Personal Dynamic Media

TLDR

The Learning Research Group at Xerox PARC studies communication and knowledge manipulation, and has envisioned a personal dynamic medium—the Dynabook—to meet users’ information needs. The project aims to design, build, and deploy dynamic media usable by people of all ages. They implemented a Smalltalk-based communication system on interim Dynabooks and are exploring its use as a programming tool, interactive memory, text editor, and expressive medium for drawing, animation, and music. Figure 1 shows a view of an interim Dynabook.

Abstract

The Learning Research Group at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center is concerned with all aspects of the communication and manipulation of knowledge. We design, build, and use dynamic media which can be used by human beings of all ages. Several years ago, we crystallized our dreams into a design idea for a personal dynamic medium the size of a notebook (the Dynabook) which could be owned by everyone and could have the power to handle virtually all of its owner's information-related needs. Towards this goal we have designed and built a communications system: the Smalltalk language, implemented on small computers we refer to as "interim Dynabooks. We are exploring the use of this system as a programming and problem solving tool; as an interactive memory for the storage and manipulation of data; as a text editor; and as a medium for expression through drawing, painting, animating pictures, and composing and generating music. (Figure 1 is a view of this interim Dynabook.)