A magazine about programmers, code, and society. Written by and for humans since 2018.
By Adrian Kosmaczewski, July 7th, 2025
Welcome to the 82nd issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about Futurism. In this edition, we look at hits and misses (mostly misses, let us be honest) in our long tradition of predicting the future; in the Library section, we review "The Dream Machine" by M. Mitchell Waldrop and famous papers authored by J. C. R. Licklider; and in our Vidéothèque section, we watch "The Mother of all Demos" by Doug Engelbart.
In a scene of the vastly underrated 2003 sequel film "The Matrix Reloaded", Neo, played by Keanu Reeves, meets "The Oracle", a sentient program interpreted by the late Gloria Foster. In that fragment, The Oracle offers Neo a piece of candy, and Neo asks whether she knows if he is going to accept it or not. The unfazed Oracle responds "Wouldn't be much of an Oracle if I didn't!"
As in any human group, there are certain pilgrimages, certain rites of passage that all software developers apparently must go through. They are various and equally anecdotical: to compile and boot their own Linux kernel; to read "The Art of Computer Programming" in its entirety (and then send their CV to Bill Gates); to give a presentation in a conference; and finally, to sit through the whole duration of "The Mother of All Demos", the recording of the unavoidable presentation made by Douglas Engelbart, Bill English, and their team. And this month's Vidéothèque entry is, precisely, said recording.
The writings of Jorge Luis Borges twist our perception of time and space. In between articles about Shaw, Chesterton, Wilde, and Coleridge, his 1952 book "Otras Inquisiciones" included an unexpected gem: a short story called "El Tiempo y J. W. Dunne". The question is, who was this John William Dunne and what does he have to do with time? Well, his name might be forgotten by contemporary audiences, but Dunne was the author of one of the biggest bestsellers of the first half of the twentieth century.