So, if I understand this correctly, it's the latest in a series of attempts by Alan Kay to find the right home for his vision of a new Xerox PARC. That began with VPRI (NSF funded), then CDG (SAP funded), and now HARC (YCR funded).
As I understand it, VPRI wrapped up because they ran out of money. I wonder what caused the move away from CDG?
Regardless, I hope he succeeds before we run out of four-letter acronyms funded by three-letter acronyms.
Last week VPRI[1] published the final "STEPS Toward the Reinvention of Programming" paper[2].
Although it is 2012, it had been unavailable publicly until now. A great way to catch up on how FONC ended. It was worked on by many individuals being cited as part of HARC.
Thank you for pointing this out. I hadn't read the last one, and was actually wondering if they'd just shut down, without concluding in some form or other. Love this stuff:
"This brings forth fanciful and motivational questions about domain areas, such as (...) "How many t-shirts will be required to define TCP/IP" (about 3), or all the graphical operations needed for personal computing?" (about 10)."
[ed: Actually thought the pdf deserved a submission of its own, lets see if other people think so too:
On the one hand, I'm happy to see visionaries like Vi Hart and Bret Victor (and presumably the others who I don't know of their work, but can only imagine to be quite good) supported to do the work that they do.
On the other hand, I am a little concerned to see InfoSys joining the fray here. InfoSys, to my understanding, are basically the face of H-1B abuse. So I'm happy to see these people funded, but it's a little harder for me to cheer when the funding comes from such a questionable source...
Would've expected YC to know this. Infosys hogs half the highly skilled worker H1b quota every year at an average salary of $80K in effect denying many startups and founders the ability. http://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Infosys/1088782.htm
They probably file 60K H1bs if they ended up getting 30K in the lottery.
Infosys is funding the project for PR reasons. They're pretty active in the CSR space too. In early 2010, there was a show in India on CNBC TV18 that showcased CSR activities by these companies.
As a naive college student, I believed I could contribute to these causes too. After I joined TCS (since I did not study well and couldn't get other jobs), I realized that they had a built up an amazing PR team to attract employees and customers. On the other hand, I bet most Infosys programmers wouldn't have heard of Alan Kay. So Infosys needs to make up for the tech "deficit" by supporting research.
AS far as YCR are concerned, I guess they appreciate Infosys' funding and won't let Infosys' unethical policies affect their research.
As a layperson, I have almost no idea what any of this means.
> HARC’s mission is to ensure human wisdom exceeds human power, by inventing and freely sharing ideas and technology that allow all humans to see further and understand more deeply.
Isn't this what the internet is for? What's new?
> Our shared vision of technology combines an expansive long-term view with a strong moral sense. We look to the distant past as well as the far future. We reject the artificial boundaries created between the humanities, arts, and sciences. We don’t always agree on what is good or evil, right or wrong, but we use these words seriously and are driven by them.
This is so vague I have no idea how you can attach any meaning to it.
> We are focusing on areas where we believe the structures created today will have the most impact on the future, and that can most benefit from having dedicated resources outside the for-profit world. At the moment, these areas include programming languages, interfaces, education, and virtual reality.
So you're gathering a group of smart people together to do non-profit research in a few select fields with the goal of improving humanity?
> Isn't this what the internet is for? What's new?
Take a step back and remember the internet was an invention too. How can we make a better internet or radicalize communication in another form? What is a browser anyway? Are screens the ideal medium? Also, it's a bit silly to ask "what's new?" out of a research center's vision statement.
> This is so vague I have no idea how you can attach any meaning to it.
Think about VR. Let's say they research how to make it super addicting to play in your own little fantasy. This ends up leading to "VR abuse" and kids stop talking to one another, etc... It is very important for them to understand how potential inventions will affect humanity if their goal is to improve humanity.
> So you're gathering a group of smart people together to do non-profit research in a few select fields with the goal of improving humanity?
Yes you summarized his aims. Those select fields are seen as having the most efficacy upon human improvement.
Since you admit to having no idea what any of it means, I would suggest you try to look beyond the words and not be so eager to extract tangible simple facts. This is a vision statement and it's abstract because forward-looking mental vision is abstract in nature.
Spend some time reading the output of VPRI - writings at vpri.org for some indication of some of their directions. Also view some of the videos on Yoshiki Ohshima's Youtube channel for some of the philosophy (he's one of the PI's [Principal Investigatore - head researcher] at this new organization).
I'm excited to see what comes out of this. The area I'm hoping they'd look at is programming. There hasn't been any big ideas in programming in a really long time. Languages are rehashes of the same features with slightly different configurations and incremental improvement in performance or tooling. Programming interfaces are stagnant too -- Smalltalk's interactive devlopement environment is still the sci-fi version of what most people think programming could be.
The programmer and the program have never been further away from each other as it is today. The development environment have never been further away from the production environment as it is today. And end-user interfaces have never been as abstracted away from computing as it is today.
If any group can breathe some life into this stagnant area then my bet would be on this group.
Eve [1] is one project I know of that has been trying to tackle this very difficult problem. The project is led by Chris Granger, whom you might know from his work on the Light Table IDE [2].
They released a video last year that showcased some iterations of their prototypes and I found them to be very innovative and promising: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZQoAKJPbh8
It does sound kind of vague. I hope it's not so open ended that it just means kind of noodling around with interesting stuff. But hey, Alan Kay's noodling would still be good, I bet. Interested to see what comes out of it!
May I make a human advancement suggestion which has very little to do with technology?
Teach about cognitive bias. Tech it at a fundamental level -- like, starting in 1st grade, with annual refreshers thereafter. Give cognitive bias an equal place at the table alongside reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Many cognitive biases are deeply rooted in biological and social structures -- but with awareness and training, they can be overcome. Without awareness and training, they can be profoundly destructive, and certainly limit the scope of human advancement.
So before we start pimping out our metacortexes or whatever, let's see if we can't overcome some of the less salutary whisperings of our old and honestly pretty useless reptilian brains. We can be better than that.
This isn't a judgment of the project itself, but the announcement's wording reminds me of the marketing newspeak from "How to Apply to Y Combinator":
"The best answers are the most matter of fact. It’s a mistake to use marketing-speak to make your idea sound more exciting. We’re immune to marketing-speak; to us it’s just noise. 1. So don’t begin your answer with something like
We are going to transform the relationship between individuals and information.
That sounds impressive, but it conveys nothing. It could be a description of any technology company. Are you going to build a search engine? Database software? A router? I have no idea.
One test of whether you’re explaining your idea effectively is to ask how close the reader is to reproducing it. After reading that sentence I’m no closer than I was before, so its content is effectively zero. Another mistake is to begin with a sweeping introductory paragraph about how important the problem is:
Information is the lifeblood of the modern organization. The ability to channel information quickly and efficiently to those who need it is critical to a company’s success. A company that achieves an edge in the efficient use of information will, all other things being equal, have a significant edge over competitors.
Again, zero content; after reading this, the reader is no closer to reproducing your project than before. A good answer would be something like:
A database with a wiki-like interface, combined with a graphical UI for controlling who can see and edit what.
I’m not convinced yet that this will be the next Google, but at least I’m starting to engage with it. I’m thinking what such a thing would be like.
One reason founders resist giving matter-of-fact descriptions is that they seem to constrain your potential. “But it’s so much more than a database with a wiki UI!” The problem is, the less constraining your description, the less you’re saying. So it’s better to err on the side of matter-of-factness." https://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/
I think research is really different from startups. That said, I expect that over the next month or two the teams will figure out their general directions, and will share it when they do.
This is an announcement of the collaboration between between YCR and HARC, not a specific project/technology. As stated in the post, "We will share more detail about each PI’s current projects once we settle into our new roles and establish a web presence".
You wrote this up within 5 minutes of the announcement. Perhaps you're judging it a bit too early? YCR is about "work that requires a very long time horizon, seeks to answer very open-ended questions"[0] - it's research and shouldn't be judged as a startup/technology company, which seems to be what you're doing.
Because it's research, they don't know what they're doing until they do it; they just know the direction they're going in. They're betting on people, not projects.
If you want more concrete details about what these particular people have done in the past, look at the code and papers they've published as CDG and VPRI. (And PARC, in Alan's case.)
>HARC researches technology in its broadest context, which includes: technology for communication (from the invention of spoken language to modern data graphics), intellectual tools (such as the scientific method and computer simulation), media (from cave painting to video games), and social systems (including democracy and public education).
In that broadest context, it really seems to lose its meaning. I think a closer word to that description is "ideas." Why try to cram the word "technology" into it, when it's such a strech?
YC seems to be trying to reach into a number of different areas lately. Maybe they find that they don't have enough innovation walking through their door anymore. Or that they need to go the extra mile to push things forward themselves.
I'll take a wild uneducated guess and guess that they are trying to find the next frontier in "idea incubation" while their current product (YC) is on top of its game. So as to not be "disrupted" by whatever is going to replace YC's idea factory, years from now. The iPhone to their current iPod. In that context, advanced research makes sense.
The description of what they hope to achieve is vague, in a good way. I'm sure a lot of people from the rationalist community in the Bay Area, who already admire YC, will love this.
I hope they realize that copyleft and protection of users is a prereq for this bit, "to ensure human wisdom exceeds human power, by inventing and freely sharing ideas".
I am waiting for the days when some big names wake up and say "RMS has been right all along, we need to copyleft everything asap!"
I'm getting tired of hearing about $NEXTGREATTECH and then finding out it's a SaaS or proprietary etc.
Heres to hoping this group does something productive and free as in beer and speech.
I can say without the shadow of a doubt that HARC is working on a new language. Not your average spoken or programming language, but a general-purpose and interactive language. A language that can only be communicated through a computer.
Text and speech are inherently limited by their linear and one-dimensional nature. Graphics are much more powerful, and leverage high-bandwidth senses. Knowledge will be consumed by navigating knowledge hypergraphs and causational trees (how-why axis).
In English, you write everything from scratch. You start with a blank page, then a word, then a sentence. With this new language, you must start with something that exists, some kind of node/edge of the graph. Communication is mostly done by manipulating the knowledge graph. This means that you can't say something that has already been said before. You don't need to provide or explain context. You can instantly see the impact of your thoughts. You can't say incoherent or fallacious things. In most cases, you don't have to say a single thing, as you can find it has been said before. Most decent programming environment provide libraries/modules, auto-completion, and compilation/execution. This new platform brings all these things to communication.
We're talking about an universal language here. An homoiconic language, where the distinction between code, data and UI disappears.
This is nothing new. People have been talking about this for decades. The most important challenge here is not technical, but social. It is becoming clear that the application paradigm is not sustainable and cannot scale. Personal assistants (Siri, Viv, Cortana, Google Now) and Messaging/Bots (Magic, WeChat, Slack, Microsoft Bots Framework, Facebook Bots Platform) are clear symptoms. Although I've been trying to tell people about this future for more than a decade now, I don't have the resources of track-record to be heard. I am hopeful that HARC will change that.
I'm excited to see that Alex Warth is involved with this. In my late undergrad days, I was really excited by his OMeta language. It turned out that I'm actually really bad at writing PEGs (or even ANTLR grammars), so I wasn't the best candidate for advancing OMeta into common use, but the idea is really compelling.
I try to make a private study of the global survey of Wisdom Literature in an attempt to distil the essence of what it basically means to live a good life and be a moral person. Everything from Confucius to Aurelius, from Goethe to Gogol. And on and on. Wouldn't it be prudent, whilst you have such an assemblage of noble thinkers, to compile some sort of universal knowledge base of choice epigrams. For the purpose of henceforth explicitly delineating what it means to be "beneficial" and "just" for all future readers to come?
In any case, this looks like a necessary and timely line of inquiry and am looking forward to the fruits of these endeavours. Good luck!
[+] [-] sgentle|9 years ago|reply
As I understand it, VPRI wrapped up because they ran out of money. I wonder what caused the move away from CDG?
Regardless, I hope he succeeds before we run out of four-letter acronyms funded by three-letter acronyms.
(Edit: CPRG -> CDG, my bad)
[+] [-] mflindell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cycomachead|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ozten|9 years ago|reply
Although it is 2012, it had been unavailable publicly until now. A great way to catch up on how FONC ended. It was worked on by many individuals being cited as part of HARC.
[1] http://vpri.org/html/writings.php [2] http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf
[+] [-] e12e|9 years ago|reply
"This brings forth fanciful and motivational questions about domain areas, such as (...) "How many t-shirts will be required to define TCP/IP" (about 3), or all the graphical operations needed for personal computing?" (about 10)."
[ed: Actually thought the pdf deserved a submission of its own, lets see if other people think so too:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11686325
]
[+] [-] jwise0|9 years ago|reply
On the other hand, I am a little concerned to see InfoSys joining the fray here. InfoSys, to my understanding, are basically the face of H-1B abuse. So I'm happy to see these people funded, but it's a little harder for me to cheer when the funding comes from such a questionable source...
[+] [-] vadym909|9 years ago|reply
They probably file 60K H1bs if they ended up getting 30K in the lottery.
[+] [-] pramodliv1|9 years ago|reply
As a naive college student, I believed I could contribute to these causes too. After I joined TCS (since I did not study well and couldn't get other jobs), I realized that they had a built up an amazing PR team to attract employees and customers. On the other hand, I bet most Infosys programmers wouldn't have heard of Alan Kay. So Infosys needs to make up for the tech "deficit" by supporting research.
AS far as YCR are concerned, I guess they appreciate Infosys' funding and won't let Infosys' unethical policies affect their research.
[+] [-] mflindell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pbnjay|9 years ago|reply
I understand it as a PR move for them, but it really devalues the concept to me.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tylercubell|9 years ago|reply
> HARC’s mission is to ensure human wisdom exceeds human power, by inventing and freely sharing ideas and technology that allow all humans to see further and understand more deeply.
Isn't this what the internet is for? What's new?
> Our shared vision of technology combines an expansive long-term view with a strong moral sense. We look to the distant past as well as the far future. We reject the artificial boundaries created between the humanities, arts, and sciences. We don’t always agree on what is good or evil, right or wrong, but we use these words seriously and are driven by them.
This is so vague I have no idea how you can attach any meaning to it.
> We are focusing on areas where we believe the structures created today will have the most impact on the future, and that can most benefit from having dedicated resources outside the for-profit world. At the moment, these areas include programming languages, interfaces, education, and virtual reality.
So you're gathering a group of smart people together to do non-profit research in a few select fields with the goal of improving humanity?
[+] [-] shadowfiend|9 years ago|reply
http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/ is probably a good starting point for what is yet to be done regarding seeing further and understanding more deeply.
> This is so vague I have no idea how you can attach any meaning to it.
Are you concerned that this isn't externally measurable? I don't think it's meant to be.
> So you're gathering a group of smart people together to do non-profit research in a few select fields with the goal of improving humanity?
Well, as a layperson it seems like you figured out exactly what all of this meant...
[+] [-] joslin01|9 years ago|reply
Take a step back and remember the internet was an invention too. How can we make a better internet or radicalize communication in another form? What is a browser anyway? Are screens the ideal medium? Also, it's a bit silly to ask "what's new?" out of a research center's vision statement.
> This is so vague I have no idea how you can attach any meaning to it.
Think about VR. Let's say they research how to make it super addicting to play in your own little fantasy. This ends up leading to "VR abuse" and kids stop talking to one another, etc... It is very important for them to understand how potential inventions will affect humanity if their goal is to improve humanity.
> So you're gathering a group of smart people together to do non-profit research in a few select fields with the goal of improving humanity?
Yes you summarized his aims. Those select fields are seen as having the most efficacy upon human improvement.
Since you admit to having no idea what any of it means, I would suggest you try to look beyond the words and not be so eager to extract tangible simple facts. This is a vision statement and it's abstract because forward-looking mental vision is abstract in nature.
[+] [-] MaysonL|9 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkdJ2NwjI8LcgyvfU7PyaVA
[+] [-] angersock|9 years ago|reply
Is there anything more to this than peacocking to show how visionary the YC folks are?
[+] [-] gordon_freeman|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abiox|9 years ago|reply
hmm, possibly. here i was thinking it was for porn, cat videos, science paper paywalls and ransomware distribution.
[+] [-] mflindell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yzmtf2008|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] amasad|9 years ago|reply
The programmer and the program have never been further away from each other as it is today. The development environment have never been further away from the production environment as it is today. And end-user interfaces have never been as abstracted away from computing as it is today.
If any group can breathe some life into this stagnant area then my bet would be on this group.
[+] [-] lewisl9029|9 years ago|reply
They released a video last year that showcased some iterations of their prototypes and I found them to be very innovative and promising: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZQoAKJPbh8
[1] http://www.witheve.com/
[2] http://lighttable.com/
[+] [-] davidw|9 years ago|reply
It does sound kind of vague. I hope it's not so open ended that it just means kind of noodling around with interesting stuff. But hey, Alan Kay's noodling would still be good, I bet. Interested to see what comes out of it!
[+] [-] cpr|9 years ago|reply
Are they being spun out into HARC, or are they just collaborating from inside SAP's blue-sky research group?
It would be helpful to clarify what their institutional standings are, if we're to understand the full import of this announcement.
[+] [-] sama|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nkoren|9 years ago|reply
Teach about cognitive bias. Tech it at a fundamental level -- like, starting in 1st grade, with annual refreshers thereafter. Give cognitive bias an equal place at the table alongside reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Many cognitive biases are deeply rooted in biological and social structures -- but with awareness and training, they can be overcome. Without awareness and training, they can be profoundly destructive, and certainly limit the scope of human advancement.
So before we start pimping out our metacortexes or whatever, let's see if we can't overcome some of the less salutary whisperings of our old and honestly pretty useless reptilian brains. We can be better than that.
[+] [-] apsec112|9 years ago|reply
"The best answers are the most matter of fact. It’s a mistake to use marketing-speak to make your idea sound more exciting. We’re immune to marketing-speak; to us it’s just noise. 1. So don’t begin your answer with something like
We are going to transform the relationship between individuals and information.
That sounds impressive, but it conveys nothing. It could be a description of any technology company. Are you going to build a search engine? Database software? A router? I have no idea.
One test of whether you’re explaining your idea effectively is to ask how close the reader is to reproducing it. After reading that sentence I’m no closer than I was before, so its content is effectively zero. Another mistake is to begin with a sweeping introductory paragraph about how important the problem is:
Information is the lifeblood of the modern organization. The ability to channel information quickly and efficiently to those who need it is critical to a company’s success. A company that achieves an edge in the efficient use of information will, all other things being equal, have a significant edge over competitors.
Again, zero content; after reading this, the reader is no closer to reproducing your project than before. A good answer would be something like:
A database with a wiki-like interface, combined with a graphical UI for controlling who can see and edit what.
I’m not convinced yet that this will be the next Google, but at least I’m starting to engage with it. I’m thinking what such a thing would be like.
One reason founders resist giving matter-of-fact descriptions is that they seem to constrain your potential. “But it’s so much more than a database with a wiki UI!” The problem is, the less constraining your description, the less you’re saying. So it’s better to err on the side of matter-of-factness." https://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/
[+] [-] sama|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runesoerensen|9 years ago|reply
You wrote this up within 5 minutes of the announcement. Perhaps you're judging it a bit too early? YCR is about "work that requires a very long time horizon, seeks to answer very open-ended questions"[0] - it's research and shouldn't be judged as a startup/technology company, which seems to be what you're doing.
[0]https://ycr.org/
[+] [-] kragen|9 years ago|reply
If you want more concrete details about what these particular people have done in the past, look at the code and papers they've published as CDG and VPRI. (And PARC, in Alan's case.)
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Mithaldu|9 years ago|reply
My only take-away about HARC is they hired 20 "researchers" to maybe make some mockups of ui designs they deem "better" ... "for humanity"?
[+] [-] imh|9 years ago|reply
In that broadest context, it really seems to lose its meaning. I think a closer word to that description is "ideas." Why try to cram the word "technology" into it, when it's such a strech?
[+] [-] karmicthreat|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alain94040|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tacos|9 years ago|reply
So why not keep busy while they wait for the next wave to form? It's a great time to grow other branches.
[+] [-] robot|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benatkin|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vbit|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the4dpatrick|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] miguelrochefort|9 years ago|reply
They're 20 people already. There is no way they will agree on a coherent direction, unless it's a weak/safe one. I guess we'll see.
[+] [-] rjurney|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arca_vorago|9 years ago|reply
I am waiting for the days when some big names wake up and say "RMS has been right all along, we need to copyleft everything asap!"
I'm getting tired of hearing about $NEXTGREATTECH and then finding out it's a SaaS or proprietary etc.
Heres to hoping this group does something productive and free as in beer and speech.
[+] [-] aroman|9 years ago|reply
How will this relate to VPRI?
And are these researchers joining full-time and collaborating together directly, or are they just "part of the project"?
[+] [-] miguelrochefort|9 years ago|reply
Text and speech are inherently limited by their linear and one-dimensional nature. Graphics are much more powerful, and leverage high-bandwidth senses. Knowledge will be consumed by navigating knowledge hypergraphs and causational trees (how-why axis).
In English, you write everything from scratch. You start with a blank page, then a word, then a sentence. With this new language, you must start with something that exists, some kind of node/edge of the graph. Communication is mostly done by manipulating the knowledge graph. This means that you can't say something that has already been said before. You don't need to provide or explain context. You can instantly see the impact of your thoughts. You can't say incoherent or fallacious things. In most cases, you don't have to say a single thing, as you can find it has been said before. Most decent programming environment provide libraries/modules, auto-completion, and compilation/execution. This new platform brings all these things to communication.
We're talking about an universal language here. An homoiconic language, where the distinction between code, data and UI disappears.
This is nothing new. People have been talking about this for decades. The most important challenge here is not technical, but social. It is becoming clear that the application paradigm is not sustainable and cannot scale. Personal assistants (Siri, Viv, Cortana, Google Now) and Messaging/Bots (Magic, WeChat, Slack, Microsoft Bots Framework, Facebook Bots Platform) are clear symptoms. Although I've been trying to tell people about this future for more than a decade now, I don't have the resources of track-record to be heard. I am hopeful that HARC will change that.
[+] [-] krilnon|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fitzwatermellow|9 years ago|reply
In any case, this looks like a necessary and timely line of inquiry and am looking forward to the fruits of these endeavours. Good luck!