Magic Ink

Magic Ink is Brett Victor’s thesis on software design and its implementation. It posits that interactivity should be considered harmful and that the computer is more than capable of making an educated guess based on context found:

Dynamicland extends many of Magic Ink’s ideas (direct manipulation, showing the data over explicit interaction, thin separation between operation and programming), but attempts to do so through a more thorough re-imagining of what a computer should look like.

NYU’s Future Realities Lab (Ken Perlin) has experimented with chalktalk, a live-coding environment for visual explanations. Michael Nielsen has an experiment that attempts to create a drawing tool and visual language for exploring math concepts.

Visualizing a computer workspace doesn’t necessarily need to happen on a screen. Here is a list of physical visualizations. Some highlights: dynamic displays, Durrell Bishop’s Marble Answering Machine, Slumber: Brainwave Weaving.