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Path: utzoo!hoptoad!amdcad!decwrl!labrea!rutgers!njin!princeton!phoenix!dykimber
From: dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.misc,comp.sys.next,comp.sys.mac,comp.windows.ms,comp.windows.x,alt.cyberpunk,comp.lang.smalltalk,comp.misc
Subject: Re: replacing the desktop metaphor
Keywords: desktop metaphor, graphical interfaces, computing environments
Message-ID: <5195@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
Date: 7 Jan 89 08:31:10 GMT
References: <4362@pitt.UUCP> <2350@cuuxb.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg)
Organization: Princeton University, NJ
Lines: 38

In article <2350@cuuxb.ATT.COM> dlm@cuuxb.UUCP (Dennis L. Mumaugh) writes:
>[description of an article from 1945]
>My point is that the above citation seems to be unknown to serious
>researchers.  It describes a set of concepts that have not yet been
>achieved.   A vague glimmering was attempted by Doug Englebert at SRI
>in his Augmented Knowledge Workshop.   I feel that people need to
>re-examine a lot of the past as I seem to see people keep re-inventing
>old ideas that have become forgotten.

No one's re-inventing the wheel, but hand waving is hand waving.  The
real advances are going to be in actual systems.  You seem to be assuming
that the problem is a shortage of ideas, and complaining that we should be
spending more time seeing what's already out there.  Well, the real shortage
is in things like technology, funding, resources, and time.  Just because
current hand waving bears a striking resemblance to past hand waving, it
doesn't mean your re-invention alarm has to go off.  Most work from
1945 is probably so extrapolative as to make it worthless.  Who in 1945
could have predicted which vision of the future would seem right 40+ years
later?  The fact that one guy seems to have gotten it right is irrelevant.
We don't want to have to constantly search through all the chaff of
the past n years for the gems.
    On the other hand, similar papers published today (I have a few references
if anyone is interested), while proposing very similar ideas, are of a
better grade of hand waving, since their ideas are actually technologically
feasible.  (Of course, Technologically is only one species of Feasible.)  And
I certainly wouldn't expect people to grind through today's ideas forty years
from now to see what they can find.  If they still want cyberspace or office
metaphors in forty years, good for them, but it won't be because someone looked
up some forty year old articles, it'll be because the idea was good enough to
be continually re-invented until someone had the bright idea of doing something
about it.  If you're worried about the original idea-man not getting credit
for his good extrapolation, well that's life, and besides, there's nothing new
under the sun anyhow, right?

                                               -Dan

p.s. i haven't read the article in question, i am responding only to the
     ideas expressed in the message posted