i couldn't resist. i was already getting annoyed by going through all that papers (slauti has cleaned up now), still hearing adele goldberg, telling me: simply ask. so i did. i asked her following question: "what was it, alan kay was talking about 1970, that is quoted as: "I only hired people that got stars in their eyes when they heard about the notebook computer idea."?? did he talk about what later became known as dynabook or can i say he had the idea of the notetaker in mind?? (well, the formulation sucks, and i have to admit i got kind of obsessed with that point, but what the hack. the important thing is, i got an answer and another piece in my hand to tell the story right.)

her reply:

Hi Mariann, I am delighted to hear from you. (couldn't leave that out g)

Here is my answer to the question, to the best of my knowledge. First, Alan's vision since 1972 was expressed as "The Dynabook". He had a cardboard mockup of the physical idea...a flat device the size of a notebook binder in width and height, but very thin (like the thin technology size portables of today). There was no lid...more like a pad of paper whose surface was a touchable screen. It had wireless communications capability. He always stated that the problem was the software for the Dynabook--how to have good software that let people access and manipulate information, including the ability for these people to write programs. Hence the years of work in Smalltalk were a combination of exploring media, integration of media, and programming environment.

Hope this helps Adele

and who the hell is listening "matrix"? i thought people are always missing it?? adele wrote she already received a message as a result of my radio report. is this good or bad news? anyhow, she promised me a forward. let's wait.

don´t miss the presence, is what henso probably suggests. vale, bueno, true. my problem here is just, my background knowledge still looks more like schweizer käse. i am still filling holes.

for me the overall question is still, what is going wrong in this field: on one side so many people get obsessed with their ideas, devoting their life to it, to realize sooner or later they can´t handle it anymore. drama starts. do bring it on a normal basis is harder than getting it started. good ideas are lost over work. but good ideas are always out there. it is a question of the team, if they find a way into real life. principles are thrown over board. to look at the history of parc is also interesting in regard to this. there has been a punch of very smart people, sitting together, throwing principles of computing, management, recrutation and other rules over board, but still, at the end, there was next to all prototypes and real stuff one thing: exhaustion. even those groups there, who had after all financial freedom, ended up in not being able to solve one basic problem: how to keep it going, how to keep the interest and ideas, when it goes into an area of consolidation. everyone, who things "oh, i am so clever" seems to hate that phase. the solution so far that i have found are not promising: people are leaving the place, starting their own company and realize, the market out there is hard. now you have the choice again to say: "hard is fun" (as adele did) or you are dreaming of some days when you were young.

the other part to the story: ppig and from pigg it´s not far to fet. (never ever have i heard something about an european disappearing computer initiative???) oh well, back in historyland (mark weiser - can´t avoid it - again parc). (hey robert: those were the days my friend :))