hackertube.io

Bret Victor - Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

Colin McDonnell · talk · Watch on YouTube

GUI, HCI & interface historyEducation & learningData visualization & information design

What it is

Bret Victor's 2013 MIT Media Lab talk argues that the media we think with determine which thoughts are possible. He demos new representations for scientific papers, circuits, filters and signal processing.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN treats it as one of the canonical Bret Victor talks, cited whenever discussion turns to better tools and interfaces for thinking.

  • 4 people recommended it
  • 4 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2015, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “goes into detail on this, especially from minute 10 to minute 17”

    Bret Victor on varied interactive notations

    magicink81, 2020-12 · Recommendation · in “Learnable Programming (2012)”

  2. “It reminds me of a talk given by Bret Victor”

    Related talk on visual thinking media

    vignesh_warar, 2021-08 · Recommendation · in “A visual introduction to Gaussian Belief Propagation”

  3. “he gets more mentions than anyone else, usually”

    One of Bret Victor's talks, frequently cited on HN

    yesenadam, 2023-01 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: Has anyone fully attempted Bret Victor's vision?”

  4. “I recommend watching this talk by Bret Victor”

    Inspiration on representing problems differently

    boomlinde, 2023-05 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: How do you approach a problem you are not sure has a solution?”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: bret victor, explorable explanations, visual thinking, tools for thought, interactive notation

Also recommended by the same people