Good old laserdiscs! they were rubbish but, I just used to like the way they looked - it kinda felt like you had your own rock n roll gold disc!
My introduction to Hypercard was purely by accident. I was totally lost on my BA (they wanted me to paint, hack bits of ice and generally do things that could properly be called 'Art') and happened to wander around (actually moped around) the building and stumbled on the head of computing in his office (Head of computing back then meant something entirely different to what we understand by the title today - sadly). he was unboxing some new Mac Plus's and there were packages all over the floor. I strolled in and started chewing the fat but he was clearly busy. I absent mindedly picked up the odd package here and there and gave it a lazy once over.
That's when I spotted a box with Hypercard written on it. I asked him what it was - I don't know why the name resonated with me. I think by now he was just keen to get rid of me and get on with his unboxing so he just said, "God knows. take it if you want, see if its of any use."
I took it home (why I don't know as it would be nearly 10 years before I could afford my first Mac!) but I read the manuals from start to finish that weekend and it was like a tiny light in the back of my head suddenly flared.
I want to consider the decision to bundle hypercard with ALL macs as the critical event/incident. The way that it led to countless people like me over time and all over the world doing things that hadn't even been considered by the makers.
My introduction to Hypercard was purely by accident. I was totally lost on my BA (they wanted me to paint, hack bits of ice and generally do things that could properly be called 'Art') and happened to wander around (actually moped around) the building and stumbled on the head of computing in his office (Head of computing back then meant something entirely different to what we understand by the title today - sadly). he was unboxing some new Mac Plus's and there were packages all over the floor. I strolled in and started chewing the fat but he was clearly busy. I absent mindedly picked up the odd package here and there and gave it a lazy once over.
That's when I spotted a box with Hypercard written on it. I asked him what it was - I don't know why the name resonated with me. I think by now he was just keen to get rid of me and get on with his unboxing so he just said, "God knows. take it if you want, see if its of any use."
I took it home (why I don't know as it would be nearly 10 years before I could afford my first Mac!) but I read the manuals from start to finish that weekend and it was like a tiny light in the back of my head suddenly flared.
I want to consider the decision to bundle hypercard with ALL macs as the critical event/incident. The way that it led to countless people like me over time and all over the world doing things that hadn't even been considered by the makers.
I've currently got stuff buzzing around in my head regarding stuff like Alan Kay, Englebart, Ted Nelson, Vannevar Bush, Dynabook, Palo Alto, Xanadu, Marc Andreason, Scripting vs programming, OOP, universal interfacing, Glick, fractal toys, the early GUI adventures!
oh, and of course Bill Atkinson!
I was just so struck back then on how powerful Hypercard was. How it didn't feel like a tool. How no-one really knew what to do with it. How it was free! How for the first time there seemed to be something for creatives to allow them to do 'stuff' on and with computers instead of just using computers to do what we already did via traditional means. How computers were not computers but extensions of ourselves, our minds and our creative impulses. How we 'negotiated with them' rather than 'used them'. How it spawned a whole generation of startups making videodiscs, Interactive CDs and just about anything you could think of.
How it questioned the very ideas we held dear about artist/creator/author and our relationships with user/viewer/interactor. How the machine became a transformation mechanism, a display vehicle and a creation engine.
How early internet acces for me via telnet allowed me to download regular periodicals like Tidbits in Hypercard form that I could query.
How it gave us the idea of extension via XCMDs and XCFNcs. How in the early stages of the web huge numbers of sites proliferated solely for the purpose of creating, selling or just giving away their Hypercard products. How ground breaking games like Myst were created with it. How rock stars like david Bowie and Peter Gabriel flocked to it to create interactive CDs. How typecast guys like Mark Hamil made new careers on interactive games built on Hypercard. Did I mention the Residents' Freakshow?
So much involved rethinking our beliefs about ownership, about how meaning is created, about relationship, about non linearity and about information that is separated and distant.
You could be an artist and create software! How astonishing was this? Beautiful code! Who would have thought?
Through all this it never felt like a tool. Perhaps this is why I have so much trouble with Flash and Actionscript. More than any other software I've ever used Flash feels like a tool. It also re-separates artists and designers from coders.
To this day I still cannot think of a single thing that Hypercard could NOT do! There was a real sense that talent and skill might in the future earn legitimate money. That talent and skill was focussed on 'lone gunmen' and not big multinationals.
oh, and of course Bill Atkinson!
I was just so struck back then on how powerful Hypercard was. How it didn't feel like a tool. How no-one really knew what to do with it. How it was free! How for the first time there seemed to be something for creatives to allow them to do 'stuff' on and with computers instead of just using computers to do what we already did via traditional means. How computers were not computers but extensions of ourselves, our minds and our creative impulses. How we 'negotiated with them' rather than 'used them'. How it spawned a whole generation of startups making videodiscs, Interactive CDs and just about anything you could think of.
How it questioned the very ideas we held dear about artist/creator/author and our relationships with user/viewer/interactor. How the machine became a transformation mechanism, a display vehicle and a creation engine.
How early internet acces for me via telnet allowed me to download regular periodicals like Tidbits in Hypercard form that I could query.
How it gave us the idea of extension via XCMDs and XCFNcs. How in the early stages of the web huge numbers of sites proliferated solely for the purpose of creating, selling or just giving away their Hypercard products. How ground breaking games like Myst were created with it. How rock stars like david Bowie and Peter Gabriel flocked to it to create interactive CDs. How typecast guys like Mark Hamil made new careers on interactive games built on Hypercard. Did I mention the Residents' Freakshow?
So much involved rethinking our beliefs about ownership, about how meaning is created, about relationship, about non linearity and about information that is separated and distant.
You could be an artist and create software! How astonishing was this? Beautiful code! Who would have thought?
Through all this it never felt like a tool. Perhaps this is why I have so much trouble with Flash and Actionscript. More than any other software I've ever used Flash feels like a tool. It also re-separates artists and designers from coders.
To this day I still cannot think of a single thing that Hypercard could NOT do! There was a real sense that talent and skill might in the future earn legitimate money. That talent and skill was focussed on 'lone gunmen' and not big multinationals.
did it all end in 2004? (actually, long before then). Or has it sown the seeds for what we are experiencing now and the future that now awaits?
The bit I'm kinda sketchy on is the post nostalgia bit i.e. what happened next. Would the web have worked out the way it did if there weren't already community of Hypercard / Supercard users able to grasp the new world order?
'Feel free to comment . . . but please, if you must throw things, enough with the onions already.
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