
My hypermedia history - enkiv2
https://medium.com/@enkiv2/my-hypermedia-history-11d576ce6dbb
======
gt_
I love reading and hearing from people who have pursued these philosophical
interface ideals. They have accomplished some great things and I think it’s
undeniable that they are exploring a vast area of unknown.

I wish they could generally be kinder to themselves. I consider the design of
musical instruments, which is an area of expertise often lost to time because
if it’s accomplishments being so gradual and, endemic, we might say.
Differences in resolution of an average person’s hearing senses vs. visual
senses makes this comparison valuable. The keyboard is the hypermedia
accomplishment of music but it resembles a piano so much in appearance that we
consider it the same interface form. Musically, however, it is a new world.
Recent musical software is largely a regression in interactivity. There is a
lot of meaning that tends to get lost here.

So much of the PC’s value comes from the hard drive. The hard drive stores
creativity that used to require sheet music and upkeep of instruments and
incredible investments of time. I am guilty of forgetting this all the same,
and love tooling away at my CGI workstation workflow. But, at the end of the
day, I often feel I simply cannot compete with the value of Ctrl + S with
cloud sync.

On the other hand, there is the mouse, which is comparable to a music
instrument, and it’s easy to overlook the benefits of the awkward oblong
shapes of classical musical instruments. Their cooperation with the human body
and their form inspire and enable the whole history of music as we know it.
But, we remember only a handful of people, not who invented them, but who
merely made final modifications to them. Their inventors are lost to time. The
bulls of hypermedia seem to face similar struggles.

------
igravious
" And, I’ve implemented stuff that’s pretty close to what I wanted back then
but found it less satisfying than I expected.

I guess that’s life.

So pro tip for all you young people:

Never have goals. If you achieve them you will realize they were crap all
along, and if you don’t then you’ll be stressed out about failing. "

– to which I would reply with,

    
    
       “HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
       Enwrought with golden and silver light,
       The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
       Of night and light and the half-light,
       I would spread the cloths under your feet:
       But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
       I have spread my dreams under your feet;
       Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
    

[https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/he-wishes-for-the-cloths-
of-...](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/he-wishes-for-the-cloths-of-heaven/)

