Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Technography. a core competency

Author:Ian Beatty
Posted:5/13/1999; 11:14:10 AM
Topic:Technography. a core competency
Msg #:6173 (In response to 6168)
Prev/Next:6172 / 6174

Well, IMHO...

Outliners are great, and having you see my outline as I do things to it is great, especially for a meeting-like context where a hierarchical list of items is appropriate. But for more general uses, for "talking, and computing, and working together; deciding and publishing, on-line", I think we want more than just a shared outline. I want to be able to show you *anything* I can bring up on my screen, and vice-versa.

Ideally (here's the vision), we'd each have two monitors, one controlled by my computer, one controlled by yours. So we could each see anything the other could. With only one monitor, maybe I'd have a keystroke to toggle between views of my and your desktop, or maybe I'd have a window which displayed an image of your desktop.

In addition, for collaborative working, I'd be able to edit a document on your computer by mousing and typing in my view of your desktop, as if it was my computer. And vice-versa. And I'd be able to transfer a document to you ftp-style by dragging it between the two views.

Basically, this ends up looking like one "computer" with two processors, two hard disks, two desktops, four monitors, and two keyboards, distributed across two separate locations. Security is clearly a concern; I'd want some way to specify what part of my system you have writeable access to, what part you have read-only access to, and what part is private.

This isn't really an extension of Frontier, it's more like an outgrowth of x-windows client/server stuff. And I doubt we'll see it any time soon. But if I were going to work with someone remotely, that's the kind of system I think I'd want.

But maybe that's too far out to be helpful... FWIW,

// Ian




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