The Real Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet (Alan Kay, 2007) | Hacker News Reader

The Real Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet (Alan Kay, 2007)

vpri.org

8 pointsjohkra8 comments

Thank God for Alan Kay. When I get depressed with the state of the industry, with the twitter mashup get-rich-quick schemes and the lack of any interest in working hard on the hard problems, it helps to know that he's around and leading the charge against that tsunami of frivolity.

Indeed ... but are he and the VPRI getting anywhere?

I don't know; by an accident of history I'm a Lisper, not a Smalltalker, so I'm not following them closely. But I don't get an impression of serious focus or progress.

Please correct me if I'm wrong; I sure would like to be, and I'm certainly finding a lot of the ideas they're throwing out to be extremely useful (or at least fascinating). E.g. generate your TCP/IP stack from the RFCs....

He's the most vocal, but I also don't think VPRI are really going anywhere.

Luckily, he's not alone. There are others working toward the "blue plane" with more success.

I spend some time on their page today and another fascinating subject are active essays: http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2009002_active_essays.pdf

Basically, it's about adding runable and editable code directly into documents, one could say literate programming on steroids. Imagine for instance an article explaining an algorithm with embedded code which you could run and edit to really comprehend it.

Literate programming is a neat idea, and in the long term will probably be very valuable (or else we'll live in a Vernor Venge like dystopia of eons old cruft), but for now I'm not sure it's generally useful.

If your program is at all a serious work in progress, you're likely getting into the "too many comments that violate Don't Repeat Yourself" land.

Wait a second: they have a 5 year 5.3 million dollar NSF grant running from the end of 2006 to the end of 2011 (http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0639...). They'd better be producing something!

"*In this project the PI and his team will design and build an extremely compact and practical model of an entire personal computing system from the metal upwards, including the equivalents of an operating system, development tools, graphical user interface, applications, media, end-user programming, and internet communications, sharing and media (analogous to the web++) - as an "Exploratorium" for itself that can be readily understood by teenagers on up. [...] This funding is for support of the central part of this large project (which is partitioned so that a complete and interesting system will result from the NSF support alone)."

They're producing something. But from what I've seen, it's just not that blue plane change that he's talking about in the above talk -- which is what he set out to do with the grant.

Could you point me at some of the others who are "working toward the "blue plane" with more success" that you mentioned in another part of this thread?

Thanks in advance.

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