(2022-01-10) Labacher Bachmanns Ethnographic Research On Dynamicland

Christoph Labacher: Gotz Bachmann's Ethnographic Research on Dynamicland. While it would be inaccurate to describe the Dynamic Medium Group as secretive.. it is obvious that the publicly available information is highly moderated. Little is available on the history, inner workings, and processes of the group

A notable exception is Carl Tashian’s excellent blog post on Dynamicland. 2019-09-18-TashianAtDynamiclandTheBuildingIsTheComputer

The Dynamic Medium Group’s vision is rooted in the idea that the computer revolution of the ’70s and early ’80s was cut short, primarily by premature commercialization. While the computer as a medium was still unfolding its potential, and way before it could do so entirely, it was solidified into commercial products, thereby stifling its free growth

Research Agenda

In this note, I want to summarize findings from the various publications by Bachmann and put them in context

The research group was initiated by Alan Kay, who proposed it to Bret Victor in March 2013. It was one of the multiple research groups initiated by Kay at the time, as part of his newly founded “Communication Design Group” (CDG)

Because of this cautionary tale and to avoid repeating history, the group is wary when it comes to public attention and deliberately reserved in what it shares. It is therefore equally surprising and delightful that they gave German anthropologist and ethnographer Götz Bachmann full access to visit them, watch and interview them

Founding & Funding

Between 2015 and 2017 Bachmann spent eight months in total with the group during four field visits. In the meantime, he has published several reports and articles for a full list. Several are available in English, some only in German..

Victor places himself in the line of Douglas Engelbart and Alan Kay, suggesting that he is directly continuing their work — however shifting the focus from technical solutions to a more abstract “medium”. (medium inventor)

The goal of the project was now clear: To help this new “dynamic spatial medium” come into being.

Team Members

the members of the group in the beginning were Bachmann, 2019a, p. 279:
Bret Victor
Glen Chiacchieri
Chaim Gingold
Toby Schachman
Michael Nagle
Robert Ochshorn

The second generation Paula Te
Josh Horowitz
Luke Iannini
Virginia McArthur*

*Bachmann last visited the group in 2017, so some more recent members are missing from this list:
Weiwei Xu (between 2018 and 2019)
Omar Rizwan (until 2020)

Further contributors were:
Matthias Graf (Research Intern, 2015)
Jennifer Jacobs (Research Intern, 2016)
Kritika Kushwaha (Residency as part of her Masters Thesis, 2018 — Report)
Eli Kosminksy (Residency, 2018 — Report)
Sofy Yuditskaya and Ria Rajan (Residency, 2018)
Nicky Case (Residency, 2018)*

As of early 2022, only Bret Victor and Luke Iannini are mentioned as staff on the about page of the Dynamicland website

Scaffolding, Staircases, Stacks, and Bootstraps

The First Two Years — Scaffolding

individual members of the team work on their own projects without much coordination and create many different prototypes, hoping to get a shared sense of the possibility space.

Bachmann describes the lab at this time as feeling like a “giant brain”

These prototypes were “working artefacts” and “traps for potentialities”, a form of poking in a “space of possibilities”

some forms of collaboration, centered around the prototypes: “riffing”, “dropping” and “jams”.

Bachmann describes that during this time there was a sense that their primary work at the moment was “scaffolding”. He points out that there were three distinct (and somewhat conflicting) notions of what that meant

Rising Tensions — Towards Bootstrapping

most of the members’ time and energy went into their individual projects. After two seemingly productive years, tensions started to arise.

Bret Victor’s early talks had worked too well

to try and build similar things, or variations of his demos. These prototypes often were focused on improving the way software is created

But they were not necessarily steps towards a dynamic spatial medium.

There were some early prototypes that made some progress in that direction. In particular the “big board”

and the “room system”

However, these prototypes failed to gain natural traction with the other engineers in the group, who kept working on their projects (using their screens, rather than the spatial medium).

in early 2016, Bret Victor had grown frustrated

He was unable to assert himself within the group, and he believed that his external prestige was suffering because he still had nothing he felt he could show for his work.

Victor felt that a change was necessary. In order to make progress towards a dynamic spatial medium, they had to start taking “bootstrapping” seriously.

In April 2016, Victor sent an email announcing that there would be some far-reaching changes to the way they worked. He introduced two new metaphors: that of the staircase that they were trying to move up on, and that of the stack that they were trying to drill down into.

But this would require all of them to spend one year solely focusing on building the platform, rather than working on their individual projects. Victor believed it was the only way to go and reminded them of the Dynamic Medium Group’s proclaimed goal: “Our goal is to invent an in-the-world dynamic medium, capable of hosting in-the-world dynamic representations of systems, which enable the people, who need to understand these systems to mutually understand them together

Victor framed it by formulating a new, higher aspiration for the work of the group: Their motivation wasn’t the invention of the dynamic spatial medium for its own sake, but to save the world. (huge challenge)

except for Toby Schachman, all of the members of the first generation left the project during this time

Over time, the second generation of members joined the group and they began working on the first “platform”, which turned into Dynamicland.

Once again there were conflicts within the group regarding the exact nature of their undertaking

a fragile compromise was found. An important factor was that Victor now permitted — initially to a large extent against his beliefs — the new spatial dynamic medium to have more objectives than just establishing new ways of thinking. A new objective was to promote new types of ‘togetherness’, not only as a means for common understanding, but as a goal on its own. (presence)

And so they started building their operating system, called “Realtalk”,

Realtalk became operational in the summer of 2017 but had to be rewritten because the first version was too slow

Since then, a continuous flow of visitors was invited into the lab to play with the prototype and build their own ideas using the system

It was around this time that Bachmann last visited the group and apart from enthusiastic reports on Dynamicland from visitors, little information about the group’s internal goings-on has emerged since

In December 2021 a private letter was sent to friends of the group, announcing the next phase of the project.