Alan Kay (1972). A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
mprove.de
mprove.de
It doesn't seem that, in practice, users want to modify their computer systems in that way, despite that that's what early programmers imagined (note that such manipulation of systems had been something their personalities had obviously been drawn to--as is mine and those of most of the people on HN, probably--and also that it was necessary in those days to get interesting results).
Besides, the only way you're going to get anybody but the tinkerers to be interested in modifying the parameters of the thrust calculation in their Spacewar game (I recall how in school we modified the trajectory of the bananas in QBASIC Nibbles) is to not give them anything else interesting on the device that already easily does something interesting and fun... I also recall that there wasn't much else to do on the 386s in my school other than Minesweeper or setting up new groups in Program Manager. Now we've got billions of web pages and thousands of free apps.
Necessity is the mother of invention -- except for when it comes to tinkerers. And I'm super thankful for tinkerers: they push us forward in software just as they do in other fields. But in a world where devices already do way more than their users can imagine (most people very much do NOT have good ideas for how software could be better or do something new) and offer a ton of other easily accessible options for activity, the vast majority of people just aren't a bit interested in tinkering.
Don't confuse core product with actual product. If, before the 20th century, you had asked people if they wanted to partake in mechanical flight, they would have most certainly said no. They couldn't distinguish a core product that would differ significantly from the current actual product of a bicycle with wire-wings.
Kay was right. And there are people out there right now, on the equivalent of a crisp morning at Kittyhawk, trying, and trying, and trying to prove it.
A computer is a tool that helps us wonder. If you can open it up in a clear, abstractable, safe way, there doesn't have to be limits to that wondering.
And flying isn't? Surely it is for some, just as for some it is "merely" a tool for transportation.
A computer is a tool that helps us wonder.
So is a book. You don't have to be able to program The Little Prince or The Way Things Work in order for it to help you wonder.
A computer is a tool that helps us wonder.
And my mom wonders why it keeps crashing when she tries to check her email. I tried to explain how important it was that she had the freedom to fix the bug herself, but she won't listen. She foolishly is only concerned with checking her email.
If you can X...
Which is to say X is not yet a solved problem, or even one known to have a solution. In the meantime: Forgive us all who dare persist contentedly with balloons and dirigibles.
Flying and books incite us to wonder. A computer can assist us in wondering. It can enable us to explore ideas. That's the potential of the computer and that's what Alan's Dynabook was promising.
Sure, we can rip out functionality until we have a computer that is so pretty and simple that a monkey can use it, but that's not fulfilling the promise that computers hold. That's not what Alan was talking about.
Forgive us all who dare persist contentedly with balloons
You're forgiven. (Just not tolerated well on a place like HN. :-)
So now my mother is a monkey? Come on now, you're exaggerating.
But seriously, I apologize if I went over the top. I understand and respect what you're saying. There's nothing wrong with getting the current state-of-the-art stable and usable; I shouldn't have intimated otherwise.
Edit: And don't tell your mom what I said or she'll tell my mom, and then I'll get it.
From Janko Roettgers:
I interviewed Kay late last year, and while he didn’t mention the tablet by name, he did share a story about the unveiling of the iPhone, to which Steve Jobs invited him in early 2007:
“When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world.”
Guess about how big the iPad's screen is?
In point of fact, the DynaBook is quite similar in many respects to an iPad. No larger than a notebook, less than four pounds (the iPad is almost exactly the size of a standard composition book). He says it should have a liquid crystal display of at least 80-100 ppi, taking up the whole surface, with a touch-sensitive on-screen keyboard. He suggests using a cassette for storage...and on that point, the iPad certainly misses the mark.
The idea of "vending machines which will allow perusal of information (from encyclopedias to the latest adventures of wayward women), but which will prevent file abstraction until the fee has been paid." sounds familiar, and surely the iPad does not embody the exact opposite of this scenario: "A combination of this "carry anywhere" device and a global information utility such as the ARPA network or two-way cable TV, will bring the libraries and schools (not to mention the stores and billboards) of the world to the home. Again, this was 1972.
Where they differ is that one was conceptually driven by a still-questionable pedagogical theory (which Kay even here describes as "abstruse"), while the other is driven by economic reality. If you've made it to the year 2010 without realizing that the latter is a more powerful force for change, I don't know what to tell you, but I can point to the OLPC, which for all its merits still doesn't fulfill much of its promise, as an example of what the other approach gets you.
Let me be clear that I think guys like Papert and Kay are very right about a lot of things--Kay is always worth reading and I think "Mindstorms" should be required reading for anybody who has ever programmed a computer (it will give you words to describe that thing you get that people who have never programmed don't).
But if you're coming away from these ideas with the belief that programming is the singular essential way that a computer can engender curiosity and epistemological insight in people, and that anything doesn't put programmability front and center is some kind of degenerate canned experience, I'm going to have to ask you to explain all of human history prior to the invention of the computer.
It isn't as though we made some terrible mistake and have squandered all hope of future genius. (Whence did Alan Kay come if not a world sans DynaBook?) We just haven't figured out how to get make a computer that lets everybody be a genius. The DynaBook wasn't it: it was an idea, a vision. The iPad isn't it either: it's a product constrained by the need to economically justify its own brief existence, a mere stepping stone on the long path to the ineffable "Better".
Y'know, several hundred million people got online for the first time last year. Some of them wanted to check out Wikipedia. Others wanted to learn more about the latest adventures of wayward women. I have a hard time seeing this product of the computer revolution as a mis-step just because they aren't yet universally manipulating arbitrary symbolic notions to construct new mental models of the world. There is still a lot of magic happening there, and I don't see any reason to be disappointed that all of human thought hasn't been revolutionized in the last 40 years. These things take time.
Kay (in '72) is right when he frames the discussion in terms of science fiction. The DynaBook never would have happened exactly like described. It was fiction. It was a vision based on observation of trends and possibilites. But nobody went out and built the thing. (If you adjust the target cost of $500 for inflation, you'll understand at least one reason why.)
They did build other things, though. A lot of other things. Some were great, some sucked. Business as usual. And now we're sitting on a few decades of actual real world collected experience (experience being something you get from making mistakes) about personal computing--with actual people using actual devices with an actual network--and what do you know, it's 2010 and what can you get for $500 but any number of actual devices that can not merely approach that grand vision but in some ways exceed it.
And yet we still have people who want to dismiss everything in between as having not "gone right"!