Macintosh Creator and "Humane Interface" author Jef Raskin
First Movie Made on Web

To view video click these links:
Jef Raskin talks about his new interface Archy
How Jef learned to play the recorder
Jef Art and Music
Visit Jef's workshop with Dick Karpinski
Kathleen Mandis the problem with interfaces

Many of you are asking why this footage is not available in MPEG or Quicktime? We're working on it but wanted to make some footage available asap. Email us for details on what's to come. We're looking for donations of server space, equipment and software and to complete the project. If you can help please write to us.

Jennie Bourne

This project was inspired by a lecture Jef gave at Fast Net Futures in 2004. It documents his work on a humane environment he calls "Archy," that works with the way we think and the life that helped him create it.

Contact : dave @ dslprime.com

Video best viewed with Windows Media Player 9 and DSL or Cable

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Special Thanks to the Sugar Family for lending us the equipment to shoot our interviews with Jef.

The Movie
Beginning with conversations on interface design and creating a better computer, Our footage reveals a remarkable man who changes the lives of people around him. Passionately described as an inovator with an unfailing moral compass and a gifted educator with an active commitment to play Jef attributes his success in part to a foundation based on music, math and physics.

Jef's Notes on our Movie full text of Jef's notes

My name will always be associated with something I did a quarter of a century ago: the creation of the Macintosh computer project when I worked at Apple. I cannot duck that connection, nor would I want to. It is an achievement of which anybody would be proud: the Mac was instrumental in changing the way computers look and feel, and the way in which they are used. The changes were based on a deeply-held code of the right and wrong ways to treat my fellow humans, and a study of psychology more than on any desire to advance technology per se, though it was necessary to do that, too in order to achieve my primary aims.

I was working on a far better way to use technology and writing two books when I recently learned that I have an incurable cancer. One book was to be "The Mac and Me", a personal history, a corrective to decades of misinformation on the origins and principles behind the Mac, and a tribute to my parents who taught the importance of uncompromising moral integrity by example. It was to be an autobiography that would tell what it was like to be with Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in their garage in 1976, and to chart the changes, some funny and some ugly, that prominence and wealth brought out from theirs' and others' personalities. There will be some of that here.

he other book, "Archy: A Humane Computer Environment" was to describe a better approach to using computers; the system I call "Archy". Its advantages are obvious to beginners and ordinary users, but quite out of the main stream and difficult to understand for many of those immersed in current methods
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We Need You to Design a Great Film
Today the Internet makes possible a new way of creating a film. Calling on the resources of volunteers over the web created Linux, GNU, Apache, several recent books, and now a movie. Not every film should be made this way, but so much of our subject is the world around computers we couldn't resist

We're looking for guidance, your stories, your footage, and contributions of money, equipment, web and programming skills to keep the project going. Our vision will lead, supported by Jef himself. But you can help to guide our shooting, our editorial choices, and even the style and the direction we take. If you have the skills and time, your footage could become part of the film. Especially if you have access to the people who made computer history, share Jef's passions like model airplanes or music, or can illustrate how computers should be better in a funny or insightful way.

View Footage on the Web - Make Edit Suggestions
We'll be sharing our original footage on the net and asking you for ideas about how to put it together to share it with the world. We were inspired to work this way by the open source and by Dan Gillmor. Gillmor posted each chapter We The Media on the web as it was written, and incorporated some incredible feedback. Similarly, Larry Lessig is revising his seminal work, Code, with the help of an online audience and guest editors.

The Shape of Things To Come
We're midway through shooting, making choices you can guide. Should we interview more computer pioneers about GUIs and Macintoshes? Should we survey interface experts how to do it better? Should we reach out to Jef's friends from high school, or is that too far from our focus? Jef's family and friends make beautiful music, but how much belongs in the film. Every film is shaped by thousands of choices as well as limited by time and budget constraints. But the web expands the possibilities.Some segments will become short films on the web. A kind of visual sidebar to our project. Guide us.

The next step is the edit - which 30 seconds of a 30 minute interview catch the essence and advance the film? No more darkened cutting room with pros agonizing over decisions. we can involve dozens of eyes joining us over the net. With the net, we can make make several "director's cuts", or in this case, "netizen cuts". One view of the material might focus on computers and history; a second on interface design going forward, still another on how one genius created a very unique life and the role of that life in fostering inovative work.

In the end the project will have a life of its own. We'll keep much of the process live on the net for those who crave more detail than our final cut allows. Most documentary footage including outtakes is preserved in obscure film archives, available only to scholars. We can do better.

Raskin Lectures on Interface
We'll also be recording and releasing Jef's lectures, in the spirit of Feynman's Lectures on Physics.

Creative Commons License
We'll be releasing segments of this project under a Creative Commons license allowing non-commercial use of segments running 5 minutes or less for educational web sites, museum showings, classroom viewing, or incorporation into your own non-commercial projects. Students working on the history of computing are particularly welcome. Please freely share any short portion of this footage on peer to peer exchanges, bit torrent, or your own web site. We want to add to the emerging body of work available without

Jef the Movie | First Movie Made on the Web | Beyond Creating the Macintosh | the Humane Interface