alt.hn

7/15/2026 at 2:56:07 PM

People don't buy calm: revisiting Weiser's "The Computer for the 21st Century"

https://adaptivesoftware.substack.com/p/the-computer-for-the-21st-century

by beerdappel

7/15/2026 at 3:12:03 PM

Love the article, but not the quote

   There is more information available at our fingertips during a walk 
   in the woods than in any computer system, yet people find a walk 
   among trees relaxing and computers frustrating.

which I can pick apart as-a-fox in many ways, not least in that the woods is a much less olfactory active space than, say, a downtown street where the smell of cooking lights up my senses. In a pagan circle this weekend I walked around a creek which has particularly smelly mud and moss that has something you feel rather than sense, like Sandalwood, and I could pick up the warning signals that trees give off by scuffing leaves with my fingers. When I walked back to the circle there was something really strong around the perimeter than people brought in.

Also people have no idea how to read forests, like knowing a lot about it I can look at a bucolic scene and see "this is what overshoot looks like" but I can't expect others to see that. Insofar as I have any skill at forest reading it is because I've been looking at particular forests frequently over decades.

by PaulHoule

7/15/2026 at 3:41:36 PM

Good point about the olfactory aspect!

by beerdappel

7/15/2026 at 3:04:35 PM

Author here, sifting through the history of Ambient Computing and Adaptive Software, trying to figure out why it never took on.

Not only did it not take on, but the it seems as though the world has doubled down on the things Weiser was arguing against.

I claim that computing needs balance. It should be idealistically calm in the same way that it shouldn't be dopamine/attention exploiting

by beerdappel

7/15/2026 at 3:12:32 PM

If you want to start a startup, chat me up!

by PaulHoule