The big players in Silicon Valley, from Microsoft to Apple to Google, have a decisive influence on the development of the computer industry and thus also on our ideas and relationships with digital media. The personal laptop and the handheld smartphone have taken hold around the world. But even before the development of today's omnipresent digital media, visionaries were pursuing a completely different idea. To this day, research groups and subcultures in Silicon Valley are working on alternative concepts to conventional computers.
The Dynamic Media Group is particularly radical. With her project "Dynamicland" she leaves the concept of the computer with screen and keyboard behind and creates a common space to discover a fundamentally new medium. One such space is currently under construction in Oakland, California. The whole building in which the research group works is the Dynamicland project and thus the computer itself. It should be accessible to everyone and therefore non-commercial. Engineers, students, artists and many more can come together to interactively develop programs and share ideas. Dynamicland is intended to bridge the gap between programmers and users. With their egalitarian approach, the group wants to go back to the initial ideas of the computer revolution - and creates a radical counter-proposal to the future plans of the tech elite from Silicon Valley.
A lot of scraps of paper with dots
The social anthropologist and ethnographer Götz Bachmann has been involved with the Dynamic Media Group since 2015. Because of their fundamental approach, he also calls them “radical engineers”.
If you want to understand what Dynamicland is, you have to visit the project yourself, as it cannot be explained in words or pictures. This is how the Dynamic Media Group sees itself. But Bachmann, who visited the group several times, manages to make his impressions tangible to netzpolitik.org. The basis of Dynamicland is an approximately 200 square meter loft. In this room, the research group works - sometimes with, sometimes without visitors - on a new type of computer. Instead of sitting in front of screens and writing thousands of lines of programming code, the visionaries work with objects that you can touch.
Scattered throughout the room are various physical objects and scraps of paper with dots attached. The dots form an identification system for the camera surveying the space. Also written on the pieces of paper are some short codes that explain what that particular object can do. When a:e programmer:moves a scrap of paper, the camera registers the movement through the glued-on dots and a computer records this process. In addition, a projector is used that interacts with the objects using light.
The combination of paper with points, camera, projector and computer-aided calculations results in a so-called object-oriented environment. It is a physical implementation of the decades-old discipline of object-oriented programming (OOP). To put it simply: The process that otherwise takes place on the screen takes place here in the room.
Computer without a box
"Despite the obviously not very simple technical set-up, the whole setting had a playful appeal and low-tech character," Bachmann describes his impressions of the Dynamicland visit. "At least when you compare this to the glossy demos that are usually expected in engineering labs."
The tinkerers can also include other items in the programming process. This type of collective programming in space is therefore very dynamic and interactive: both from person to person and from person to object. Bret Victor, leader of the Dynamic Media Group, shares the latest projects on Twitter:
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Open content directlyThe whole room works like a computer that you can walk around in. According to Bachmann, the visionaries describe the Dynamicland as a "computer with no box", i.e. a computer that extends over the whole room instead of being limited to a box. The users: inside come away from the screen and instead come together in the analogue space to work there with real objects. Götz Bachmann writes in an article:
Back to the origins of the computer revolution
Dynamicland is thus pursuing the original idea of the Internet: free, and therefore non-commercial, access to information for everyone. The digital medium that they are developing together should not be owned by anyone and therefore cannot be marketed. This gives the whole project an anti-capitalist tinge. Bachmann explains that the group sees Dynamicland as an egalitarian alternative to the products and structures of Silicon Valley. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, for example, has recently been working here on his next evolutionary stage of the Internet: The Metaversum is to become a new virtual space in which users can meet - if they can afford the appropriate hardware and use the services.
At the same time, the research group led by Victor is networked with important players from the tech scene, according to Bachmann. That's why you can see them as a subculture of Silicon Valley - albeit a very radical one. This subculture began to flourish as early as the 1960s and 1970s with Alan Kay and Douglas Engelbart.
With their work, both lay important foundations for the creation and development of Dynamiclands. Engelbart is a computer visionary who saw machines as a new medium to facilitate people's intellectual work and thus find solutions to pressing global problems such as population growth. He felt the desire to make the world a better place. To do this, he wanted to further develop the potential of the computer, which had previously only been used as a large calculating machine. In 1968 he invented the computer mouse and presented an interactive computer system that could also display text, images and videos.
Alan Kay is another legendary figure in computer history. Together with the computer scientist Adele Goldberg, Kay shaped the vision of today's computer in 1977 with the so-called "dynamic medium". In 2013 he initiated the research group led by Bret Victor, which began with the preliminary work on Dynamicland, says Götz Bachmann. Similar to Engelbart, Victor recognizes the potential of a computer to support people in their work. However, he criticizes that you have to think like a computer yourself in order to be able to use it in the first place. He is alluding to the technical programming language. That is why Alan Kay formulated the goal in 1969:
Otherwise, the computer will create a technical elite, led by computer nerds. This creates a hierarchy between the developers and the users – or, to put it another way, between the tech companies and the consumers. The playful approach and the ease of use of Dynamicland are an expression of this political conviction.
What is not yet can still be
Bret Victor comes to the radical conclusion that people must go back to the 70s and create a "fundamentally new thinking tool", as Bachmann describes it. And that is exactly what is created with Dynamicland: a space in which people can learn together and develop new computer-aided projects. Dynamicland is thus a process in which the developers approach what they think they are looking for. This ultimate goal is not yet tangible, but rather remains a vision. Götz Bachmann says: "Dynamicland existed in the state of not yet, it was its own foreshadowing, a promise".
A central starting point is that the research group in Dynamicland is working on Dynamicland. This breaks with the otherwise typical hierarchy between developer and user. In Dynamicland you are a visionary, engineer and user at the same time.
For the anthropologist Bachmann, Dynamicland not only shares a completely different idea of what a computer should be, but also represents an opportunity for cultural change: "With its visionary work, the Dynamic Media Group offers an alternative course of history." continues the revolution that began with the first computer prototypes and held the promise that a new digital medium would also lead to a new humanity and a "humane future".
It is still unclear how long this path will take and what it will look like in detail. But as Alan Kay is said to have said, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it".
