Last summer, I had the opportunity to talk with Bill Atkinson, the creator of HyperCard.
Bill Atkinson wrote many of the first applications that were available on the Macintosh computer, including the very popular HyperCard development environment. I took some lightweight notes of that conversation - not word for word notes but just jotted down a few things we talked about. We quickly found common interests in the Northwest, Japan, fractal based art and artificial intelligence.
Bill was a pleasure to talk with - his warmth and intelligence shine without any of the egocentricism you find in many executives in the software industry.
Bill was in the process of getting his PhD when he joined Apple. At the time, there were about 30 employees in the company. I didn’t get the impression that Bill completed his PhD, but he apparently continued with some graduate studies at the University of Washington.
Since leaving Apple, Bill Atkinson has pursued a number of interests, including his great love of natural photography - which you can see in Bill Atkinson Photography. We talked at length about the beauty of the Northwest and the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, a place where Bill has spent much time with his camera.
Bill has published some photography books, however he was very dissatisfied with the state of color display and printing in the United States. In order to go beyond the limitations of color available from US publishers, Bill had to go beyond the borders - to Japan.
In Japan, Bill found publishers not only willing to learn and put into practice the techniques he desired in printing, but a willingness to share that information, even with competitors.
So I had to ask - do you still use HyperCard? Bill still has some stacks that run his photography business - running on a G5 and maintained by his wife. But his involvement in programming revolves around Numenta, a business focused on developing software that simulates the neocortex. Numenta was started by Jeff Hawkins, the man behind both Palm and Handspring.
Numenta had caught my attention about a year prior and Paradigma was accepted into their then closed developer program. Bill was surprised that I knew about Numenta.
Bill believes Numenta represents more than the next step in computing - it has historical significance. Neurons in the human brain fire at the a maximum of 200 per second - and we cannot get around that limitation. Not only can human brain functionality be emulated by a computer, they can go far, far beyond these limits. Numenta is forward looking towards a kind of progeny of humans that will go beyond humans.
So will Bill hop back into programming tools and deliver HyperCard 3? It seems very unlikely. He was very happy to hear that the golden descendant of HyperCard - Runtime Revolution - is prospering and delivered the many modern features that never found their way into HyperCard.
If you are interested in natural photography - stop by Bill Atkinson Photography and pick up his book or prints.
08.05.25 Related: Wired Magazine: What HyperCard Could Have Been