https://www.gnu.org/philosophy...
"Later on, Dan would learn there was a time when anyone could go to the library and read journal articles, and even books, without having to pay. There were independent scholars who read thousands of pages without government library grants. But in the 1990s, both commercial and nonprofit journal publishers had begun charging fees for access. By 2047, libraries offering free public access to scholarly literature were a dim memory. ..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"In 1980 Winner proposed that technologies embody social relations, i.e. power.[2] To the question he poses "Do Artifacts Have Politics?", Winner identifies two ways in which artifacts can have politics. The first, involving technical arrangements and social order, concerns how the invention, design, or arrangement of artifacts or the larger system becomes a mechanism for settling the affairs of a community. This way "transcends the simple categories of 'intended' and 'unintended' altogether", representing "instances in which the very process of technical development is so thoroughly biased in a particular direction that it regularly produces results heralded as wonderful breakthroughs by some social interests and crushing setbacks by others" (Winner, p. 25-6, 1999). It implies that the process of technological development is critical in determining the politics of an artifact; hence the importance of incorporating all stakeholders in it. (Determining who the stakeholders are and how to incorporate them are other questions entirely.)
      The second way in which artifacts can have politics refers to artifacts that correlate with particular kinds of political relationships, which Winner refers to as inherently political artifacts (Winner, p. 22, 1999). He distinguishes between two types of inherently political artifacts: those that require a particular sociological system and those that are strongly compatible with a particular sociological system (Winner, p. 29, 1999). A further distinction is made between conditions internal to the workings of a given technical system and those that are external to it (Winner, p. 33, 1999). This second way in which artifacts can have politics can be further articulated as consisting of four 'types' of artifacts: those requiring a particular internal sociological system, those compatible with a particular internal sociological system, those requiring a particular external sociological system, and those compatible with a particular external sociological system."

Surprised no one mentioned it yet: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/
"Lazarus is a Delphi compatible cross-platform IDE for Rapid Application Development. It has variety of components ready for use and a graphical form designer to easily create complex graphical user interfaces. ... You can create your own open source or commercial applications. With Lazarus you can create file browsers, image viewers, database applications, graphics editing software, games, 3D software, medical analysis software or any other type of software. ... Lazarus has a huge community of people supporting each other. It include scientists and students, pupils and teachers, professionals and hobbyists. Our wiki provides tutorials, documentation and ideas. Our forums and mailing-list offer a space to ask questions and talk to users and the developers."

It is a cross-platform system that has been around for over twenty years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Anyway, circa 1996-2000, I co-developed (with my wife) three applications in Delphi Pascal (a garden simulator, a text-adventure authoring tool, and a 3D botanical plant creation tool). Earlier versions were done in C++ and also Smalltalk. For the time, Delphi has much faster compiles than C++. And in general Object Pascal was easier to work with than C++, especially for my wife who had learned Pascal in school but did not know C well. And Smalltalk applications back then were problematical to distribute including due to run-time fees. Links to those three applications are here, with source on my GitHub site.
https://www.kurtz-fernhout.com...

I had been looking at Lazarus in its early years to port that code from Windows to Linux, but ultimately I never pursued that approach.

I ported one of those programs a few years ago to TypeScript. I prefer using a language with garbage collection when possible. I used a conversion tool I wrote to do some of the heavy lifting by parsing the Delphi code, but there was also a lot of hand editing involved. I never release the source for the tool because I was not sure of the licensing for the Delphi grammars I adapted. Some changes were also needed to the UI to map easily onto a web page.
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...

I hope to port the other two applications to TypeScript someday as well. But, I still might consider just porting them to Lazarus which is a much easier lift than such a port -- especially now that Lazarus can generate applications for the web.
https://wiki.lazarus.freepasca...

All that said, given Squeak's emergence, I kinda wish I had stuck with Smalltalk for those projects, especially as my wife liked it. Or alternatively, maybe just soldiered on with C or C++ given its portability and prevalence and continued improvements too (which opens up other opportunities). Or even just get really good at Forth? :-)

Delphi was nicer than C++ and faster than Smalltalk, but it is risky and usually limiting to tie your projects to a single vendor's proprietary language and libraries. Lazarus changed the game on that though for Delphi eventually too though, but Lazarus took years to get really good -- and in the meantime Java improved and then JavaScript/TypeScript improved (both of which I ended up doing a lot of coding in).

Anyway, great now to have many good choices nowadays (including for many other languages) of free software development systems that are cross-platform.

And the StrongARM in particular used in the MP2000 was amazing for its time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

But sadly the Newton was discontinued in 1998. Big loss for a lot of reasons -- including ending use of ARM processors in Apple devices.

Apple returned to the ARM in 2007 with the iPhone (almost ten years later). And recently with the Mac.

A missed decade (and more) of opportunity there though.

From an essay I wrote on this in 2010: https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. So, while in the past, we had "nothing to fear but fear itself", the thing to fear these days is ironically ... irony. :-)"

... and why using the tools of abundance like AI and robotics and advanced manufacturing to fight wars as if scarcity still matters is ironic, as I explore here:
https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream.
    We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety") and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working")."

Also by me on that theme as it applies to "intelligence" software:
https://groups.google.com/g/op...
"Summary: This note is essentially about how civilians could benefit by have access to the sorts of "sensemaking" tools the intelligence community (as well as corporations) aspire to have, in order to design more joyful, secure, and healthy civilian communities (including through creating a more sustainable and resilient open manufacturing infrastructure for such communities). It outlines why the intelligence community should consider funding the creation of such FOSS "dual use" intelligence applications as a way to reduce global tensions through increased local prosperity, health, and with intrinsic mutual security."

The world may choose that path or not to "A New Way Of Thinking" about security and prosperity through mutual instrinsic security -- but that ultimately is a path forward to healthy prosperity for all. Whereas other paths like competition over who can make the most aggressive AI whether economically or militarily is an almost certain path to disaster.

Sadly, even OpenAI seems to be going off the rails towards full-steam ahead proprietary competition as "Rei" said here -- and apparently for much the same reasons Putin is outlining for Russia (to "win" some competitive race -- towards humanity's doom?):
https://news.slashdot.org/comm...
"The company was being drawn in two different directions. Reportedly, one, represented by Ilya Sutskever, wanted to go cautiously and stick with the founding principles while being careful to avoid the risk of uncontrolled AGI; his personal focus, as an AI researcher, is superalignment. The other, represented by Sam Altman, was pushing hard on commercialization and outracing all potential competitors. This was automatically going to create a collision course."

As I explore here: https://pdfernhout.net/open-le...
"An Open Letter to All Grantmakers and Donors On Copyright And Patent Policy In a Post-Scarcity Society
          Foundations, other grantmaking agencies handling public tax-exempt dollars, and charitable donors need to consider the implications for their grantmaking or donation policies if they use a now obsolete charitable model of subsidizing proprietary publishing and proprietary research. In order to improve the effectiveness and collaborativeness of the non-profit sector overall, it is suggested these grantmaking organizations and donors move to requiring grantees to make any resulting copyrighted digital materials freely available on the internet, including free licenses granting the right for others to make and redistribute new derivative works without further permission. It is also suggested patents resulting from charitably subsidized research research also be made freely available for general use. The alternative of allowing charitable dollars to result in proprietary copyrights and proprietary patents is corrupting the non-profit sector as it results in a conflict of interest between a non-profit's primary mission of helping humanity through freely sharing knowledge (made possible at little cost by the internet) and a desire to maximize short term revenues through charging licensing fees for access to patents and copyrights. In essence, with the change of publishing and communication economics made possible by the wide spread use of the internet, tax-exempt non-profits have become, perhaps unwittingly, caught up in a new form of "self-dealing", and it is up to donors and grantmakers (and eventually lawmakers) to prevent this by requiring free licensing of results as a condition of their grants and donations."

"Any suggestions on how to make the transition?"

Read James P. Hogan's "Voyage from Yeasteryear" sci-fi novel from 1982 for some ideas.
https://web.archive.org/web/20...
"The fun begins when a generation ship housing a population of thousands arrives to "reclaim" the colony on behalf of the repressive, authoritarian regime that emerged following the crisis period. The Mayflower II brings with it all the tried and tested apparatus for bringing a recalcitrant population to heel: authority, with its power structure and symbolism, to impress; commercial institutions with the promise of wealth and possessions, to tempt and ensnare; a religious presence, to awe and instill duty and obedience; and if all else fails, armed military force to compel. But what happens when these methods encounter a population that has never been conditioned to respond? ...
      The book has an interesting corollary. Around about the mid eighties, I received a letter notifying me that the story had been serialized in an underground Polish s.f. magazine. They hadn't exactly "stolen" it, the publishers explained, but had credited zlotys to an account in my name there, so if I ever decided to take a holiday in Poland the expenses would be covered (there was no exchange mechanism with Western currencies at that time). Then the story started surfacing in other countries of Eastern Europe, by all accounts to an enthusiastic reception. What they liked there, apparently, was the updated "Ghandiesque" formula on how bring down an oppressive regime when it's got all the guns. And a couple of years later, they were all doing it!"

Or some related ideas I put together circa 2010:
https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income."

(Inspired a bit by Marshall Brain's Manna story)

"Long discussed, little acted on" is so true.

James P. Hogan brought these issues up in his 1982 sci-fi novel "Voyage from Yesteryear" (and others), talking about a "phase change" in human society caused by a combination of cheap fusion energy, automation, and, in general, improved know-how.
"Voyage from Yesteryear"
https://web.archive.org/web/20...

A physical example of a phase change is liquid water boiling into steam instead of just being hotter water -- where gaseous steam has very different properties, dynamics, and management needs than liquid water.

From an open letter I wrote to my Princeton classmate Michelle (Robinson) Obama in 2011:
https://pdfernhout.net/open-le...
"I've spent decades thinking about these issues since Princeton and Professor Steven Slaby's class on "The Technological Imperative of the Arms Race", where I developed the theme of "technology as an amplifier" (although it is also true that technology can be an brake too, so either wings or chains). Problems can grow exponentially, but so can solutions. There are technical solutions (even as there are also technical mazes). It comes down to finding the social energy to put good solutions that we already know about into place. ... Unfortunately, as you know, substantial improvements in policy sometimes require going against some very powerful interests that are driving this country off a cliff in their greed, fear, and ignorance. But, I guess, like dealing with mildew, that has been a perennial problems of the human social condition. Physical obesity is not pretty, but then neither is financial obesity."

Anyway, better late than never for Michelle's husband to start paying attention to trends that were apparent to some in the 1980s and earlier -- but which society collectively did not have the political will to address back then. It would be great if he could provide social leadership in addressing them now.

Other information collected by me on that theme:
https://pdfernhout.net/beyond-...
"This article explores the issue of a "Jobless Recovery" mainly from a heterodox economic perspective. It emphasizes the implications of ideas by Marshall Brain and others that improvements in robotics, automation, design, and voluntary social networks are fundamentally changing the structure of the economic landscape. It outlines towards the end four major alternatives to mainstream economic practice (a basic income, a gift economy, stronger local subsistence economies, and resource-based planning). These alternatives could be used in combination to address what, even as far back as 1964, has been described as a breaking "income-through-jobs link". This link between jobs and income is breaking because of the declining value of most paid human labor relative to capital investments in automation and better design. Or, as is now the case, the value of paid human labor like at some newspapers or universities is also declining relative to the output of voluntary social networks such as for digital content production (like represented by this document). It is suggested that we will need to fundamentally reevaluate our economic theories and practices to adjust to these new realities emerging from exponential trends in technology and society."

Lots more on my website related to all that. I also mention Michelle and her Princeton thesis theme of alienation from the mainstream in my 2008 "Post-Scarcity Princeton" polemic/memoir/memorial available there, mainly in these two sections:
https://pdfernhout.net/reading...
https://pdfernhout.net/reading...

tl;dr Ultimately the idea in my sig is the most important of everythign I have wrote: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity." We will never be able to deal in a healthy and effective way with the socioeconomic consequences of AI and other advanced technology until we broadly acknowledge the "phase change" we have been going through as a (global) society related to broad technological changes and think about the implications for many aspects of that society.

Lawrence Lessig wrote in Code 2.0 you can shape human behavior by at least four things:
* rules
* norms
* prices
* architecture

All are important in different ways and likely could be involved in shaping AI in a healthy way.

But that said, because AI is a technology produced using abundance and which can produce more abundance, humans need a perspective (and economics and politics) rooted in abundance to use it in healthy ways. Otherwise we risk creating all sorts of ironic situations, like I discuss here:
https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"... Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ...
      There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies [and also "financial" organizations] are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all.
      The big problem is that all these new war machines [and AI plans]] and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream."

See also James P. Hogan's 1982 sci-fi novel "Voyage from Yesteryear" on such a perspective shift based on the implications of advanced technology to produce abundance for all.
https://web.archive.org/web/20...

Or Theodore Sturgeon's 1950s short story "The Skills of Xanadu" that helped inspire hypertext and the web.
https://archive.org/details/pr...

As I suggest here: https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all."

FTFY. Explaination: https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
"The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream.
        We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security ("I'm safe because you are nervous") and extrinsic security ("I'm safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them"), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch's mutual security ("We're all looking out for each other's safety") and Amory Lovin's intrinsic security ("Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working")."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://asimov.fandom.com/wiki...

Multivac was eventually a single unified globe-spanning AI computer complex (which then was expanded across the galaxy).

Let's hope we don't burden it too much?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...