Category: History of Computing and Multimedia

Scopeware Vision Professional

I was reading about the Yale Lifestreams project which may have been one of the first life-tracking projects. Lifestreams was developed by Eric Freeman (it was his 1997 PhD project) and David Gelernter. They had some interesting ideas about how the computer should organize your data into streams rather than you having to file stuff. The streams could take advantage of the flow of your life. Here is how lifestream is defined:

A lifestream is a time-ordered stream of documents that functions as a diary of your electronic life; every document you create and every document other people send you is stored in your lifestream.

Freeman and Gelernter tried to commercialize the ideas through Scopeware released by Mirror Worlds. If you search Google Images for Scopeware you can see a number of screenshots that give an idea of how the interface organized files into streams.

Many of their interface ideas seem to have reappeared in things like Apple’s Cover Flow and Time Machine which explains why Mirror Worlds sued Apple (unseccessfully).

The idea is supposed to have come from Gelernter’s semi-philosophical book Mirror Worlds: Or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox…How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean (1991) in which he reflects on the change from small personal software to large networked software that “mirrors” the world. Google Street View and all the virtual surrogates available on the web would seem to prove him right, though he may have been imagining more of a VR type implementation. (Admission: I haven’t read the book, just reviews.)

What intrigues me is the focus on time and the move away from representations of time as a line that traverses from left to right. In streams you are in time and can swim back like driving down a road to the past.

Xanadu Released

Screen shot of Xanadu

Hacker Trips has an article about how Ted Nelson’s Xanadu finally gets released after 51 years (with Transclusion). The article describes a conference in Ted Nelson’s honour. At the end he is quoted to the effect,

To wind up his story, Ted Nelson stated that he was “dealt one of the best hands in history, and misplayed it to the hilt. [He] could have accomplished so much more. [He] was here 1st, and it’s all gone wrong. [He] believes this would be a very different world and better world if [he] had gotten leverage. The world has gone the wrong way.”

Nelson also announced a demo of a working version of Xanadu with transclusion. Open Xanadu is up at the Xanadu site.

Museum of Online Museums

From Twitter I learned about the Museum of Online Museums. The idea is great. It is part of a site by Coudal Partners, “a design, advertising and interactive studio … as an ongoing experiment in web publishing, design and commerce.” I’m not sure what that means? Will this survive? They also have an enormous Board which seems to be voluntary.

On the MoOM I found some neat online museums like the Sheaff : ephemera.

Early Selfie (1865)

There was a discussion on Humanist about selfies and Emma Clarke on behalf of the Letters 1916 Project team posted a link to this holding of the National Library of Ireland, Augusta Caroline Dillon and Luke Gerald Dillon with camera on tripod reflected in a large mirror.

The two were apparently skilled amateur photographers who experimented with photographs like this. If one goes beyond photographs to paintings, I wonder if Las Meninas would qualify as a selfie.

7 classic versions of Windows and Mac OS you can run in a browser

Ars Technica has a nice collection of 7 classic versions of Windows and Mac OS you can run in a browser. It is impressive how earlier operating systems are being emulated in Javascript and these emulations are much more accessible because they run in the browser. I had fun trying an emulation of a Mac Plus running Mac OS 7 (see above). I wonder if we could load the HyperCard version of Perseus in it.

Speaking of in-browser emulators, there are also NES and SuperNES emulators. They have a number of games available for these Flash Emulators that you can play in-browser.

Historical Software Collection: Internet Archive

The Internet Archive has started a Historical Software Collection. This is part of a larger Internet Archive Software Collection that has a number of collections. What is cool is that they have an in-browser emulator that allows you to play with historical software like Visicalc or Atari’s E.T. in the browser. This is a Javascript version of MESS called JSMESS. They are not just archiving the code, but ensuring that there are ways to try the software too.

I learned about this from David Rosenthal’s blog entry on In-Browser Emulation which is worth reading.

▶ Perseus Digital Library: Diachronic View

Perseus Digital Library Diachronic View is a YouTube video put together by Mihaela as part of a project we are working on as part of INKE. We started asking about the evolution of digital humanities interfaces which then led us to asking if there were projects that have been around long enough that their interfaces may have changed. This led us to the Perseus project which existed before the web. Using the Internet Archive and other sources we tried to reconstitute a history of major versions of the interface from the first HyperCard interface. We then created this video to show the evolution. We are now collaborating with Perseus to study the evolution of their interface, to preserve key screens, and to improve the interface for mobile devices.