> I genuinely do wonder why that has been the trajectory.
The simple answer here is still likely the best one: Smalltalk and Lisp Machine systems were expensive and proprietary right at the same time that Unix and C became free (and therefore ran everywhere)
This comes on the heels of the AHA and other parties in the suit against the government posting the video depositions of some of the DOGE people to youtube [1], which are fascinating to watch.
Justin Fox not being able to say what DEI is really tells you everything you need to know about how grants were cancelled.
I didn't mean "like hypercard" so literally in this manner. What I meant was, a computing environment that seems to blend seamlessly into the wider operating system, and that is able to sufficiently blur the line between end users and "programmers" (here called "authors"). Critical to this capability was the ability to "pop the hood" easily and mess with what was going on underneath.
All of today's computing is fundamentally based on a strong division between programmers and users. That division has only grown more stark with time. The dominance of Unix is partly to blame, in my view.
It's the "no stopping it at this point" that always sticks out to me in these discussions. Why is there no stopping it, exactly? At this juncture these systems require massive physical infrastructure and loads of energy. It's possible to shut it all down. What's lacking is the political will.
These posts claiming that "we will review the output" etc., and that claim software engineers will still need to apply their expertise and wisdom to generated outputs, never seem to think this all the way through. Those who write such articles might indeed have enough experience and deep knowledge to evaluate AI outputs. What of subsequent generations of engineers? What about the forthcoming wave of people who may never attain the (required) deep knowledge, because they've been dependent on these generation tools during the course of their own education?
The structures of our culture combined with what generative AI necessarily is means that expertise will fade generationally. I don't see a way around that, and I see almost no discussion of ameliorating the issue.
> treating the economic world as a gross external thing
Well, a _specific_ kind of economic world in this case. Is it not a matter of fact that big tech companies largely guide how computing is used a developed, and that they are beholden to ever-expected increases in value to their shareholders? You have still have an "economic world" that doesn't operate that way.
I would be _very_ surprised if any 18Fers were a part of the "national design studio." It is, at the very least, Doge affiliated, and Doge is who killed 18F.
For those of us in civic tech, this is a higher priority. At the federal level especially, there are laws on the books about website accessibility compliance -- even if, at present, the powers that be are ignoring them.
I have found the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines [1] to be especially useful when thinking through what I need to implement and why.
It is _impossible_ to thoroughly test any of your accessibility concerns only with automated tooling. You will need to have an experienced user of screenreaders go through your site, especially if it contains complex JS enabled controls and other dynamic updates. This is because the habits of individual users and the combination of a particular screenreader application / browser can often produce different results. It's important to know what the common "patterns of use" are for, say, a JAWS user vs a VoiceOver user.
Last thing I'll recommend is that if you are testing a11y yourself on a Mac using VoiceOver, do all your a11y testing in Safari. In our research, most VO users on Macs/iOS use Safari because it has the best screenreader integration on that platform, and other browsers miss basic things.
As an elder millennial, I just don't know what to say. That a once in a generation allocation of capital should go towards...whatever this all will be, is certainly tragic given current state of the world and its problems. Can't help but see it as the latest in a lifelong series of baffling high stakes decisions of dubious social benefit that have necessarily global consequences.
The writing system is not syllabic. It uses ideograms, logograms, and yes syllables all together. It's also not one singular "writing system," as the set of symbols varied and changed in the context it was used (language or region) and over the two thousand years that people wrote in this style.
All the glamour seems nice until you're in a country of continental expanse, with territories from the pacific islands to the caribbean, and with equal citizens living in areas with low-bandwidth internet access.
When I was about 12 or 13, I was hanging out in my local Egghead so much playing Rebel Assault on the demo machine that the guy who worked there gave me a free mousepad just to leave the store.
The simple answer here is still likely the best one: Smalltalk and Lisp Machine systems were expensive and proprietary right at the same time that Unix and C became free (and therefore ran everywhere)