While searching around for early uses of algorithmic text, image, and music generating software from yesteryear (which I have been documenting on this page), I stumbled upon Don Crabb’s Guide to Macintosh System 7.5.5 (1996), which is a guide to using Apple’s System Software 7.5 on Macintosh and Power Macintosh computers in the mid-1990s.
In Chapter 5, “The Multimedia is the Message,” he writes the following prophetic passages that point to right about where we are now with giving generative AI access to our files so that we can chat with an AI about the contents of those files–for ideation, brainstorming, summation, search, discovering patterns, etc. Crabb had an idea that combined Apple’s then innovative OpenDoc technology, which flips the computing metaphor from application-centric to document-centric and that facilitates different Editors (aka programs) to work on/within different Documents or create new Documents via Stationary files, with the power of artificial intelligence to observe, learn, and collaborate with computer users. The foundation of his idea is what he calls the Open Desktop Architecture (ODA) and the Omniscient Sage. He writes:
The Multimedia/OpenDoc Desktop
The future of the Macintosh Desktop will reside in something I call Open desktop Architecture (ODA)— as Apple ought to articulate it and we ought to use it in the form of a new Multimedia/OpenDoc desktop.
Back in May of 1994 at the Worldwide Developer’s Conference, Don Norman— Apple Fellow and Interface Guru Extraordinaire— told us about one possible future Mac interface (AKA Finder) based on Apple Guide, that would become truly active in its assistance features and orientation. My Open Desktop Architecture relies on this same active assistance to make it fly, but it adds the OpenDoc document-centric idea of computing (see chapter 6 for more details) and the liberal use of multimedia data.
The Omniscient Sage
To start with, though, we need a basic interface metaphor in mind for our new desktop. I call my metaphor The Omniscient Sage. Corny sounding? You bet. But highly descriptive. The Omniscient Sage watches what you do on your Mac without being judgmental.
The role of the Omniscient Sage is to watch, assimilate, correlate, and then assist. Active assistance based on observation, analysis, and planning at a level as far above Apple Guide 1.0 as the it was above Balloon Help. Active assistance based on the artificial intelligence work that’s been modeled and executed over the last five years. Active assistance based on a world of OpenDoc files and apps.
Crabb, Don. Guide to Macintosh System 7.5.5. Hayden Books, 1996, p. 253.
Crabb’s Omniscient Sage seems science fictional thinking back to that period of time. This was the era when Apple was on the ropes and nearly down for the count. Then, Steve Jobs returned with NeXTSTEP, which delivered all of the things that Apple had led us to believe was forthcoming in OS 8 codenamed Copland. However, Jobs also killed OpenDoc at Apple.
Could the Omniscient Sage have been built on top of Mac OS X? While working towards OS X, Apple developed Apple Guide/Macintosh Guide as a robust help system that worked with AppleScript to guide the user along steps, and it could change based on the observed state of the software that the user needed help with. Yet, it was running on rails and therefore couldn’t adapt and adjust outside of those prescribed steps. Given advancements and R&D maybe this could have advanced towards something like Crabb imagined. But, when Mac OS X launched, the help system was much simpler as a web rendering engine and HTML.
Unfortunately, Crabb didn’t get to see how close we are now to his vision of the Omniscient Sage. He died in 2000 at the age of 44.
