Dynamicland

Summary

Dynamicland is a radical reimagining of computing as a communal, room-sized medium, where people interact with computation by arranging and manipulating physical objects — paper, cards, markers — throughout the room: on tables, the floor, shelves, or walls. Overhead cameras and projectors bring these objects to life, turning the entire space into a malleable computational environment.

Dynamicland is not just a technological experiment; it’s designed as a shared community space, inviting collaboration, improvisation, and social learning, all “for free” — not as optional features, but as essential outcomes of its spatial design. Computation becomes visible, tangible, and immediate, inviting anyone to join in, remix, and build together.

Instead of isolating users behind personal screens, Dynamicland imagines a future where computing is embedded in shared environments — a medium that fosters belonging, creativity, and collective intelligence.

Crucially, it envisions a form of computing where people are physically present together, working on the same materials, learning by being around others, and improvising in real time. With Dynamicland, computation draws on the richness of physical materials — things you can touch, move, and share — creating possibilities for learning, collaboration, and creativity that pixels on a screen alone could never offer.

This is my vision of a medium of thought that treats the human being as sacred, that treats these capabilities that we've been honing for hundreds of thousands of years as sacred, treats the physical world and our interaction with the physical world as sacred, and builds on top of those things to continue this ascent of intellectual progress and enable people to think ever greater thoughts.

You might have a different conception of what a humane medium would look like, and that's totally great. The point that I want to get across here, the point that I want to leave you with, is that “humane” won't just happen. […] Humane is never a default. Humane only comes out of very deliberate and conscientious design work. Bret Victor

Key concepts

• A room-sized medium Computation happens across an entire room: on tables, floors, shelves, and walls. Everyday materials like paper and markers become interactive when recognized by cameras and projectors, turning physical space into a programmable canvas.
• Community space, not a device Dynamicland is designed as a shared environment rather than a personal gadget. Anyone present in the room can see, touch, and remix the same computational objects — making computing naturally social, collaborative, and inclusive.
• Beyond the personal screen Instead of isolating users behind individual devices, Dynamicland fosters co-presence and group activity. People learn by watching each other, sharing ideas in real time, and improvising together in the same physical environment.
• Hands-on, material computing Computing here builds on the richness of physical matter: cutting, stacking, drawing, rearranging. People engage with code as tangible objects, crafting software the way one might build with tools or materials, rather than typing into a distant machine.
• A collective way of thinking By making computation visible, tangible, and shared, Dynamicland reframes programming as a communal form of reasoning. The medium encourages reflection, play, and discovery — turning software into something you learn from others by being together in the same space.

Dynamicland offers a radically different vision of computing — not as private screens and apps, but as a shared, material medium woven into the spaces where people live, learn, and work together. By turning rooms into programmable environments, it enables people to collaborate with their hands, improvise with physical materials, and learn from one another simply by being present. It rejects isolation and abstraction, instead inviting us to think, create, and learn with computation — together, in the world.

This idea was developed by Bret Victor and his team as Dynamicland. Earlier, Bret Victor outlined the vision in his 2014 presentation The Humane Representation of Thought, situating the project within a broader cultural and technological context.