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Yeess. Recommendation, drop everything & go read Matt Webb on the computing that could have been, talking SAGE & multi-user workspaces[1]!

> Right now we’re in the era of personal computers. Collaboration, social use of tools, togetherness: all of these are hacks on top of something that, at its core, was designed for the individual first.

> But there’s a particular photograph of group computing from the 1950s, from before the PC was invented...

I wonder how much if at all Engelbart was aware of SAGE. Webb poonts out Engelbart got started working on computers out of SAGE.

> As an aside, the whole "meta-verse" craze might pull these ideas through to the mainstream again.

Heck yeah, right on. Even if the immersive modes fail, I really hope some embodiment survives. Constructing space & environments in which being & event can occur, manifesting processes... I have a lot of hope we can start to better ground & make real computing.

[1] https://interconnected.org/home/2021/12/21/sage https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31665364 (12 points, 10 hours ago, 2 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31535139 (14 points, 12 days ago, 1 comment)

I mean, have you played any massively multiplayer online game in the last 20 years?

Now we just need to start presenting computing inside these environments! Those projects of using Doom to kill processes... http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/

> In the original implementation of the program, 'pid monsters' could be killed not only by the program's user, but also by other 'pid monsters' and normal Doom monsters on the level. The reasoning behind this behavior was that "on very heavily-loaded machines, it is not uncommon for the OS to kill random processes." Unfortunately, the number of monsters in a given area must be depressingly small in order for them to avoid both intentional infighting and friendly fire. Since monsters would tend to kill each other off until only a few remained in the area, the user was severely hampered in the ability to orderly control processes on the machine. Therefore, the default behavior of psDooM is to ensure the player is the only character in the game who can wound and kill 'pid monsters'. This avoids accidental process deaths from monster infighting. Unfortunately, it doesn't prevent accidental process deaths from a user's poor aim. ;-} The original behavior of 'pid monsters' being as vunerable as other monsters may be enabled with a command line flag.

That's amazing lol

> The demo had multiple people working on the same computer remotely, with their own cursors and ability to do things on the system at the same time. Best we have now is web-browsers syncing data silos, or a one way "let this person control my mouse + keyboard".

Apple's multi-user support in it's "iWork" productivity apps actually comes very close to this, and it's a real shame that it's not as well known as it is. In fact Apple just demo'd improvements to it a couple of days ago at WWDC.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT206181

It works almost exactly like you're describing and frankly I think it's amazing and am surprised more people don't rave about it.

It's OSX-only, which makes it a non-starter for most orgs. We actually are 100% macbook, but we still use Google Docs since some people want to edit documents from their phone.

That's reasonable, but if the question is "why doesn't this exist" then the answer is "it does".

(For what it's worth, it's also available on any platform via the web app versions of iWork at icloud.com. I'm not saying this is necessarily practical, but, it's there.)

I think the point is that if this only exists in Apple World, then really it exists as a little, isolated island, and the entire point of having "anyone with a computer" able to play is lost.

Nothing will ever be "anyone with a computer".

It really all hinges on how you want to define "computer". There are some prerequisites like you need a network connection and display and input device(s). You also need some client software. In this case, the client consisting of a particular software stack doesn't seem that unreasonable.

If I can't play with you using the computer in my laser printer it doesn't mean the vision of collaborative computing still isn't here.

I think, for a desktop work environment, people would be happy if it worked, given a standard keyboard, mouse, and display, on iOS, Android, Windows, and OSX, with Linux support a bonus.

MS Office supports this, as does Google Docs, and apparently, so does iWork!

As a counterpoint (and not necessarily a counterargument), this sort of paradigm would be orthogonal to and perhaps incompatible with the merits of "personal" computing. Collaborating in this kind of multiuser workspace requires common knowledge of a shared interface that does not necessarily provide efficient workflow for all. If a person were to use my customized setup, they wouldn't know how to close a window, let alone how to open one - everything is optimized solely for my personal ease of use, almost always at the cost of familiarity.

One of the few reasons why I have Windows installed on my machine was so that my ex-girlfriend could use my computer when she needed to. Somewhat amusingly, I had to teach her how to access the arrow keys under a function layer of my 60% keyboard to select the correct bootloader entry in order to do that. That's two new concepts foreign to most average users just to do what they might consider "turn on the computer".

Your concern about tailored user interfaces also applies to disabled people who physically can't do things the same way as the rest of the group, e.g. blind people who need to use a screen reader and keyboard commands rather than look at the screen and use a pointing device.

Having said that, some implementations of collaboration don't have this problem. In most modern networked applications that are designed to be multi-user, each client runs its own instance of the UI, and the clients synchronize the underlying data. This scheme can accommodate different user needs much better than, say, using something like VNC to have a bunch of people watch a shared frame buffer and take turns sending input to a shared UI.

> As an aside, the whole "meta-verse" craze might pull these ideas through to the mainstream again.

I actually really agree with this hypothesis. People think the whole head mounted display thing is going to revolutionize interaction (and I do think eye contact will be a killer app)…

But I also think one of the biggest affects VR will have is to reset peoples’ expectations about 2D interfaces. I think once we get used to the idea that “data exists in space” it’ll trickle down into the 2D world and—50 years after it began was invented—we might see an alternative to WIMP.

Check out Croquet[1], they seem to be tackling the very problem you speak of.

[1]https://croquet.io/

Xorg has been able to handle multiple users in one session for quite some time. The problem, I think, is that most windows managers don't handle multiple focuses very well.

I vaguely remember some multi-user system for Windows as well, but IIRC it was more of an R&D thing.

>The fact computers have been so isolated from one another (even with internet apps) is a complete tragedy. Even sending large files is a pain in the butt to this day.

We don't have to really send anything anymore, I can just place a file in a shared location. I can even share an incredibly high resolution video on google by just making a link.

>Best we have now is web-browsers syncing data silos, or a one way "let this person control my mouse + keyboard".

I am now able to edit Excel documents and see people in the same file making updates live. I am not saying this is peak collaboration but I find it pretty impressive.

The meta-verse may have a chance (I'm pulling for it in some shape), but let's not act like we aren't making progress :)

Multiplayer Excel/Powerpoint may be the biggest advance in Office-tech in the last 20 years. Things like Google Docs allow collaboration in a way not seen since ... the Mother of All Demos.

The question/problem with the approach is: Who owns the commons, the Shared Space? Usually the answer is Not So Good.

Google Docs pretty much handles the multiple users working on the same document problem as well as I could imagine. Am I missing something here?