignores his deep contributions, and overshadows his role as an inventor of key technologies that define how computer platforms run today.

Gary viewed computers as learning tools rather than profit engines. His career choices reflect a different definition of success, where innovation means sharing ideas, letting passion drive your work and making source code available for others to build upon. His work ethic during the 1970s resembles that of the open-source community today."

computerhistory.org/blog/in-hi

CHM · In His Own Words: Gary KildallGary Kildall was a pioneer of personal computer software. He wrote programming language tools, including assemblers (Intel 4004), interpreters (BASIC), and compilers (PL/M). He created a widely-used disk operating system (CP/M). He and his wife, Dorothy McEwen, started a successful company called Digital Research to develop and market CP/M, which for years was the dominant operating system for personal microcomputers. Thousands of programs were written to run under it, and a million or more people might have used it.

"#MySpace pages, Media player skins, the eye searingly gaudy hot dog stand theme. These all were vectors for #selfexpression. But to offer these #freedoms, you have to trust the person operating your system, honour their agency, and respect them as a serious intellectual partner instead of a gibbering idiot to be manipulated for your own ends.
…personal computing needs to make a firm return to normative #design practises.
#TheUser is dead. Long live #PersonalComputing!"

pastagang.cc/blog/kill-the-use

pastagangpastagangjam code

Further to yesterday's misadventures in Flatpak Land: The very notion of "sandboxing" "apps" in a desktop env seems to me exactly the *opposite* of the direction we want if we're to foster #PersonalComputing. A sandbox's purpose is to *prevent* software from interacting/interoperating with other bits of s/w, when what we *want* is many more much smaller components that interact promiscuously, fluidly and easily. (Yes, I know, bad actors/malware. Don't know how to solve that yet. Capabilities?)

Before there were demos, there was their 'mother'. Rewatching Doug Engelbart's "The Mother of All Demos"

Wikpedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moth

YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzM

The history of and is the history of computing.

Fun tidbit: Engelbart apparently 'dealt lightning with both hands'. Research presenters at PARC were called 'dealers of lightning'. PARC still holds a weekly 'Dealer' seminar.

en.wikipedia.orgThe Mother of All Demos - Wikipedia