Emacs is probably the most successful malleable system in the history of computing. What can we learn from it for designing the malleable systems of the future?

Geoffrey Litt and Daniel Jackson have been working on Wildcard, which enables customising websites via one of the most popular programming models in existence today: the spreadsheet. Wildcard’s sheet is bidirectionally linked to the site content, so that changes and also user additions to the sheet are reflected back in the site’s UI. Similarly, if the site content changes, the sheet is updated as well.

Welcome to the Malleable Systems Collective, a community space for those interested in redefining our relationship with software by dismantling the boundaries of contemporary applications. If you haven’t already, read through the collective’s mission to get an idea of the revolution we’re working towards. While we believe this mission is achievable, it will likely take many years and the work of many people to achieve. Quite a few of the ideas that our mission is built around have been percolating for decades already.