Leave flowers and take hope, Jef Raskin has left the building

I'm sure this is not the only memorial to this guy and it shouldn't be but when you think of all the benevolent things, the true human growth that the PC should give us in our lives think of Jef Raskin. Aside from being a true adventurer and genius, creating drag and drop, making designing Macintosh like every great teacher, he died working on a project called Archy that will make "it easier to do our work".

"Archy, at present, contains commands that do typical word-processing operations and e-mail, has a calculator, and contains its own Python development system. However, it doesn't work like anything else on this or nearby planets (you can't make something better and still keep it the same). It's extremely easy to use, and very efficient, but to gain this ease of use we had to abandon current interface methods entirely and rethink interface design from the ground up. This means that you won't know how to use Archy (now, there's a challenge!)"

That's cooler than any idea you had today and Jef considered good code a moral duty. He founded the field of cognetics, "the ergonomics of the mind." None of us are worthy.

I coped all of this from a tag at the bottom of the Google page. Even if you see this a million times today, it does matter. This guy was one of the few who cared about the human race and we, as the recipients of his love, need to take up the slack. Even though he died, knowing how he lived gives me hope and makes me want to do more, live smarter. I probably won't.