Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
All Ages
Alan Kay
Viewpoints Research Institute, 1209 Grand Central Avenue, Glendale, CA 91201 t: (818) 332-3001 f: (818) 244-9761
VPRI Paper for Historical Context
fall, but not towards the sun. NOh no! It's
going allover the
A i\OVEI. OF 1 ,
C:Jlt
by Irving Stone
Be sat before the mirror of the second-floor hedroom . : . 'I thisonc = tlJatnnc·
his lean checks with their high hone ridgcs: thet .'t.l.t : = \,\'V + . om:
Jla1 broad foreheall, and cars too back the head, the f"f ttl i.,i)nc :=J slrp S 1l1I1i/IIS
hair curling...forwarol in thatches, the amber colored
EYes wide-sct . __ . .. .. .
j tNiI
iI",
.
pfilll(: thisnnc. :t.ll):
r--TlJe ACrONV-
Fiq. 1. "Bodoni-Liks" Font .(19)
.
#s%s> ]
, ... and The Ees r ,\CY Pig. 4. Spurious Algol in -Times Roman-Like- Font
•I
l A NOVEL OFl\lICIIEI.,\NCiEI.O. The first interesting· discovery was that the -
, display looked much better than it "should M • i.e.,.
. i the characters seemed much more round than the .
quantization level seemed to indicate, yet,. when.
by lrvlnn Stone they were blown up larger size, they quickly:·
\,,
1
became ugly. intuitive reason for this has
to do with the inherent noise reducing filter
function of the optic tract that, essentially,.·
1
I
f
, first averages the signal (using an averaging
window of about .02 0 of which turns small
corners into fuzz, then differentiates over a
THE STlJDIO I larger area to tweak the scene back into a sharp.
.! image. The effect of this filter is to remove
small isolated glitches and, luckily for us, to
He So1t ilc.:ti)re the rn irrnr nf the :;l1:nnd-tlnor Ix·droom allow matrix defined characters to look beautiful
his Il:tn dl\.t:l.'\ With their Nlnt: tbe . when the matrix is small. It also partially
·11at ilroad and elr:; 1,.-) I;lf ilad: un tht.: tll.:lli. tbe explains why 875 line TV seems to be subjectively
dart hair curlinr, li)rward in tbe amber .:olorOO ; more than twice as good as 525 at 22- viewing
fJ,t::1 wide-set but bca\'y-liddcd. •. , ...._...._ .". distance. The scan lines and their spaces 'are
too large to be filtered for 525 since they are
!'1g. 2. .·Times Rcman-1J..k." Font (19). about higb •.. ·.
Once one has gotten used to the idea of no moving' Processor and Storage
parts, he is ready for the idea of no keyboard 'at
all: These two categories represent, respectively, the
least expensive and the most expensive
Suppose the display panel covers the full extent in our fantasy machine. They are presented
of the notebook surface. Any keyboard together because of the great influence the
arrangement one might wish can then be displayed processor has ()n the amount of primary memory
anyWhere on the surface. Four strain gauges needed.
lDOunted under the corners of the panel will
register the position of any touch to within . What follows is an attempt to show that both the
3/16- Which is close enough. The bottom portion performance and the packaging requirements are
of the display panel can be textur'ed in va%'ious not necessarily incompatible with today's
ways to touch typing. This arrangeRent technologies (although a hand will occasionally
allows the font in one is typing to be have to be waved). Just as in the HP-35 pocket
shown on the keys, special characters can be ", electronic "slide rule", the main savior of our
windowed, and user identifiers can be selected dreams is cheap LSI components. The HP-35 uses
with one touch. five LSI chips with an equivalent of 30,000
.transistors, for an average density of 6000
Pile Storage ' transistors/chip. Even better packaging
densities are now being accomplished. The price
The only technology that currently exists which ot a packaged LSI chip seems to approach $12.00
can handle the modest, though important, demand asymtotically over a two-year period, then may
for a writable file storage is magnetic oxide '. dip to about $5.00.
plastic in the form of tape cassette or floppy
disk. Until recently, tape handling typically Complete CPUs are'now available on single chips.
required a conglomeration of pinch rollers, The challenge now lies more in determining what
capstans, solenoids and motors. Now the problems Characteristics the processor should have rather
of constant tape tension and differential drive than using just anything that will package
have been solved by a nw:lber of canpanies, the nicely. '
. most elegant being the cassette by 3M which uses
• -magic- driveband which contacts the outside of 'LSI Random Access Memory is now routinely
the tape takeup reels and requires only one motor , available in 1024·l,bit chips (700 ns cycle time).
for read, write, search and rewind. Four tracks for l¢/bit packaged. A 4096*1 chip has now been:
of tape at a bit density of 1600 bpi allows 6400 announced and looks as though it can be packaged
bits/inch to be stored and retrieved. Our for .35¢/bit. An SK*16 memory would thus cost
requirement for 8M bits thus demands 1250 inches about $460 (still too much, but encouraging).
(or 105 feet) of tape in the cassette. Of course
there will be gaps, etc., so to play safe, our The rechargeable-battery state-of-the-art has
fantasy cassette will have 50' more tape or 150· been considerably advanced by the advent of
feet. ' portable shavers, tape recorders, toothbrUShes,
TV, etc. We may expect even higher
the file directory will be placed in the middle performance/charge in the futU%'e.
of the tape (as in .the LINe) so that only 1/4 the . .
tape traversal tima on the average' is required to Since les i. the current estimate of the
.• acee.. it. From there, the.verage cUatance. of. .number of chips, needed in 'the DynaBook, we can be
1 processor chip, ' I would like to thank Danny Bobrow very much for
16 (BK·l) RAM memory chips helping me to organize this very "breadthfirst"
4 %0 controllers (also processor chips -, paper, and Xerox for providing a nice place to
why not?) think about 'things like this.
n chips @$14, "'$294.00 for electronics. '
References
This price has very little credibility because of
science fiction -a:rur
haiidWiving. However, some 1.':Bush, V., "As We May Think", Atlantic
brave readers might decide that it is ' , Monthly, September 1946
ridiculously high rather than just ridiculous!
2. Pines, M., Revolution in Learning,
Conclusion . Harper Row, Uew York
Speculation and fantasy were promised and most 3. Moore, O. K., Andersen, A. R., ·Some Prin-
readers will probably agree by now that the ciples for the Design of Clarifying Educa-
preceding pages delivered just that (along with tional Environments," Chapter 10 in
some gas and maybe even a slight tinge of ' Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research,
credibility? •• ) • " ' Goslin (Ed), Rand Co. (1969)
We do feel that the pedagogical merits of 4. Papert, S., Solomon, ,C., "Twenty Things To '
teaching algorithmic thinking, having easy Do with a Computer,· AI Laboratory, MIT .
editing, etc. (all wrapped up in an environment (1911) ,
which can go anywhere and can, belong to
everybody), are undeniable. Considerations of 5.' Papert, S., "LOGO Book Notes,· AI Laboratory,
packaging, power and weight requireznents were, HIT (1910)
derived from current technology as were the
electronics and are probably true. The software' ' 6. Feurzeig, W.; et al, "The LOCO Project,·
knowledge, language design philosophy, and user Volumes 1-4, Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Inc.
interface ideas are at least 5 Years'old. The (1911)
, three main handwaves are the flat screen low
display (which does not currently eXISt but" 1. XAy, A. C•• -The Reactive Enqine,- U. of
. . . . poaaible) ,the cjuess about how much can be ' " Utah. Dept. Ccmputer Technical,
Report (1969)