
The Psychedelic Inspiration for Hypercard (2018) - bobbiechen
https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/06/18/the-inspiration-for-hypercard/
======
betamaxthetape
The Internet Archive has a large collection[1] (3,500+) of HyperCard stacks
that can be run directly in the browser (using in-browser emulation of an old
Mac Plus).

I've been "maintaining" this collection of stacks for around three years -
keeping the uploader[2] running (yes, you can add your own stacks!), checking
the stacks for bugs / errors in the emulation, etc... and the range and
breadth of what was created in HyperCard is just amazing.

You've got silly little animations[3], sound samplers[4], choose-your-own
adventure stories[5], reference guides[6] and teaching materials[7] (that last
one was added to the collection with the very kind help of someone at the USGS
who mailed me a CD-ROM so I could add it).

I thoroughly recommend that those unfamiliar with HyperCard have a browse of
the collection and see what was made possible by this groundbreaking 1980s
tool.

[1]
[https://archive.org/details/hypercardstacks](https://archive.org/details/hypercardstacks)

[2] [http://hypercardonline.tk/](http://hypercardonline.tk/)

[3]
[https://archive.org/details/hypercard_computer_sind_doof](https://archive.org/details/hypercard_computer_sind_doof)

[4]
[https://archive.org/details/hypercard_cheapsequencersit](https://archive.org/details/hypercard_cheapsequencersit)

[5]
[https://archive.org/details/hypercard_inigo_gets_out](https://archive.org/details/hypercard_inigo_gets_out)

[6]
[https://archive.org/details/hypercard_macprinters-11](https://archive.org/details/hypercard_macprinters-11)

[7] [https://archive.org/details/hypercard_usgs---teaching-
earth-...](https://archive.org/details/hypercard_usgs---teaching-earth-
science)

~~~
SllX
Found a gem browsing around the Internet Archive: The Meeting Watcher[1]
calculates the ongoing cost of a meeting. No doubt for use by responsible
managers and disgruntled employees alike.

[1] [https://archive.org/details/hypercard_the-meeting-
watcher](https://archive.org/details/hypercard_the-meeting-watcher)

~~~
rubyfan
that’s fantastic. i used to manually do this whenever i’d show up to a meeting
with 40+ people. it puts things into perspective.

~~~
hownottowrite
Especially when you ask how the outcome of the meeting translates to $X in
revenue to cover the cost.

------
ridiculous_fish
Hypercard remains extraordinary. It anticipated the web, but have a taste of
its _scripting language_ :

    
    
        if the number of chars in field "Customer Code" is not 7 then
          ask "Please type in the 7-letter customer code"
          put it into field "Customer Code"
        end if
    

This is a _real language_! 'ask' pops up a modal dialog. 'it' is a special
identifier meaning "the last result", like Perl's context variables.

But what is most lovely about this language is that it focused on users. As a
user you could drag out a button, then double click and write some Hypertalk
scripting. It was part of a vision where computing would empower amateurs to
become desktop publishers or artists or programmers or...

The web captured that magic for a time, when it was about HTML with light JS.
But the modern web has advanced beyond the amateur.

~~~
shrimpx
What sucks about these languages is complex sentences that look like loose
English but are actually formal syntax. “.length” is so much easier to
understand and remember as a formal sentence than “the number of chars in”.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> What sucks about these languages is complex sentences that look like loose
> English but are actually formal syntax.

I really like this though!

It's true, you can't just write English sentences and expect the computer to
understand you—you have to learn the "formal syntax". But, once you've
_written_ that code, it _comes out_ as English sentences, so you can _read_
what your code is doing _in English!_

I _love_ this. I've never used Hypercard (too young), but I do use
Applescript, which was based on Hypertalk's syntax and which—sometimes, when
Applescript isn't being crappy—has the same property.

If there are other modern languages that do this effectively and can be used
for more than just macOS automation, I'd love to know about them...

~~~
maxwelljoslyn
'Wowfunhappy, I strongly suggest you take a look at the Inform 7 programming
language:

[http://inform7.com/](http://inform7.com/)

It is powerful, stable, and addresses many of the issues of using an English-
like syntax. It comes with an IDE and two hyperlinked manuals, which contain
hundreds of working code samples implementing everything from basic
conversations to systems of weights and measures. Finally, as one of the
pillars of the modern interactive fiction<1> development community, it is
under active development by its creator, in the saddle for twenty-plus years
now.

Here's a sample (syntax may be slightly wrong):

 _A person can be nervous or relaxed. A person is usually relaxed.

The Train Station is a room. Joe is a man in the Train Station. Joe is
nervous. "Joe shifts from foot to foot, looking uncomfortable." The
description of Joe is "[if Joe is nervous]He's shifting
uncomfortably[else]He's standing tall and proud[end if]."

Understand "cheer" as something new. Cheering is an action related to one
person.

Carry out cheering (x - a person): if x is nervous: now x is relaxed;
otherwise, say "[X] doesn't need to be cheered up." instead.

Report cheering (x - a person): say "You clap [X] on the back. It works:
[regarding X: his] mood lightens."<2>_

That's all you need for rudimentary gameplay:

TRAIN STATION

Your buddy, Joe, shifts from foot to foot, looking uncomfortable.

> look at joe

He's shifting uncomfortably.

> cheer joe

You clap Joe on the back. It works: his mood lightens.

> examine joe

He's standing tall and proud.

<1>: the medium started by, but not limited to, text adventure games like
ADVENT and Zork

<2>: [regarding X: his] is roughly the syntax used to change "his", "her",
etc. into the appropriate gender for the variable X. Because games and
experiences built with Inform have all-text contents and interfaces, Inform
provides a large number of constructs to tame printed strings.

~~~
anthk
Inform6 is much better and easier.

~~~
maxwelljoslyn
Thanks for responding.

In syntax, the two languages are quite unalike, so I think the relative
"easiness" will come down to whether or not the learner was already a
programmer.

As for "better:" better _at what_? better _for whom_? and _why_?

~~~
anthk
better _than_ if7. By design. If7 may be better for the non-programmer, but
the syntax can be hideous. If6 allows you to be pretty modular writting very
few of logic code.

~~~
082349872349872
Think of if7 as low-hanging fruit: if people _who enjoy text adventures_ can't
be bothered to play guess-the-verb, who can?

------
pulkitsh1234
I think most people (who have tried psychedelics) will have a story like this,
but will never share it publicly because of the obvious stigma attached with
these "drugs".

Most people on HN will try to reduce these experiences and theory-craft over
why/how, instead of giving in (and accepting the fact) that these things and
experiences are something which have puzzled the human civilisation for ages,
so instead just try it once and make your opinion then.

Now obviously some of the psychedelic purists will claim to do a higher dose
to see the full potential, but I would recommend to do just a very very light
dose, such that effects are noticeable but not overpowering at all.

My reasoning for a lower dose is that, our mind quickly starts craving the
experiences of a higher dose (if the experience was good). Craving not in the
sense of doing the psychedelics again, but craving in the sense that if-only-
I-was-in-that-state-of-mind-all-my-problems-will-be-solved sense. Contrary,
any bad experience(trip) can cause severe PTSD symptoms. If you see, both
positive and bad trips have the same effect in some sense (just in opposite
directions).

Now, with a lower dose, the chances of bad trip happening is quite lower. A
bad trip happens when you feel you are losing control, chances of that
happening on lower dose is very very small. From a purist perspective the
lower dose does not "unlock" the full potential of the psychedelic. Of course,
there is always set-and-setting which also effect what you feel and how you
integrate the experience later on.

The effects of a lower dose are similar to just feeling "good" about yourself,
like waking up after a good nights sleep and looking at a valley of colourful
flowers without any sort of mental burden. You could be just looking at your
room and feel the same way. The experience of lower doses, can also give you a
window into how the affects of a good meditation session feels like.

This is not the entire picture, but I suppose I should just stop writing.

~~~
jcun4128
Ha after watching Jobs I was like "will I be Steve Jobs if I try some LSD" but
I did not do it.

~~~
trenchgun
You did not become Steve Jobs?

~~~
jcun4128
Sadly no, I lack that ferocity, no I meant I didn't partake.

------
AdmiralAsshat
I just finished reading "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties
Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry," which similarly covers
how many of the computing pioneers were influenced by psychedelics.[0]

[0]
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OCXFYM](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000OCXFYM)

------
katsume3
I never had a trip that inspired me to do something very creative. I mean the
will to create something psychedelic was there, and I done some brightly
colored doodles in my notebook, but that was about it.

Also psychedelics for me rarely tried to make me push for a better future as
discussed in the article. If anything, they thrust me directly into the
present, _' the felt presence of direct experience'_ as McKenna called it.

Trips for me, were always like dreams, in that they are ultra vivid and lucid,
and worthy of remembering, but quickly fade away like RAM when a computer
turns off. Kudos to the author for bringing something back from the trip,
something I could rarely do.

One insight I did have though is the importance of knowing the time[0], which
is why I surround myself with several clocks, which are all synced together,
and none of them would be fast or slow. That's the only insight I gained after
10+ powerful trips!

[0] Anecdotally I once had a situation entirely absent of clocks which freaked
me out whilst tripping. My phone was absent, I didn't own a wristwatch. The TV
had only international stations with different time-zones, and there was no-
one nearby that I could ask for the time. Lesson learned.

------
chamberecho
Psychedelics should be legalised and regulated. There are many social benefits
we're missing out on, including the insights possible in the article, as well
as promising results for depression and other mental health problems. Instead
we have all the ill effects of criminalisation...

------
Stierlitz
“Why Hypercard Had to Die .. The Apple of Steve Jobs needed HyperCard-like
products like the Monsanto Company needs a $100 home genetic-engineering set.”

[http://www.loper-os.org/?p=568](http://www.loper-os.org/?p=568)

------
Gatsky
Kary Mullis tells a similar story about inventing PCR (polymerase chain
reaction), for which he won the Nobel prize in Chemistry.

------
mcaswell
I love how he was able to identify a problem of huge scale that truly mattered
to him and was able to make a massive impact in solving that problem. Very
inspiring. It feels very rare that all of those things line up (identifying a
core problem, having the ability to solve it, and the time in which to do so),
but this article gives me hope to keep striving for it

~~~
masswerk
What's interesting is that the mission and its underlying question isn't that
dissimilar from Doug Engelbart's, but the answer is completely different. Not
a bootstrapping cyborg, but a friendly tool for recording and communicating
data.

~~~
jes5199
Hypercard couldn’t exist without Englebart’s UI, though

------
w0mbat
Part of the genius of HyperCard was that it didn’t take long for someone to
learn the whole language and all the things you could do. Once I hit the edges
there were a few things I wanted to do that HyperCard didn’t support but I
found I could write an XCMD (external command) in Pascal or C to add any
feature I wanted. That involved buying a compiler and Inside Macintosh books,
and learning a much harder language, but I was so enthused with what I’d
created so far that I didn’t want to stop. Each individual XCMD I wanted
seemed small enough that it seemed possible to write. Once an XCMD was done it
was easy to use and reuse on different projects.

As it turns out, I’m weird, and very few people made that jump to XCMDs and
soon I had a full time job writing them. Eventually our products were so XCMD
heavy that I started writing Mac apps from scratch in C. It was a nice gradual
seduction into programming from the career I was originally trained for.

~~~
betamaxthetape
If you still have any of those XCMDs lying around, it'd be great if you could
upload them[1] to the HyperCard stacks collection[2] - particularly if you
still have source code. (Of course, only if not covered under NDAs, etc...).

If they're still on old media (floppy disks, SCSI hard drives, etc...) contact
me[3] and I'll do by best to help get them transferred.

[1] [http://hypercardonline.tk/](http://hypercardonline.tk/)

[2]
[https://archive.org/details/hypercardstacks](https://archive.org/details/hypercardstacks)

[3] HyperCardOnline@gmail.com

~~~
w0mbat
An example of the XCMD-heavy HyperCard stuff I worked on was the "Last Chance
to See" Mac CD-ROM with Douglas Adams. A small team worked on it but the whole
UI is done with XCMDs I wrote as is the audio streaming. I don't see an ISO
for that online (well it would be two ISOs as it was a double-CD-ROM).

------
fnord77

        > It occurred to me the weak link for the Blue Marble team is wisdom. Humanity has achieved sufficient technological power to change the course of life and the entire global ecosystem, but we seem to lack the perspective to choose wisely between alternative futures. 
    

Are we any wiser today?

~~~
iamcasen
His invention allowed the easier transmission of knowledge, which is
undoubtedly valuable. His mistake was in thinking that transmission of
knowledge necessarily leads to wisdom. Wisdom comes from direct experience.
Knowledge is knowing, wisdom is being. They are two sides of the same process,
but people often get hung up on the knowledge part of it and never go out into
the world and deeply live.

------
walterbell
Hypercard lead to macOS Applescript, iOS Workflow and then iOS Shortcuts.

An iOS shortcut can be executed when iPhone is touched to a piece of paper
with an NFC tag, or a geofenced zone is entered. The script can manipulate
apps in iOS, then SSH to a remote device, invoke Linux code or SaaS APIs, then
pass that data back to iOS for local processing and presentation to the user.

The iOS Shortcut language editor is free on hundreds of millions of iPhones.
Sadly, there is little support for backup, restore, sharing, discovery,
versioning or auditing.

------
Wirerack
While I was offered LSD before, I could never shake the feeling that somehow
this was "doing drugs" and therefore wrong. Objectively I could sense that
this didn't quite follow logically, but I guess it is hard to shake the
conditioning? Anyone else felt this?

~~~
pugworthy
There is a lot of misinformation for LSD and other psychedelics, going back to
the 60's. I certainly remember all those whispered rumors of the kid that took
some and though the could fly and jumped out the 6 story window.

If you're looking for an objective (in my opinion) perspective on LSD and
other psychedelics, consider getting a copy of How to Change Your Mind by
Michael Pollan. Definitely a good read.

------
remir
I'm not American, but when I think of America, that is what comes to my mind:
the optimism of creative thinkers. The way that folks at Apple thought about
computer is beautiful: they could be much more than tools for technical
people.

I now someone may polarize what I said with some whataboutims, but I think
it's good to focus on the positive once in a while.

~~~
09bjb
It's true; this yin-yang of "What if there's a better way?" / "Don't tell me
what to do" is inseparable in America, and is at the root of so much of what
makes it both great and terrible.

------
zackmorris
HyperCard was the single greatest inspiration in my programming career. I
learned it when I was about 12, the age of the kids in The Wonder Years show.
So it had a huge effect on my brain's development.

It's a little hard to explain what's so great about it. What I remember is
that it was my first real exposure to scripting vs systems programming. So for
example, I played with the little MIDI-style music generator forever. It blew
me away that such simple notation controlled the complexity of the music chip.
I sort of knew that somehow computers used binary and converted bytes to the
shape of sine waves and stuff, because I was also using an old program called
SoundEdit to kind of draw sound using commands like "envelope" and "FM
synthesis" if I remember correctly. But being able to command that complexity
from a conversational or human standpoint really blew me away.

And everything in HyperCard was like that. You could dial the modem, speak
text, make your own calculator or rolodex, just on and on and on, in probably
the smallest amount of code that I've ever encountered. And my parents could
even read the code, without ever learning how to program!

So what that ended up creating was a feeling that the computer was full of
easter eggs. For example, I didn't have access to array functionality (or more
accurately, wouldn't have known how to use such a construct). I needed it to
store the piece locations for the walls in a Gauntlet-style game I was making.
So I ended up storing the coordinates like (100,200) as lines in a text field,
and then seeing if that text "contains" the coordinate I was trying to move
onto. But see, the text search functionality even on an 8 MHz Mac Plus is so
fast as to be effectively infinite from a human frame of reference. So even
though I was full-text searching these text fields, the game ran in real time
and was a lot of fun. I still use this technique today in languages like PHP,
where I know that the language is slow, but I can call down to any system call
or compiled C function, and it will generally be faster than I need it to be.

The only downside is that it opened my eyes to how tech could serve humanity,
only to see that vision inverted so that we ended up at the present day where
humanity serves tech. I know that the direction that tech is going is wrong,
but I have trouble articulating how or why. And it kind of haunts me that
something as revolutionary as HyperCard could be written in the 80s in Pascal,
such a primitive language by today's standards, but we keep missing the mark
with all of our modern tools.

What's the next tool like HyperCard that could free humanity from this tedious
labor? I just don't know, and that bothers me. I think loosely that it will
work like J.A.R.V.I.S. on Ironman, but I know that all of the current
approaches like Alexa and Siri are coming at it from the wrong direction.
They're trying to find use cases for consumers from a profit motive
perspective. But digital assistants need to work more like wolframalpha.com,
and give users access to all of the capabilities in their computer (only in a
notation that isn't terrible, no offense to Wolfram Alpha). I do know that
some of the prerequisites are blocked by corporations though, like we should
have had a cross-platform scripting language like HTML/Javacript long before
the arrival of the internet. Apple and Microsoft would never allow that
though, obviously. It should have been more of a hybrid between AppleScript
and VBScript, only not terrible. Even AppleScript is a profoundly worse
language than HyperTalk, and I don't know why. These deep questions get
glossed over by everyone, and I hear quips and solutions for this or that. But
remarkably, everyone is wrong, or else we'd be using that next better thing.

------
unchocked
Seems like a pretty decent ideation process, and you can't argue with the
result.

------
aphroz
It's funny how things makes sense when you are under influence, but it is less
usual it becomes real. I guess drugs helps you to let go and be more
imaginative. But, it does not mean you need to take LSD to have brilliant
ideas.

~~~
GordonS
Story time.

I recall one afternoon I took mushrooms, when I was perhaps 15 years old. Not
a huge quantity, but enough for a mild, pleasant experience.

That same evening I realised that I had to write an essay for school - it
wasn't like me, but I'd completely forgotten about it, and now had a single
evening to write a whole essay... bah, how could I possibly do that?!

I sat down, and... it just _flowed_. Words, sentences, paragraphs, ideas,
characters, just sprang to life on the page - and it was _good_ , really good!
My mind felt amazing - like my consciousness had been expanded. I'd never felt
such pure imagination and joy of knowledge before.

By the end of the evening I had unquestionably the best essay I'd ever
written, and about twice the target length.

A week or so later when I got the results, it was a B, and I was kind of
shocked. But the teacher called me back after class - he told me what I
submitted was way better than A+ work, more what would be expected at
university level. He also asked who wrote it, because "it obviously wasn't
you" \- he didn't believe my insistence that I'd written it. He couldn't prove
anything, so gave it a B and strongly warned me not to "pull a stunt like this
ever again".

Of course, people can have great ideas and do great work without
hallucinogenic drugs - that should really go without saying. But the results
with such drugs can be utterly incredible - Also keep in mind the effect is
not only while using the drug, but _afterwards_ too.

~~~
mudita
Did you ever try to reproduce this experience and experiment with writing
under the of psychedelics?

~~~
GordonS
Well, there is another story there.

Just some weeks later, I took mushrooms again - but this time we took way, way
more. _Hundreds_ of them.

Shortly after the effects started coming on, I had a stupid argument with my
friend and I was left alone for a while feeling bad. It all went down hill
from there. I was disorientated and confused, lost all depth perception, and
was seeing small monsters all over the place - I'd turn round and see one
huddled in a corner, staring at me like it was planning an attack, then it was
gone and I'd see another elsewhere. I was absolutely terrified; the whole
experience was like the "essence" of terror.

I seem to recall that in total the effects lasted for something like 12 hours.
For the last few I was huddled up on a bed, shaking uncontrollably, thinking
it would never end.

Right at the end, another friend sat with me and talked about something
terrible that had happened to her, getting it of her chest, perhaps thinking I
wouldn't remember afterwards. I actually became quite lucid then, and felt
such empathy and human understanding that I haven't felt before (some people
think I'm autistic, so in retrospect it was particularly meaningful!).

Anyway, that was the last time I ever took mushrooms, or any hallucinogen.
Parts of the experience seem imprinted in my mind forever, and 20+ years on
I'd still be really wary of taking hallucinogens again.

I think hallucinogens can be extremely powerful, but _must_ be used with care,
and in the proper setting. I learned that the hard way.

------
perl4ever
Now I want to see some sort of functional language, without too many baroque
features, with a Hypertalk-like veneer.

