Today at the makerspace we were discussing The Things We Lost W/R/T the development of computing.

We talked about the Cannon Cat, we talked about Hypercard, we talked about the ST and the Amiga.

One topic that came up towards the tail end of the discussion that is near and dear to me is Sugar, the DE designed along side the OLPC project.

It was a radically different approach to computing, and could have been a strong step towards a more Humane future for computers.

But this is a discussion of what we lost, it wasn't a step towards a more Human future for computers. It was nothing more than a broken branch.

Open source software, as it exists today, is 0ften chasing the same dead ends that proprietary software chases.

It's so often Exactly what the proprietary version does, but better, or worse, or just The Same.

We're so often constrained by the same vision that drives proprietary software.

But every once in a while some piece of open source software or some piece of proprietary software will actually manage to do something Unique, and push it's area forward.

Then everyone rushes to copy it, and everything is the same again.

Different is good.

Sugar was good.

Gemini, for example, decided to take the web back to a human scale. This is good!

I'd love to see, and to participate in, more open source projects that explore these broken branches and dead ends.

Let's make computers Humane.

What would a video editor look like if it was designed to make video editing fast and easy?

Modern video editors are mostly designed for maximal control and precision.

What else could an NLE look like?