Ivan Sutherland’s Sketchpad MIT thesis was covered by Create Digital Motion after I posted the video clip from MIT’s New Media Reader featuring Dr. Alay Kay from Xerox PARC give a lecture on Sketchpad. The video clip has since garnered over 10,000 YouTube views and other “instances” of the film on video sharing sites — so appropriate given Sutherland’s contribution of the idea of a “master” and “instances.” His contributions to computer aided design history extend well into its origins and beyond its final outcome.

Peter Kirn says it best — what I think, he was able to say about this…

Additional Demonstration Footage Also Emerged

This Sketchpad film on YouTube: Part 1

The computer has been, in a sense, nothing but a very elaborate calculating machine. But, now we’re making the computer be more like, almost like a “human assistant” and the computer will seem to have some intelligence.

It doesn’t really. Only the intelligence that we put in it.

{Emphasis added.}

Professor Steven Coons
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT
Co-Director of The Computer Aided Design Project

On Teaching Mobile Application Design at Parsons

Dr. Dobb’s Journal, legendary software design publication, published our phone interview on its web portal yesterday on the subject of teaching mobile media design at Parsons Communication Design & Technology. John Dorsey, the editor of Dr. Dobb’s, offered probing questions that got at the nature of the program, the challenges of teaching Flash for application design, and how various tools and platforms can fit together in a technology curriculum at the service of the arts. This is all very interesting when you consider Dr. Dobb’s target audience, clearly hard-core coders and application developers. It’s a good sign when engineer-types are starting to take what’s going on in art and design schools more seriously. These distinctions are very much starting to blur.

» Interview

For the uninitiated, Processing→ is an open interactive media platform published on free software license via MIT by Casey Reas→ and Ben Fry→. Originally created as a learning tool, it is maturing through a Beta phase currently while winning tremendous support within the academic and design community. It appears to be emerging as the [tag]Sketchpad[/tag]↔ of the future. Sutherland→ would be so proud of his fellow alumni.

• Download Sample Chapters→ in PDF
• MIT Press→

For those in-the-know, this MIT Press release, Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists will be noticed on August 24, 2007. A substantial amount of the book is available in PDF format now. The free preview certainly suggests how tremendous and definitive this text is going to be. Take a peak at this inspiring passage from the introduction. It begins by describing the world view of Processing and the philosophy about software it epitomizes:

Software is a unique medium with unique qualities
Concepts and emotions that are not possible to express in other media may be expressed in this medium. Software requires its own terminology and discourse and should not be evaluated in relation to prior media such as film, photography, and painting. History shows that technologies such as oil paint, cameras, and film have changed artistic practice and discourse, and while we do not claim that new technologies improve art, we do feel they enable different forms of communication and expression. Software holds a unique position among artistic media because of its ability to produce dynamic forms, process gestures, define behavior, simulate natural systems, and integrate other media including sound, image, and text. (p. 1)

The introduction continues on to beautifully frame the pursuit of aesthetics through software. The free preview includes not only complete Table of Contents and Index, but also a very solid introduction to Processing and some of fundamental concepts. It’s enough material to function as an ideal free resource for getting started, while also leaves you thirsting for more.

Indeed, a more comprehensive review is forthcoming.

Between 1962 and 1964, Dr. Ivan Sutherland created Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communications System, arguably the world’s first computer graphics system, and non-procedural programming system.

Video

In this video, Dr. Alan Kay, from PARC, discusses Sketchpad and its significance in determining the nature of Object Oriented graphical interfaces.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/v/495nCzxM9PI]

Geneology

In this Computing Family Tree diagram◊, note how Sketchpad is considered the origination point for the modern operating system, as we know it.

Links

• Sketchpad, PhD. Dissertation, .pdf (3.9 MB) ↓
• Sketchpad, Wikipedia→
• Sketchpad, YouTube→
• Sketchpad, Archive.org→

See Also

Lecture: The Origins of Interactive Media ↑

Originally published in the Atlantic Monthly→, “As We May Think→” (July, 1945), a member of the Manhattan Project proposes the [tag]Memex[/tag]↔, a sort of microfilm-based knowledge desk. Many consider the Memex to be the pre-digital precursor to the idea of the Web and Internet as we know it today. It may reflect the dawn of the information age.

I am constantly referring to the Memex in my [tag]lectures[/tag]↔ and research as a significant historical precedent to modern informatics, information design, hypertext and interactive media.

A diagram depicting “Computing’s Family Tree”◊ sources the Memex at the root of all modern operating systems. See also Dr. Ivan Sutherland’s [tag]Sketchpad[/tag]↔ for the world’s first interactive computer graphics system.

Links

• Original article, Atlantic Monthly→
• “As We May Think”, Wikipedia→
• ‘Memex,’ Wikipedia→
• ‘Informatics,’ Wikipedia→

See Also

Lecture: The Origins of Interactive Media ↑

The Origins of Interactive Media.

交互式多媒体的起源

A brief examination of two influential American scientists who pioneered the idea of interactive information systems and graphics. Dr. Vannevar Bush, The Memex↑ and Dr. Ivan Sutherland, Sketchpad↑. Their research accomplishments resonate through every aspect of modern computing. A lecture given on Thursday, June 21, 2007, 13:30, Room B413 at the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University.Sponsored by Information Art & Design in collaboration with Communication Design & Technology, Parsons The New School for Design.

Lecture downloads available below.

Lecture Images

Lecture Downloads

» Download Lecture PDF↓ (6.5 MB)

» Download Lecture PowerPoint with QuickTime video ZIP ↓ (135 MB)

» Download Lecture Poster PDF ↓ (780 KB)

» View Lecture SWF in a Popup Flash Player → (20 MB)

See Also

• Memex, The Dawn of Informatics↑
• Sketchpad, The World’s First↑