Retro Futurism To The Rescue; Or, Chasing All The Bugs
Retro Futurism To The Rescue; Or, Chasing All The Bugs

Tuesday • January 2nd 2024 • 12:46:46 am

Retro Futurism To The Rescue; Or, Chasing All The Bugs

Tuesday • January 2nd 2024 • 12:46:46 am

Instead of talking about how computers are broken, let's talk about fixing things.

Let me open with an example of a fixed thing, everyone's favorite the world encyclopedia, is a fixed thing.

It is a constantly updating system, and with AI or Large Language Models, it will only get better.


We need to fix smartphones, we have to rebuild apps, the way the collaborative editing rebuild, the encyclopedia.

And we have to fix the fact, that there is no one way of doing things.

An app, should be a set of visual programming nodes, or puzzle pieces that can be fully customized.

Thus far, greed forced centralization, and walled gardens under the guise of security.

Ecosystems are meant to be installed on the phone, where they don’t need a central server.

They will just need a copy of databases, and access to remote API, or functions, if needed.

The new apps will be built with a visual programming language, where nodes are coupled together to create new things.

And it is nodes all the way down, where a clever data stream based programming language resides.

Basically, everyone gets a copy of the Encyclopedia of Apps, and the ability to customize them, and build new ones.

Visual programming is just streams of data, flowing through a diagram that lives beneath he app.


Performance, is a weird thing, to start at the right point.

We have to go back to 70, 80, 90, to retro computing.

Where, if you wanted to drag a window, all you got was an outline.

And when you let go of the mouse, wherever you placed the outline.

That is where the window jumped, you don’t have to use such features.

But they are needed, so that low power computers are snappy and responsive.

The retro displays of green vector lines, are back – and they make today’s technologies look beyond bloated.


And that’s it, that fixes the computers, a fast powerful distributed, decentralized visual programming language.

That poses little challenge, it is just a diagram, an interactive concept map.

Above it, live the beautiful apps, they can be styled every which way.

I personally envision fantasy retro-futuristic design, but any design can be put on top of the vectors.

It is really up top the user what theme they choose, how they style their apps, how they remix them.


Outside of speed and efficiency, a major point behind this system is the return to a state.

Where users are not being analyzed all the time, whatever privacy is taken away…

Sooner than later leaks into the hands of criminals, everything being broken means, everything gets hacked.

It also means, everything needs to get fixed.

Becasue, signing binaries, and walled gardens, closed source code operating systems, are just too vulnerable, too broken.

We need to help programmers write better code, by helping them to a diagram first approach.

And, since it is all just labels and lines that connect them, we might as well learn how to create programs as well.

Artwork Credit