Computing

Genera - The Living Lisp Machine OS

Preface: Why Genera Still Matters Genera is a Lisp-based operating system and development environment originally built for Symbolics Lisp Machines in the 1980s and later ported to run in a virtual machine as Open Genera and, more recently, Portable Genera.

The Decade We Forgot: How We Traded Depth for Scale

The Decade We Forgot There was a moment somewhere between 1988 and 1998 when computing stopped feeling alive. We did not notice it at first. The screens grew sharper, the CPUs faster, the GUIs prettier. But something subtle and essential faded: the idea that a computer was knowable.

Reclaiming the Machine: Designing Modern Systems with Lost Principles

Reclaiming the Machine After studying the Lost Wonders of Computing, it is tempting to grieve but grief is not the point. The point is reclamation. Many of those ancient ideas are not gone; they are simply fragmented across modern systems. We can rebuild a living, introspective, personal machine again by design.

Lost Wonders of Computing

Lost Wonders of Computing When I look back at the languages and systems of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, I don’t just see “old tech”. I see entire worlds of thought, ideas that modern computing quietly abandoned.