Notes from Dynamicland: programming Raspberry Pis
Each table is powered by a monolithic 'Realbox' machine – one engine that runs Linux and executes pages and connects to cameras and projectors.
The Realboxes are all federated together by the Realtalk protocol, so tables can communicate across the room and share data and programs.
I want to argue that we shouldn't need those Realboxes (and the complex software stack they contain), that they're just a stopgap.
What do the Realboxes do? Most Realtalk programs (like my Geokit, previously) have used cameras for input and projectors for output.
Consider how a program runs on your laptop: the program mostly uses your mouse and keyboard for input and your display for output, and it executes on the CPU on your laptop's logic board.
But Realtalk's programming model is much more general and powerful than this particular configuration. It's not really about cameras, projectors, dots, or pages at all. It's a protocol for all kinds of live, physical, reprogrammable computing.
And that protocol doesn't need a big Linux computer like a Realbox to run. Realtalk runs equally well on small computers, like the Raspberry Pi:
