lambdaway :: future

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{require lib_uncover}

{center
{{IBLOCK}
_img http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/data/blocknote/0.jpg
A simple good old {b blocknote} to write your thoughts and draw pictures. With nothing but a pen and {b your brain}.
}
{{IBLOCK}
_img http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/data/blocknote/1.jpg 
A modern desktop {b blocknote}, a standard text editor with a plethora of buttons for styling titles, paragraphs, lists, and opening dialogs to insert links, tables, pictures, and a clown ready to help you if you are lost! Because behind these rings and bells there is a big problem: {b infobesity} and {b frustration}!
}
{{IBLOCK}
_img http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/data/blocknote/2.jpg 
A shared web {b blocknote} without any buttons but with a single unified notation for writing titles, paragraphs, lists, links, tables, pictures ... and also math expressions, complex algorithms, web applications, ... A notation shared by authors, web designers, coders, blurring the barriers. The process and the result saved in a same notation. {br}No more clown needed to help you! {br}{b Nothing but your brain}.
}
}
{FUTURE}

_p Many people have to use a {b blocknote} to create and store information.

_p Our computers are full of {b flashy interfaces} intended to help us writing titles, paragraphs, lists, inserting links, pictures and so on. But when things go further first basic enrichments - {i like boldify some words} - these interfaces full of buttons and dialogs become rather cumbersome, bloated and too often counter productive.

_p Let's remember that, in order to speed up computers, smart engineers have replaced their {b CISC hardware} (Complex Instruction Set Computer) with {b RISC hardware} (Reduced Instruction Set Computer). Why couldn't we as well imagine replacing {b CISC software} (Complex Interface Set Computer) with {b RISC software} (Reduced Interface Set Computer).

_p  Not only RISC tools are not exactly what big companies offer us, but it's not what the "common" man is waiting for. So where is the problem if {i Everything is for the best in the best of worlds!} ? The problem is {b infobesity} and {b frustration}! Despite the many frustrations caused by not mastering so many tools, the "common" man still loves them, he doesn't understand why he bangs on the walls, he is permanently waiting for even more and more tools, he can't believe that fighting against infobesity could be an answer. That his own intelligence could be the answer.

_p It's probably why, as an architect, as a teacher and recently as a coder, my attempts to promote a {b RISC attitude} during {del 30}, {del 40}, 50 years have been quite misunderstood. It looks that there were no place for small tools waiting for the {b user's intelligence} and that everything must be done via big "machines" intended to {b dummies}, nicely provided by huge powerful companies, the GAFAM and some others. « {i Drag & drop your selfy and wait for likes ... Let us store your data ... Google me your questions ...} »

_p Why do, in front of a computer, even intelligent people behave like if they were dummies?

_p But what did I do by myself to evade from these golden jails ?

_h3 1) simple architecture
{uncover http://b2b3.free.fr/confs/data/modulor_3/nyls/nyls_plan_coupe.jpg" 100 500 Granular architecture, everything is built on a 1 feet modulus and can be drawn by hand or using a simple basic graphic editor. A child could draw such a house!}
{uncover http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/portail/data/nyls_piscine_w_001ca.jpg 100 500 A house in the south of France. Less is More}

_p When I began my work as an architect in the early seventies, my goal was to build small simple and cheap (but nice) houses for average people, not to say poor people. So I invented very simple methods to draw, write and quantify building projects, transfering (and so not forgetting) ancestral knowledge into the new coming digital tools - building bridges between our fathers and our chidren - and not only replacing them by new 3D tools coming from the industrial world and inadequate in the daily work of an architect.

_p More to see here:  [[architecture and grains|http://b2b3.free.fr/confs_2019/?view=grain]] (in french but with a lot of illustrations).

_p I can say that it worked fine for me, except that my target, "common" people, was not interested by my {b RISC attitude} - "Less is more", "Small is best", and so on... - and only "original" people took some profit from it. And I have been for a while an architect for rich people, why not.

_h3 2) simple shapes

{uncover http://b2b3.free.fr/confs/data/angles/2/pL3_realisation.jpg" 100 700 Building a parabola with ropes, planks and stakes}
{uncover http://b2b3.free.fr/confs/data/angles/3/gaia/shell_pers.jpg" 100 500 On Sketchup 3D, using a small Ruby library, pForms.rb, a thick double curvature shell model.}

_p When I began my work as a teacher in a school of architecture in the last eighties, my goal was to share my {b RISC attitude} with colleagues and students. But my colleagues were dreaming of prestigious architectural projects and students were dreaming to become great prestigious architects building large and beautiful curved shells upon cities. So I forgot simple architecture made of right angles and I invented a new approach to curved shapes made of easy gestures coming from the deCasteljau algorithm, so called "Pascalian Forms".

_p More to see here: [[architecture and curves|http://b2b3.free.fr/confs/?view=angles]] (in french but with a lot of illustrations).

_p I never built any curved shape, a few mathematicians I tried to contact at university found my approach too "nonacademic", my colleagues architect found it too much mathematic and students prefered to choose "true" 3D tools used in architectural agencies to sketch their shapes, like 3DStudio, Autocad and so on. And my "[[Pascalian Forms|http://marty.alain.free.fr/recherche/pformes/pFbook.pdf]]" came back into a dusty cardboard box.

_h3 3) simple words
{uncover http://b2b3.free.fr/confs/data/mots/mots3/iproc_sketch.jpg 100 700 Extended reality, towards the zero computer.}

_p When I began to understand the concept of [[wiki|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki]] in the last nineties, I discovered that wiki pages were polluted by an ugly Markdown syntax and my goal was to give wikis - at least mine - a true consistent/coherent language, following Lisp and extending by far the Markdown rather limited functionalities. I wanted this language to be close to the HTML/CSS syntax and easy to use by "average people" and not only by smart coders. An easy tool for producing free and sustainable documents. And so started the [[lambdaway project|?view=start]].

_p More to see here: [[words on the web|http://b2b3.free.fr/confs/?view=mots]] (in french but with a lot of illustrations).

_p As usual, academic people found it not sufficiently theoretical and other people found it too much theoretical. And nobody in between! Is there anybody out there?

_h3 4) no future?

_p Today it looks like if my attempts to share simple answers to simple questions -  {i drawing gentle houses, designing simple curved shapes, creating coherent documents shared on the web} - were condamned to stay hidden behind modern tools full of fancy colored sugared buttons, icones and windows.

_p But I still have some hope in the future!

_p What is called {b [[Flat design|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_design]]} has soon replaced the complex previous one made of 3D, gradient and shadow effects. Maybe tomorrow "{b RISC softwares}" could become fashionable, the way to follow to be {b à la mode}. And writing {code {b '{b Hello World}}} in a wiki page could become {b the must} to be used by everybody, out of the golden jails built by Facebook and other big monsters. So I want to tell you:

{center « forget prosthesis, think different and {b believe in your intelligence}! »}

{uncover data/simplet.jpg 100 800 That's all!}

{FUTURE}

_p {i Alain Marty 2016/10/03 | updated on 2021/05/29, 2022/12/10}

_h3 some links

_ul [[4 conferences|http://b2b3.free.fr/confs/]] (in french)
_ul [[teaching|http://lambdaway.free.fr/lambdaspeech/index.php?view=teaching]]
_ul [[is there a future for simple things?|https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12633893]]
_ul dear [[professeur]], "The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer." (Ward Cunningham)
_ul [[trombinoscope]]
_ul [[esprit_matiere]], our memory is stored in a cloud, not inside our brain
_ul [[anges]], angels exist, but not as we think
_ul [[fromroots2canopy]]
_ul [[coding]]
_ul [[concepts]]
;; _ul [[HN|https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32699458]]

{{hide}
{def FUTURE
 {div
  {@ style="text-align:center; font:italic 4em optima; color:cyan;"}
  '{b hello future!}}
}

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 div {@ class="iblock"}}
}

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a { color:red; }
pre { box-shadow:0 0 8px #000; padding:5px; background:#444; color:#fff; font:normal 1.0em courier; }
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