The always awesome Asianometry channel covered Lisp, early AI, and the Lisp Machines earlier this year:

“A Cult AI Computer’s Boom And Bust”, Asianometry (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sV7C6Ezl35A).

#Video #Asianometry #Lisp #AI #LispMachines #Symbolics #YouTube

@dabeaz @jmsdnns

Well, first I thought, "would you instead maybe want a thing where all programs said 'I am going to store a file on your disk, ok?" Then I remembered Lisp Machines (very sophisticated computers of the 1980s whose evolutionary line was truncated for reasons arguably unrelated to their coolness) used to dedicate a line at the bottom of the screen to all kinds of status info, like whether you were running or waiting blocked on network or disk. Everything that blocked was allowed a string to say why it was blocked that users might see either in the status line or in the system's process monitor tool.. Part of that status line was a dedicated progress indicator, because could not just iterate over a range or list but do the same operation noting a string describing what you were traversing and giving an indication of the progress without messy pop-ups.

I started this ramble because this capability included file I/O. The line would show the name of a file that was open and a percentage read. So users often were able to detect unexpected files opening by wat hing hat part of screen while bored waiting. They reported suspicious stuff or just files taking too long to process. There waz not yet a web, and cookies had another meaning, but if we had those things, I suppose if cookie-ing showed up in the progress area, it'd be too fleeting. Still, another part of my goal here is to onserve that it's a design choice how transparent we make our operating systems (and a browser is almost a kind of fractally recurring OS), or how inspectable, or how explainable. We have, of course, Javascript debugging console, but that's a nerdy tool not helpful to mortals just using the system, not programming it.

A UI to tell you what kinds of cookie data was passing by (or how much, or to whom) might be designed that was human-friendly. It could use presentations and metaphors people chosen for regular folks to comprehend.

(Note you COULD use ChatGPT kinds of interfaces that papered over the technicalities but let us introspect into system operation, BUT then you'd need an AI nosIng in all your business just so it could tell you if someone else was ALSO nosing in your business. Sounds hopelessly circular and inefficient ... but probably where the world is headed.)

#Lisp #LispMachines #UX