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Bret Victor - Media for Thinking the Unthinkable

Colin McDonnell · 33.4K views · 2015-06-17 · 39:33

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

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

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2015–2026

Topics

GUI, HCI & interface historyEducation & learningData visualization & information design
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bret victorexplorable explanationsvisual thinkingtools for thoughtinteractive notation

What people said

boomlinde · 2023-05 · Recommendation

I look for different ways of representing the problem domain or the desired outcome. This will improve your vocabulary/toolbox for reasoning about and subdividing them into more approachable units. For some inspiration, I recommend watching this talk by Bret Victor [VIDEO] (Media for Thinking the Unthinkable)

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yesenadam · 2023-01 · Recommendation

For the people asking who is Bret Victor: When "What are your favourite tech talks of all time?" is asked on HN, he gets more mentions than anyone else, usually. Some of his talks: Inventing on Principle [LINK] The Future of Programming [LINK] The Humane Representation of Thought [LINK] Media for Thinking the Unthinkable [VIDEO] Seeing Spaces [LINK] Drawing Dynamic Visualizations [LINK] [LINK]

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vignesh_warar · 2021-08 · Recommendation

What a great article - and the way it's presented is insanely great. It reminds me of a talk given by Bret Victor [VIDEO] (Media for Thinking the Unthinkable)

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Sources

Video by Colin McDonnell, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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