In the early 80s, I could see that computers held enormous creative potential. But I couldn't make my C64 make magic, other than a rudimentary choice game that lacked any understanding of what a parser is.

Then, in 1987, I got a Macintosh Plus that came with HyperCard. Suddenly, I could see the vast universe of creative possibility through that tiny blue-white window.

The Web took some of the easiest-to-replicate ideas from HyperCard, but the land rush of the .com era pushed away the sharing of creative computing media into the realm of IP and technical obfuscation.

plugdata is to me now what HyperTalk was to me into the 90s. It's a programming language that is designed for creative purposes (starting with sound, but also for graphics and...who knows what else you can do with it). And what I always wished for growing up was a way to design new interactions. The mouse, screen, and keyboard were neat, sure, but even today's ubiquitous touchscreens aren't an unapproachable ideal for human fingers, eyes, motion, and ambience.

We explore that kind of thing through art. The Oblique Palette is a set of ADCs and DACs designed to make it so your software can react to the simple twist of a knob, or light levels, or stretched velostat plastic, or proximity sensors, and then turn around and send voltage controls to modular synths, to Arduino projects, and to LEGO robots.

This is the first time I've gotten the Palette running reliably enough to share, where nothing broke midway through filming a video, where I have confidence in its fundamental construction.

I've got hope in defiance of our Stupid Future that it's not too late, that we can still turn information technologies into human creative empowerment, rather than burying us in the waste of thuggish resource hoarding.