Re: Hardware/software:2

[Louis Frazier <cogniscu@xxxxxxx>]

Wayne, I don't know if this kicks off (HS)embedded, but I'll give it a try.

I blush to say such obvious things in the presence of Chuck and probably 
Jeff as well as anyone else who knows what went on at Xerox Parc 
(Palo Alto Research Center) 25 year ago, but xx21 processors should be in 
every printer in the world. I found my way to FORTH via Postscript, the 
rpn language which is the defacto standard for page/screen description. 
It is the standard because it is best able to put points on a surface or 
in space. I don't know which came first (I'm sure someone will tell me 
shortly), but Forth and PS are so much alike, either could be 
encapsulated in the other -- and probably has been. 

This brings me to the mass market. Sun is touting "net-centric" computing
in trade shows this week. They are talking about the successor to the PC
being a good display and keyboard hooked to a fast graphics computer that
gets all it's software and information from the net, at three megahertz, as
it needs it. I'm betting that xx21-type hardware (MISC, FORTH) will be the
best candidate for these systems which will be more pervasive than laser
printers in a few years. 
 
HTML, the primitive composition program we are using on the net today, can 
easily be written in Postscript. (Adobe has no doubt done it.) Netscape 
and all the other browsers are going to  be forced to go to Postscript 
eventually to be really competitive. Things are happening awfully fast 
right now, and probably most of the software work is in alpha at least.

People who are interested in applications these days can start with 
silicon, as Chuck has  proven with MuP21. We who are following MISC are 
on the leading edge of something big and it behooves us to learn as much 
as we can from each other, whatever our interests are.

At 70 I consider myself an artist dedicated to expressing the beauty and the 
power of the technologies we've been working in and applying since Edison 
invented the triode. 

I want my art to demonstrate the leading edge of networking. I want to 
build a piece that is a free-standing entity on the net, able to interact 
with its viewers, ascertain their interests and go to the net to satisfy 
them - with music, images, sounds, questions, answers -- anything that 
seems to interest them. I expect that many artists will produce thousands 
of works in the next few years to appeal to a new generation of 
technology-aware art lovers, just the way millions of painters and 
sculptors have met their aesthetic needs in the past. 

To do this, artists will need all the usual art materials plus vast
quantities of cheap chips like xx21's, just they way they've consumed
millions of tubes of paint since someone put paint in a lead tooth paste
tube and started the impressionist movement of outdoor painting in the
19th century. I am interested in learning from anyone who has ideas about
applying MISC to art.