[HN Gopher] Tripping Californians who paved the way to our touch...
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Tripping Californians who paved the way to our touchscreen world
Author : gjvc
Score : 41 points
Date : 2022-12-22 13:11 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| Animats wrote:
| (2017)
|
| Talks about Google's "material design" as recent. Did anything
| ever use that much?
| labrador wrote:
| One thing young people don't understand (probably because they
| didn't experience it) was that the introduction of LSD to
| engineers and other technical people was a revelation and very
| inspiring. The mindset back then was formal and rules based. LSD
| taught people to think outside of the box. We now live in a world
| that has benefited from that thinking and also a world in which a
| lot of people have taken LSD and it's old news. It's hard to
| capture the excitement of that time.
|
| It's the transition or inflection point that was inspiring, like
| movie goers in the 1930's who were only used to black and white
| movies going to see Wizard of Oz and being amazed that it turned
| into color, something they had never seen. But it was much more
| profound than that because it felt possible to rewrite the world
| to be a better place if enough people took LSD. Nobody feels that
| way today.
| gjvc wrote:
| The complete and correct title _" Designers on acid: the tripping
| Californians who paved the way to our touchscreen world"_ is 7
| characters too long.
| dang wrote:
| The designers on acid were redundant so I think we can take
| them out.
| minitoar wrote:
| Really struggled to parse this title. I was like why are we
| tripping these people? Literally tripping them or metaphorically?
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| I understood this title, but I am very much not looking forward
| to when the language becomes words such as "bet", "cap", and so
| forth.
| Saturn5 wrote:
| It's "tripping" as in drugs, not as in falling over something.
|
| "The tripping Californians"
|
| (I think the "the" makes it clearer)
| CharlesW wrote:
| This article appears to be a misleading write-up of the _"
| California: Designing Freedom"_ exhibit, the central premise of
| which is that "California has pioneered tools of personal
| liberation, from LSD to surfboards and iPhones."
|
| That being said, there is an actual causal relationship between
| LSD and HyperCard: "Inspired by a mind-expanding LSD journey in
| 1985, I designed the HyperCard authoring system that enabled non-
| programmers to make their own interactive media."1 -- Bill
| Atkinson
|
| For more, see the _Mondo 2000_ article, _" The Psychedelic
| Inspiration For Hypercard"_.2
|
| 1 https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...
|
| 2 http://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hype...
| reillyse wrote:
| Sounds like they took acid and also designed it doesn't sound
| like they designed anything more interesting because of the acid.
| In fact (no shade on a good trip) maybe they'd have got more
| designing done if they weren't taking acid at work.
| mistermann wrote:
| One thing that is often revealed when on psychedelics is how
| unreliable _how things seem_ is, though this realization tends
| to not be transportable across the barrier between the two
| states.
| epolanski wrote:
| Those stories remind me of a Carlos Santana (the guitarist)
| anecdote:
|
| during the late 70s he would often play guitar on acid. He felt
| great and that his music was among the best he ever played. He
| then asked to be recorded in one of those sessions/concerts
| where he gave his very best.
|
| Few days later he went to the studio, excited to hear what he
| produced in that session and..he just couldn't listen to it. It
| was awful, the worst of his recorded performances ever by far.
| Missing notes and beats out of time, pointless arpeggios, just
| terrible.
|
| He then decided that he was never ever going to do anything
| related to his profession on drugs.
|
| I too tried to code and do professional stuff on drugs in the
| past. It just doesn't work. You may enable a part of your brain
| that gets less used when you're normal, but you entirely lose
| the relevant one evolution gave you to process information and
| distinguish between good and bad idea. You also get super lazy.
|
| Thus I second your thinking: they probably thought of touch or
| other devices when high not because of it.
|
| Also, I'd like to add that I think those stories are only good
| when not fact checked. Didn't 2001: Space Odissey feature
| advanced touch devices that streamed video, had video calls,
| productivity and much more? That's a 1968 movie and I'm quite
| confident it was probably not the first thing those devices
| where imagined.
| filoleg wrote:
| Imo acid works for me almost the way that the famous saying
| about writing claims it does - write drunk, edit sober.
| Except it is more like "think about stuff and write it down
| on acid, act on it and process it again sober".
|
| The main difference compared to alcohol, weed, and a lot of
| other drugs is that it leaves a fairly long-lasting change.
| And not in a way that's like "oh, I am still feeling it", but
| more like how I imagine ketamine is supposed to work (never
| took it, so cannot validate personally) - while the drug is
| acting, you process and realize certain things that you had
| been unknowingly suppressing in your daily life, all while
| feeling funky. Once the drug wears off, you don't feel funky
| anymore, but you remember the parts you had been suppressing
| until that point, and now you can think through and process
| them normally and fully sober. So it isn't the drug itself
| still acting, you just ended up realizing certain things, and
| that realization let you consciously think about them later.
|
| Of course, it is also possible to have an acid trip where you
| don't realize anything and just waste your time on it. But
| imo that's a fool's errand, because acid doesn't feel that
| enjoyable just or "fun" on its own. At least it never did to
| me. But I am immensely glad the few times in my life I gave
| it a try. I would not call those experiences fun at all, but
| certain realizations about the direction of my life and my
| place in lives of others stuck with me (after i processed
| them sober later). And imo I, and people around me, are
| better off due to that.
|
| P.S. I am one of those people who cannot write any good code
| or be productive when drinking alcohol at all, not even the
| smallest amount that will make me feel it. Same with weed.
| And I am acutely aware of it.
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
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