From the pictures, it looks like they've set up some kind of system to translate certain physical movements into changes in the projected images. It seems like a non-technical user can only make superficial changes within a limited set of pre-defined behaviors. But from the description it sounds like there's a lot more to it than that...
For me, the impressive part of Dymanicland is how physical everything is. Want to see how something works? Find the paper that the code is printed on. Need help understanding some code? Bring somebody over to the wall, table, or couch where the code is. You can annotate the paper, draw diagrams on it, cut it, fold it, tear it, put it in a book to help others learn how it works. Want to edit some code? Point an "editor" token at the paper program you want to modify, then start changing the code.
Dynamicland isn't a room with a computer, it's a room that is a computer.
The important thing to keep in mind is that everything in Dynamicland is, well, dynamic. Right now, editor tokens are just normal Realktalk programs printed on paper, but in the future the might be a different physical object. Right now you edit the coded using a text editor, but in the future you might use a pen to write code directly on paper, or perhaps you'd re-arrange physical objects that represented blocks of code, etc ...
> Want to edit some code? Point an "editor" token at the paper program you want to modify, then start changing the code.
If you edit a paper program, then won't the source on the paper be obsolete? Will that be indicated somehow? If I'm looking to see what a piece does, how can I tell if the source code on it can be trusted?
When a program is changed, Realtalk will print a red line over the lines that have been modified or removed. It looks a lot like the output that you'll see from a "git diff" on a file.
You mean like, from the projector?
for your right
to compute
Dynamicland is a communal computer,
designed for agency, not apps,
where people can think like whole humans.
It's the next step in our mission to
incubate a humane dynamic medium
whose full power is accessible to all people.
I agree the problem they are addressing is epic, and their language is suitable for describing it, but from what I'm able to glean about the project, the solution so far is on the level of 'neat,' and maybe important for introducing new users to programming—but, if that's what it's for, just say it! Instead we see that the aim of the project is to 'reinvent computing for the 21st century'. So am I going to do my taxes with this? Am I going to use it write novels? To design 3D models? To conduct research? To build artificial intelligence? To discover new medicines? To call an Uber? Is there any reason to think it might attain the level of generality where it could at any point be an actual alternative to contemporary computing? Or are we supposed to take this on faith because of the people involved? How could this compete with similar systems designed in AR? It seems to me like there's more 'agency' in AR since a system like this could be replicated within it, but with AR we'd likely have a number of alternative 'physical computing platforms' like it (Of course not soon, but they're talking about a timeline of at least 50 years for this project).
It's definitely refreshing to be able to interact with 'real' objects ('physical' would be less rhetoric-laden), but I feel like the novelty and suggestive language here may tempt readers into forgetting how much power was gained through computation specifically because it didn't require fiddling with physical objects. It's a big deal, and I'm pretty sure that a legitimate alternative computational medium will require deep theoretical breakthroughs, of which I've seen no suggestion here.
That would be one the most obvious thing to do with such a system, as writing a novel used to be a very spatial task, and current text editors are not good at helping writers organizing their novel, identifying patterns, etc.
> AR
This is AR, but with projectors —which is not novel in itself, as it has been explored in labs, during prototyping events like Museomix and by digital artists for several decades now. HP even tried to commoditize the technique with the Sprout all in one computer.
You are right that the next step is most probably to do without projectors and replace them with AR glasses.
But the manipulation techniques, the collaborative aspect need to be developed and iterated, be it with or without AR glasses, and my understanding is that’s the goal here.