353

t into our usual narrative of the history of personal fi Founded Founded in 2009 and currently part of the University as it was neither behind the times nor ahead of its time – it was actually very much of its time, only not a time that Cat the does understood have would never I However, computing. as a machine of its time if I hadn’t had the opportunity to experiment with the one in we have the Media Archaeology pressured now are we of how light in moment, a for (Just Lab. to replace our computers and smartphones after only three old years twenty-eight now is machine this how years, four to and still functions perfectly.) [SHIFT]+[DOCUMENT] began to work on designing the Canon Cat after of release before . years two 1982, in Apple left he 1987 in Canon by public the to introduced then was Cat The for $1495 – roughly $3100 in 2015. Although the Cat was discontinued after only six months, were around sold during 20,000 this units time. The Canon Cat fascinates me nd he came across on : a Canon Cat, which billed itself in 1986 1986 in itself billed which Cat, Canon a ebay: on across came he nd fi who will sit at sit will who cult, and producing fi user imaginary: user “If the button is not shaped like the thought, room they occupy, what do they want? The imagined which with object the becomes user the of subjectivity some actual person interacts, inclining them one way making choices design affordances, through another or some tasks easy and others dif actual subjectivity. the thought will This end is Theodor up Nelson speaking, shaped coiner of like the term the button.” [SHIFT]+[DOCUMENT] Who will the user be? The shape that computing early personal takes rests in part on this persona, or scenario, The paradox. temporal implicit its question, with or model, or instance of the user threads through the production of the machine, from performance criteria to software, industrial design, and input devices a it and call can We marketing. the is what pen, light the up take will who console, the LORI EMERSON & FINN BRUNTON BRUNTON FINN & EMERSON LORI CAT CANON THE WORK ADVANCED PROCESSING Lab Archaeology Media the of Director Emerson, Lori contacted NYU, at professor assistant an Brunton, Finn 2014, of fall the In rare a about Boulder, Colorado, of University the at (MAL) as an “advanced work processor.” The MAL wasn’t immediately able to purchase the machine; however, Brunton purchased the Canon Cat with the agreement that he’d experiment with the Canon Cat for six months or so, sell it to the MAL, and then he and Emerson would co-write a piece – now, this piece – on the obscure machine from an ever-more distant past. Here, we been and still could be. glimpse into what computing could have hope to give you a 354 It can dial your phone, we are told, and it has “exclusive categories, it is an “of similarallthree.to Instead theseofestablished product “not a ” – despite having functionality electronic“notan ,” wordprocessor,”“nota No menus. “No has It negative. created for it answer this question almost entirely in the changes thechronologyofpersonalcomputing. the future – a future that never came to pass, one that much an artifact immured in the past as it is stranded in place and into the record of retrocomputing. It is not so hiding historical its of out Cat Canon the coax to start can we that paradoxes odd these in It’s now. machine user-to-be retroactively tweaks the development of the what it is that the user knows about the computer. The including user, the about something know to has built, and the user because of the system.) The computer, as user, the of because exists system (The work. to was and system the how explain and justify to userthem using then virtual a constructing test,” “prospective a project of imagining the future user: you have to create inexperienced users. paradoxically, yet, and they had to model the potential value of the system for – computer themselves the programmers by inspired workers,” “intelligence be chording keyboards, and graphical user interfaces would software, hey, it takes time to learn a of skill.” These users of mice, piece new a use to how learning year a needed you if And need. higher a to tailored be would concepts core “software interaction, human-computer of devices and the of many developed (ARC) Center Research Augmentation whose Engelbart, Douglas For the presence of a responding setup, is too complicated.” in tutor a “by Nelson, wrote minutes,” ten in layman a intuitively: and “Any system easily which up cannot be system well taught the to take to able be to had user the meant “docuverse” one in activity written human and simplicity of adoption. To encompass the whole of speed was issue Computers design foremost the therefore Understand and – Must and Can “You manifesto in his as of “you!,” subtitle hortatory – the everyone well, is, user the system, Xanadu, envisioned his of purposes For “hypertext.” ht s h Ct Ee te aktn materials marketing the Even Cat? the is What In fact, there are layers of paradoxes in the necessary fi ce machine,” a “Work Processor.” fi les. No mouse.” It is It mouse.” No les. optr Lib, Computer NOW ”

the keyboard. into right werebuilt functions its graphics), or mouse,icons though the interface was text based (it does not make use of sra” f tx boe it svrl pages. several into broken text of “stream” etr t te twenty- the public to century general the of access to obsolete, functional media members from the early twentieth and the scholars, English, students, gives short) for of ‘MAL’ sadly, (or, Department Lab Archaeology Boulder’s Media at Colorado of function. LEAP the of part-and-parcel is cursor the because cursor the designed Raskin way remarkable the explain to need I the works, use LEAP how you explain can I Cat before But keys. the “LEAP” with “FIND”, command the select and a to navigate to mouse the use might you (GUI) Whereas with a machine that uses a Graphical [LEAP BACKWARD]+AERODYNAMICS and menus.no concept of Instead, the concepts of “archive” and “museum” inside out in the in out inside “museum” and “archive” of concepts the unique.Perhaps broadly,and importantly most turns lab the is MAL the regard, this In creation. research and teaching, fapersonalcomputer. of that, by from the idea 1987, had already become inseparable Interface User Graphical the and interface command-line the both from different distinctly was interface its because wasit computer” “personal a called be to supposed not also word wasa Cat not the explicitly processor, While language. dictionary,Forthin assembly and program to ability the and word 90,000 a device, communications built-in programs, of standard with came it that in processors word beyond both the IBM Selectric Typewriter and conventional it looks like a word processor, the Cat was meant to be a step this machineFirst, regress. is called of an notions “Advancedeven or WORK progress Processor.” of Although notions to attempt any supports that past/present/future disrupts of arc linear a narrativize that machine a of with up come their unique, material,operationalinsides. display the outside these and artifacts rather surfaces than of that exhibits static through arcs such represent to tendency the b) and present the to past the from extend that progress the technologicaltendency to create neat teleological arcs of interests disrupting of two interrelated, cultural tendencies: a) r oiaieacmue hthdn ocp fof concept no had that computer a imagine to Try I’ve examples best the of one is then, Cat, Canon The fi rt etr fr ad-n research, hands-on for century rst all data was seen as a long n s even so And fi ce suite ce fi les 355 t in the fi Second it shows us shows it Second rst occurrence ofoccurrence rst the fi Raskin’s Raskin’s vision for the machine was fty times faster than the same function fi rst character of character the rst fi ore, ore, this disruption only becomes evident ust on the face of it, the Canon Cat disrupts M nally, it’s important to note the bundle ofcontradictions bundle the note to important it’s nally, fi I’ve I’ve only discussed two features of the Cat – the cursor Leaping, then, is method the ofCat’s cursor movement; The Cat’s cursor has several states: narrow, wide, and nd pattern in the text. behaves LEAP the BACKWARD same as LEAP except FORWARD that the cursor moves in the at was, LEAP that Note text. the through direction opposite that time, roughly on the Macintosh and possibly just as fast as “FIND” is on our contemporary machines. functionality both and ofLEAP, which make it possible to do many more things than we can do today with FIND or control-F or with our generally single-purpose cursor. My point is that, j and inaccuracies the Cat’s functionality brings and to inaccuracies light. the First, Cat’s the is believe we what between contradiction the us shows it history of computing versus the Cat. disruptionsthe as such machines by to represented this story you you LEAP the can While keys. leap BACKWARD LEAP and FORWARD forward and backward key is FORWARD using held, a pattern may be typed. the While the forward moves immediately cursor LEAP the typed, being is pattern the on lands and its appearance, style outward when look you not at the Cat’s and design, but at its functionality. extended. In addition to the variable cursor states, the cursor the states, cursor variable the to addition In extended. blink cursor The oftext. state the the indicates also rate blink rate a at blinks cursor the (whereby clean states: two has rate of roughly 3 Hz to indicate that all changes to the text have at blinks cursor dirtythe and disk) a to (whereby saved been made been have changes that indicate to Hz of1 rate about a to a disk). not been saved have to the text and they [LEAP BACKWARD]+ENTERING NONSENSE [LEAP BACKWARD]+ENTERING A that while, beginning with the Macintosh, Apple may have had an and uncanny design knack The board. for the weaving across design case the into marketing, wasn’t certainly that marketing of computers in the 1980s were not necessarily one and the same as even the even most nuanced genealogical accounts of computers and digital devices. Where does a Processor Work history of computing – a history that nearly seamlessly always glides from IBM processors and personal word Selectric, micro computers, computers, to kit computers, computers? mini rsthand, fi nds a starting point fi awsinthe explanation which– ying cars like the IBM PS/2 and fl fl effect (the reason a stream of water from at-wing balsa plane he brought in the next ă fl In the y upside-down: “I was very frustrated,” writes adult menu clones of Macs and PCs on the of craters smoking one the hand, and the Sinclair Q(uantum) L(eap) on the other. The Cat is day to demonstrate the demonstrate to day got him sent to the principal – he in a line of technological toward step major a take to me led had airplanes model objects: “My playing with intellectual independence – and a spirit of that innovation later led me to project create (and the other, Macintosh less-well-known inventions) computer as adult.” an This emphasis on the immediate and on understanding for less-well-known “other, oneself, his of one computer, explains this makes part of what inventions,” so deeply of its time that it can disrupt our received chronology. The Cat, as an attempt object, to replicate isn’t an already an successful product, or a deliberately futuristic alpha-rollout hoping to stake a claim on relevant novelty for industry. We have plenty of those: countless beige-box window-mouse-and- the faucet follows the curve of a surface – next to constituting, it) in the process, his in disappointed merely not is Raskin autobiography. a hidden intellectual sixth grade science teacher (“who could not take the books library the in but reasoning”) my to listen to time “It given. been had he explanation the with agreed that was a revelation that I could trust my own thinking in the face of such concerted opposition.” lift. Why, precisely, does the accelerating plane take off? The teacher’s standard explanation did not satisfy sixth-grade Raskin, who wondered how planes could fl Raskin, “and argued until he said, ‘Shut up, Raskin!’” This is followed by a dozen pages of lucidly described experiments with paper, spinning the Coand balls, airfoils and Leap keys.” To the contemporary eye, seeing this ad in a in ad this seeing eye, somewhat contemporary the To looked keys.” art Leap line in depicted as Cat the magazine, like an with differences in box? What is this enigmatic orientation. proportion and [LEAP FORWARD]+1982 “In aerodynamics, theory is what makes the invisible plain”: so opens the epigraph Raskin selected article for an he wrote in the 1990s about the physics of 356 its seemingconstraint inasubtlerway. and a proto- system. But the Cat is also open in client, email an formulas, mathematical calculating for tool a environment, programming a learns, user the as that seems solely meant for writing memoranda is also, device A technically: true is This ways. unprecedented (no getting used to, some because within its seeming constraints take may system new reviewer this 1987, in a Cat the writes of packages,” application current of yet: “if you are accustomed to the complexity and held back by the abstruse command line interface. And rigidity all to tools the opening computing, of democratization ful to easier, friendlier,” and therefore freeing users of all kinds as effortless and therefore liberating – “ several contradictions. Graphical interfaces were framed exempli it document: “then the user will hit the keyboard …”), requirements and a from evolving that (imagine use actual from emerge only could that gesture counterintuitive center odd, of kind the the It’s purpose. this to for keyboard the slap of light a point, recommended starting Raskin your and to back you take will therefore, where you were when you hit LEAP. Entering nonsense, string of characters you’re entering, you are returned to return to their starting point? If the Cat can’t Cat the If point? starting their to return to want they if LEAP, a of out get user the does How [LEAP FORWARD]+YOUMIGHTUSE intensely cursor inablankspace–andbeginsto blinking a – “the environment” the of formlessness seeming called reviewer contemporary a what in Cat the fi using one-off, but because industrial it is an still experiment, hard to unique understand a without was it because not computing of model our with interferes Cat The Effect. plane balsa a It’s upside-down, not an abstract concern with the object. Bernoulli an with experience person’s particular a with starts that something it’s but makes plain the invisible process of use and interaction, needed, is theory when Raskin, for Theory, machine. phenomenological a it’s – use of experience personal t it into a simple timeline of innovation. The user meets meets user The innovation. of timeline a simple into t it fi in open is it mouse) no images, no menus, no les, it; no contemporary parallels exist that can help us us help can that exist parallels contemporary no it; fi ll their potential. The GUI was, in this story, the story, this in was, GUI The potential. their ll present, fi e te a’ srne pnes oe f its of one openness, strange Cat’s the es re fl ecting a focus on the immediate immediate the on focus a ecting naturally fi nd their way. way. their nd fi nd the nd better, fl ying ying it in promotional materials as a closed system closed a as materials promotional in it the Cat as a secretarial workstation and therefore represented consistently contradicted by Canon. as closed, somehow Raskin was able to make sure the Cat the sure make to able was Raskin somehow closed, as a pointingdevicethatcouldbeaddedonlater. for softwarehooks and connector a had also it softwarebut third-party with integrate to only not designed was Cat the was consistently marketed in terms of speed and ef and speed of terms in marketed consistently was sealed. hermetically similarly nowadaysare devices in Apple our waythat same themselves,the it repairing and up it opening from people discouraged openly Apple fact, in schematics; like anything machine. The Apple Macintosh, by contrast, never came with how to dis-assemble and re-assemble every the single part of for schematics detailed very and manual repair a with came a small number of possibly related tasks. What is desired is desired is What tasks. related possibly of number small a computer will become a mere appliance – at best performing that Raskin believed “can and must be done” otherwise “the something – it’sprogrammable and also system open an of version a actually is Cat The toaster. a into toast of slice a software a on inserting that use to easy so are that machines or appliances, are that machines and programmable are that machines between incompatibility inherent an isn’tnecessarily there that us the shows Cat Canon But interconnected. a all were of – appliance interests as the computer in programmability of lack meant that extensibility of lack – things three these that case the be to closed systems. Looking at the Macintosh, it did indeed seem designing computers to be like household appliances as well as computers that should not be extensible meant belief that he his supported assumed I because Macintosh Apple the of Here, I was very Raskin critical and of his work on the design book myvehemently in quite about Cat – emphasizedthemachine’s incrediblespeed. the themselves manuals the for to ads magazine material to videos promotional from – Canon’s of bit single ef and speed execution over usability human and generality philosophydemanded which “implementation an Raskin on based were designs technology, his how about digital to comes statements takeheretical to making seemed in pride himself it of markers when two the are progress these that belief our reinforcing That said, despite Canon’sdespite said, That marketmachineto the efforts Third, related to my second point above, while the Cat the while above, point second my to related Third, ial, h Ct lal cnrdcs oehn I wrote I something contradicts clearly Cat the Finally, fi ciency.” By contrast, every every contrast, By ciency.” F Reading WritingReading Interfaces or example, Canon sold fl oppy is likeis oppy putting . While i While . fi ciency, n fact, n . 357 nd one explanation for why the Cat never took took never Cat the why for explanation one nd fi that was on its way to being “taken for granted,” and in its place, the construction of the user as and drags. clicks, consumer who merely chooses, – as one for the computer to become an appliance, but not a user, its grantedby for taken be mere must presence Its appliance. but in the long run, the act of programming itself must be taken for granted as well.” Perhaps in words Raskin’s here also can we hold: the years leading ofprogramming culture up of a dismantling to quiet the the by release marked of the Cat were (with BASIC taught in high schools across North America) everything everything It is, after all, a machine in which [LEAP FORWARD]+CONTRADICTIONS becomes becomes the work of writing; all is text. In this, as it limited, as is constrained, as words themselves are – and, paradoxically, as open as letters, memos, novels, stories, poems, accounts, formulas, scripts, notes, essays, executable code. It elicits archaic freedom in the limits of its modeless a interface: about strange world, the about system, kind the (about more learn of to yourself), write more.