Dynamic Medium ‒ Szymon Kaliski

Dynamic Medium

thoughts prompted by Alan Kay and Bret Victor (Bret Victor's Thesis)
computing right now seems to simulate old mediums (books/movies) instead of becoming its own medium
Bret Victor says that dynamic medium is:
- computational (can simulate, calculate, etc...)
- responsive (responds to stimuli)
- connected (exchanges information)
dynamic medium could be a great Cognitive Medium

Kay began to understand that what he wanted to create was an entirely new medium - a medium that would be fundamentally different from all the previous static media of history. This was going to be the first dynamic medium - a means of representing, communicating, and animating thoughts, dreams, and fantasies as well as words, images, and sounds.

— Tools For Thought - Howard Rheingold

Bret Victor's Thesis

we can (and should) use Dynamic Medium to improve on each of these!

Cognitive Medium

dynamic medium seems like an obvious substrate for cognitive medium
- allows simulating and solving things visually
- thoughts can be freely recomposed and rearranged (with better history handling in software)
- ideas can be linked together to create new ideas

Ideating-Authoring

authoring - creating, especially in domain of the dynamic medium

Peripheral Vision in Software

this is related to ideas of Embodied Cognition, Epistemic Actions, spatial thinking, and the Dynamic Medium

Solving Things Visually

Dynamic Medium could be great for thinking this way - if only we had proper tools!

would such imaginary tools be good only for transferring knowledge, or also for gaining new knowledge? - in other words would I invent calculus just by having access to a Dynamic Medium that works this way?

The Incredible Power of The Right Interface

most powerful interfaces so far were static - how much more can we do in the Dynamic Medium?
- generic Simulator is one idea
- what would be a Second-Order Tool Building tool for inventing "interfaces" (in the broad sense described above)?

Working in the Dynamic Medium

Collection of random thoughts of how working in the dynamic medium might look like.