CompuServe Thread

Press Release (Part 2)

4 messages in this thread
#21760From: Jamie Clay [Adesk]Apr 11, 1988 4:09 PM
"We're currently developing techniques for computing with diagrams and drawings," said mathematician Dr. William Bricken, head of the new research team. "A picture can represent an idea much more concisely than a string of words. The innovative contribution of boundary mathematics is to equate changing pictures with the act of computation. We can construct programs by drawing and run programs by animating these drawings. The natural consequences of representing ideas on two-dimensional planes rather than in sequential strings include a visual programming language, parallel processing, more efficient representation, and much faster computation." Bricken has an extensive background in both theoretical and practical mathematics, computer science, social psychology, and education. He received a Ph.D. degree from Stanford University in Mathematical Methods of Research. Bricken has applied boundary mathematics to research in artificial intelligence for the past seven years. Working with Bricken on the research team are Eric Gullichsen, whose research interests include artificial realities and psychoactive software, and Meredith Bricken, who specializes in information integration and prototype design. (This files is also in DL9 – RESRCH.AI)
#21788From: Lansing PughApr 12, 1988 4:09 PM
Okay. .. I'll bite. .. What is psychoactive software? .. .. Regards, .. Lansing. .. (I guess I need to return soon to Sausalito for my triennial attitude realignment.) ..
#21797From: Craig Sharp [Mem TM]Apr 12, 1988 10:57 PM
Lansing: Sigh. It must be soo booring to live in the middle of the country. Those of us on the right coast are very attuned to the use of psychoactive software, even though it is in greater use on the left coast. That's because the left side of the brain is the intuitive side. You poor guys in the middle get left out completely, lost somwhere in the netherland of intuitively analytical wishywashydom. Psychoactive software came about expressly for the use for those of us who ask our dealers questions like "why does my drawing crash when I poor beer on the keyboard?" and we get the response "I'll have to check with California". This creates a severe pain in the region of the center of the brain and causes blackouts and changes in professions. Once the condition is corrected by the change in profession, generally in the exciting new use of computers using a word processor to write children's books, the residue from the use of ACAD and the search for logic in the menu structure of the wordprocessing program causes relapses. This is where psychoactive software comes into play. The user attempts to understand what it is that he has just spent the last four hours writing and comes to the conclusion that he can't understand what he is reading. (i.e. he's not getting what he sees). Through the use of psycoactive software, the words that he wrote are translated into what he was thinking. (i.e. what you think is what you get.) This once thought revolutionary concept got placed on the back burner because everyone came to realize that no one wanted to know what it was that anyone was really thinking. They only wanted to know what they thought about what the other person seemed to be thinking. Got it? Craig. .
#21811From: Jamie Clay [Adesk]Apr 13, 1988 9:42 AM
Yes, stop by my office for the tour of CompuServe Central! We have an attitude realignment rack in there. <grin> Psychoactive Software? Mental digitizers? Actually I don't know, I'll have to ask Dr. B. for a comment. Jamie