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Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

worrydream.com · 1,263 words · saved by 6 readers

For more information on the context behind this talk, see An Ill-Advised Personal Note about "Media for Thinking the Unthinkable". About this page — I publish talks because this work is best conveyed through live demos — show-and-tell — and the "talk" is a medium that supports that. But a talk is a poor knowledge-container. It's opaque. The viewer can't skim, browse, or get a gist at a glance. Ideas can't be looked up as needed; they feel fleeting. The medium works well for entertainment — watch and enjoy — but not for a toolbox. This page is an attempt to "explode" a demo-driven talk into a skimmable, browsable, gistable form, where individual ideas can be quickly referenced later. Coming at the problem from the other direction — a well-designed paper can be skimmed and referenced, but typically can't show and tell. For an attempt to incorporate live demos into prose, see Learnable Programming.

Media for Thinking the Unthinkable Media for Thinking the Unthinkable Designing a new medium for science and engineering Bret Victor / April 2013 Introduction (2 min) This talk is about a particular kind of media, which is "media for thinking in." And it's about a particular kind of thinking, which is understanding systems . "Science" is understanding a system in the world. "Engineering" is building a system in the world, where the challenge is often understanding what we're building. Media are our thinking tools. Our representations of a system are how we understand it. To understand or build

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