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Comment by norswap | Hacker News Reader

For all the respect and admiration I have for Alan Kay, I think he's often showing a lot of bad faith.

His ideal vision is always described in very abstract terms. If he took the care to write it down precisely, what it should look like, I'm sure there would be hundreds eager to build it for him. Of course, part of it is "design principles". But then do some common use cases.

When the abstraction meets reality we get comments like "the iPad should have a pen". Which is really an interesting observation, but doesn't quite rill the crowd like the abstract impressive-sounding stuff does. And you'd hardly call these isolated observation "vision".

Clearly, the user interfaces we have today are sub-optimal, and I can make hundreds of factual remarks on what could be improved. But I don't think this works out to a "vision". In fact, a vision is I think sometimes bound to be too abstract. If we just had products where the shit was fixed relentlessly, I reckon we'd get to "good" without needing them.

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Maybe you disagree with him or perhaps think his position is ill-considered or too woolly or somesuch. But 'bad faith'? You really believe he's being intentionally duplicitous and deceptive?

His ideal vision is always described in very abstract terms. If he took the care to write it down precisely, what it should look like, I'm sure there would be hundreds eager to build it for him.

He did. There's "Personal Dynamic Media", the classic paper.[1] Kay's vision focused on the user as creator, rather than consumer, of information. In practice, most people are content to watch the boob tube, now available in handheld. This has been the frustration of new media inventors from Edison to Zworykin. What Kay is complaining about is the banality of computing today. That's a problem with humans, not computers.

Kay also thought that discrete event simulation was going to be really important. Smalltalk is based on SIMULA, which was a discrete event extension of ALGOL-60. Objects were supposed to be entities in the simulation. In practice, discrete event simulation is a tiny niche application of computing.

(I got a tour of PARC in 1975 when taking a course at UC Santa Cruz, met Kay and Goldberg, and saw some of the first Altos. The idea back then was "this is what can be done with enough money. Someday it will be cheap." Eventually it was, but not soon enough for Xerox. Years later, I programmed an Alto in Mesa while at Stanford, although by then it was obsolete.)

[1] http://www.newmediareader.com/book_samples/nmr-26-kay.pdf

Doesn't your typical business application model some discrete events on the real world? Why is object oriented programming so popular of it doesn't meet needs of software it helped to write? There should be some correspondance between principles that layed foundation of OOP and their application, and OOP's popularity os not a coincidence

Most of what OOP is used for is to implement the thousands of minor details that go into implementing a complex system. Peruse the Firefox source code some time; you'll find a large class hierarchy of different types of strings, and another one for different types of DOM nodes, and another for different types of documents that the nodes belong to, another for windows of various types, another for various types of images that it can decode, etc. None of that has anything to do with modelling entities in the real world.

>> Why is object oriented programming so popular of it doesn't meet needs of software it helped to write?

Perhaps because the vast majority of programmers learn to program in an OOP language first, and then find it very hard to learn a different paradigm. Or maybe they have very little time to do so.

I think this leads right back to the point alankay1 is making (if I got it right): that given a hammer and sufficient time, you become a hammerer; someone who can hammer nails and can't do much else.

So asking "why is OOP so popular" is a bit like asking "why do people watch Holywood movies" (i.e., if they're not good cinema). That's what they're used to.

You must not be familiar with the STEPS project, a complete OS project (with a compiler collection, 2D vector drawing and compositing, desktop publishing, online communications…), in 20K lines of code. Mainstream OSes by comparison are more like 200M lines (10K books).

That stuff is pretty concrete, with an actual GUI and real software. One can get their hands on the source code, though it's really not meant for public consumption (it was a proof of concept, not a commercial product).

Here are the progress reports (latest first):

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2012001_steps.pdf

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2010004_steps10.pdf

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2009016_steps09.pdf

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2008004_steps08.pdf

http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2007008_steps.pdf

That stuff definitely works out to a vision.

Are binaries available, to run in a VM at least? Also, can you provide a link to the source code?

Some software and code are linked here http://www.vpri.org/vp_wiki/

But not the "STEPS" project's code, apparently.

> One can get their hands on the source code

Where?

"it was a proof of concept, not a commercial product"

Within that distinction, lies dragons.

The issues I have with existing systems are divided in two categories: bugs/issues/not being polished enough, and conceptual inadequacy.

Most of my issues with actual products fall within the first bucket, because the second bucket actually means I'd want another product. This is where innovation is.

That being said, unlike Kay, I don't loathe what we have. I'd be very happy if it was just better. But, like him, I thin the fact it's bad has deep roots in the way it is conceived.

I think another commenter hit the nail on the head when he said that Kay was mostly disappointed with users.

About Steps specifically, I haven't tried it out, but I harbor a lot of doubt. A huge amount of work goes into making stuff merely tolerable.

Something I do have experience with is Pharo Smalltalk (which I believe is the most advanced offering in the market). In theory, having your own small universe based on coherent principle is heaven. In practice, it feels very constricting to work inside that box (the Smalltalk image), because you don't have access to some of your best power tools, or even to some basic modern niceties.

(Pharo Smalltalk and great, and improving steadily, you should try it out. But I don't see myself calling myself a Smalltalk developer/hacker any time soon.)

His ideal vision is always described in very abstract terms. If he took the care to write it down precisely, what it should look like, I'm sure there would be hundreds eager to build it for him.

Look at Squeak. http://squeak.org/ The idea that you should be able to dig in and modify things is very powerful.

Another way to look at it is in terms of discoverability: you are at one level of understanding (using the phone, clicking on things), and it should lead you to a deeper level of understanding (perhaps moving things around, modifying them). At each level, there are hooks inviting you deeper, drawing you in. Ideally you get down low enough to start programming, to actually understanding how assembly and the CPU works, so there is no longer any area of magic.

On Hackernews there was once a skeptic of postmodernism who got into a debate with a Derrida fan. The skeptic said "If deconstruction is not BS, how about you explain to us, in plain English, what it's all about." The Derrida fan replied "No. How about you demonstrate that you've read Husserl, Heidegger, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Levinas. Then we can begin to talk about Derrida."

If Alan Kay were like the Derrida fan, then he could have rebuffed anyone who came asking what the Dynabook was about with "How about you demonstrate that you've studied the achievements of McLuhan, Montessori, Papert, Minsky, Engelbart, etc. Then we'll talk." Of course he's not like that so he's going to try to give the reporter a bit of the background he has in those things and let them figure it out for themself.

The Dynabook is supposed to be, roughly, an iPad with a keyboard, stylus, and a Lisp Machine-like OS. Of course Apple and third parties have closed the gap with keyboards and styli but it's the OS that's the really important bit because in order for a Dynabook to be a Dynabook it must not be a thing that you can just download and run preapproved apps on. You have to be able to discover -- and change -- the entire system from the bare metal on up. Think "Stallmanism on steroids".

It's like a television you can talk back to. Computing is a dynamic medium that demands interaction from its user, so to deny the user the ability to question and change the assumptions of the medium is to lock them in to certain stereotyped modes of interaction and deny the full richness of the medium. This is where Kay's "real guitar vs. Guitar Hero" analogy comes in. You can either have a device that offers its full potential up front, like a real guitar, or you can have a device that can only be used in circumscribed ways, in vague imitation of having the full richness of the original device, like Guitar Hero. The price you pay for having a real guitar, or a real Dynabook, is what we call "ease of use" -- the ability for a complete neophyte to pick it up and immediately display something resembling proficiency with it. (It is much easier for a trained data-entry clerk to operate a 3270 terminal than it is for that same clerk to fill out a modern Web form, but that sort of ease doesn't count.) And Apple has really doubled down on ease of use, at the expense of everything else wonderful about having a powerful computing device you can hold in one hand. To the point where it's become just like regular, can't-talk-back-to-it television.

The basic problem there is that no company in the industry, from Apple all the way to the lowliest gray box manufacturer in China is not interested in that.

OLPC tried, it got hoodwinked by Microsoft et al.

Mozilla tried, FirefoxOS bombed.

Hell even Linux is turning ever more complex an opaque year by year.

Simple thing is that such flexibility self support do not sell widgets and support contracts, and thus company are not interested in making them.

Well, yeah. For the benefits to be realized you need a society that values that sort of thing. It will look quite a bit different from our society, just like societies with writing are completely different from entirely oral societies -- something else Kay touches on.

In effect Star Trek lala land...

OLPC and Firefox OS are not examples of projects that pushed the idea of an OS and application stack that could be understood by a single person. To get a better idea of what Alan Kay has been working towards I'd recommend checking out the STEPS project.

I'd say that they were the closest in recent memory.

The software for both OLPC and Firefox OS were both based on Linux. Is there anything that made them more approachable on the low level than any other Linux distro?

I say that they were the closest, not that they were complete implementations of the vision.

Firefox OS had a particularly hackable UI layer. You could install webpages as if they were apps (all assets stored locally), bypassing the need to get your app into a curated store. Writing new drivers in Javascript could have come later.

Deconstruction is a way of viewing reality which comes naturally equipped with a process for disassembling ideas (the "deconstructive process") as well as a process for viewing ideas as the synthesis of other ideas (the "constructive process"). The core is this: all semantics are relative, all observations surface-level, and all truths buried in the raw materials. But since the materials are themselves relative, all truths are ultimately undefinable, recursively unknowable. To see a house is to know that it was built on a foundation, that its walls are made of gypsum, and that the number of children living there are proportional to the number of toys left on the lawn. Conversely, to see a corporate email thread is to know the shape of the corporate power structure, the bickering between departments, the products under development, and the CEO's ability to curse. Everything is connected and related. This is the entailment of postmodernism, where we first glimpsed that narrative truths could be relative; now, we know that reality itself is relative, whether it is the reality of a book or the reality of our current "real-world" narrative.

Deconstruction isn't bullshit, but we've been swimming in deconstructive and reconstructive narrative media for nearly half a century, and it has altered how we critique media so heavily that people don't see it as a distinct feature of their worldview. (Great example: Folks seem to love Rick & Morty, a deconstructive soft sci-fi serial, and also Steven Universe, a reconstructive soft sci-fi serial, both of which are running on a network which markets to youth, not literature postdocs.)

Kay, like Derrida, hasn't been unable to explain to people for lack of words, but because the enormity of the paradigm shift means that no number of words will necessarily suffice.

(Aside: If you are rubbed wrong by the first paragraph, in particular because you believe that reality is absolute or that truth is definable, then do not fear. You are merely having trouble overcoming instincts. Trust in mathematics; postmodernism arrived in mathematics in 1874, was completed in 1930, and is widely accepted by the mathematical community as meta-truth. Dissenters exist but necessarily must accept the meta-truth ("There is no one true foundation for mathematics.") to avoid being laughed out of the room.)

I am far from an expert in Deconstruction, but I am an expert in mathematics and have read a fair amount on the foundations of mathematics. I find your description technically correct, but highly misleading.

The vast majority of mathematicians will agree with "no one true foundation". However, unlike the bulk of postmodern/deconstructive work, they are then perfectly happy to say "this particular foundation is good enough to explore some interesting ideas", as opposed to wallowing in the fact that they had to take a generative step to create the mooring of their meaning.

In my non-expert opinion, I think many people instinctively rebel against Deconstruction, not because they can't accept that there has to be a faith-act to pragmatically root meaning... but because Deconstructionists, having discovered that such faith acts are necessary, then refuse to engage with any particular choice made by people who want to discuss pragmatic meaning.

Mathematicians have long ago internalized the important, but ultimately quite limited, idea behind Deconstruction (which, by the way, they didn't need Deconstructionists to tell them, since the idea of having to subjectively choose an axiom system goes back at least to the Greeks). Having understood this, they have since moved on with their lives to continue to do important and valuable things, just as they were doing before. What have the Deconstructionists done?

It's given us a framework to understand what's going on in a world with fake news. Arguably, Deconstructionists made Trump possible.

"Deconstructionists, having discovered that such faith acts are necessary, then refuse to engage with any particular choice made by people who want to discuss pragmatic meaning." I'm perfectly happy to have such discussions, as long as it's understood that, regardless of the beliefs brought to the table, the idea of "good enough" is not set in stone and itself is a perspective that is also brought to the table. I'm also not a Deconstructionist, whatever that is.

I find that most arguments that I have had with people usually end with them implying that their epistemology is rooted in something that is "good" or "reasonable" or "close enough" without any explanation of why it is that their chosen way of looking at the world must necessarily be beneficial. Indeed, you have pointed out that maths is a source of "important and valuable things", which I could agree with, but only with the understanding that our agreement is bound to the reality defined by our joint observations, and not a universal truth.

My point was not about choosing axioms, but about incompleteness, undefinability, uncomputability, etc., which cut short any attempts to bless a particular set of axioms as uniquely correct. You are only seeing the surface level so far; I assure you that it all deconstructs. (Be careful when looking directly at The Void.)

Finally: Where does meaning come from when having dialogues? Hofstadter explains it well: We constantly exchange deeply-coded messages with recursive layers of meaning, trying to reflect the symbols in our mind into words which we think will reconstruct those symbols in the minds we talk to. The "mooring of their meaning" is a fascinating illusion based on the inherent difficulty of stepping outside ourselves to examine where our own sense of meaning comes from.

> What have the Deconstructionists done?

Deconstruction changed the way we think about what we read, see, and hear, and taught us to question the assumptions inherent in the same. It gave us the spaghetti western, cyberpunk, and arguably punk rock itself (and it definitely influenced hip hop and dub).

Always remember that postmodernism is "defense against the dark arts" for the left. The techniques of playing shell games with symbol and meaning were devised by the right and by corporations and weaponized against us; postmodernism exists to make us aware of these techniques.

But I didn't really bring up the Derrida fan to argue about deconstruction or postmodernist thought.

> Deconstruction changed the way we think about what we read, see, and hear, and taught us to question the assumptions inherent in the same. It gave us the spaghetti western, cyberpunk, and arguably punk rock itself (and it definitely influenced hip hop and dub).

I've seen related claims before, and, having attempted to dig into them, my impression as a lay person is that what is called "postmodern literature" is actually not obviously connected to postmodern thought and deconstruction.

I personally find, for example, the idea of an unreliable narrator or non-linear storytelling not to be obviously derived from the idea of the subjectivity of anchors of truth. There are of course superficial similarities, but I see no evidence that the academic and philosophical ideas were in any way necessary for the literary, musical, and cinematic ideas. My feeling about the alleged similarities is about the same as the claims that Cubism was deeply connected to allegedly parallel ideas in the physics of relativity -- ideas that would pass in an art house, given enough narcotics, but that do not withstand serious scrutiny if one actually knows anything about the origins of ideas in physics.

So I wonder if you would be able to draw me a straight line from, say, Derrida to The Sex Pistols? Or to explain to me how Gibson's Neuromancer would not exist but for Foucault? These are not rhetorical questions -- I would be truly grateful to receive a good answer, and it might just turn around my generally low opinion of the post-60s contributions of postmodernism and deconstruction.

Well, he could implement the Dynabook. Why should others do it for him?

Sounds like a lot of hand-waving to me.

That's what he was trying to do at Xerox and Apple.

Without the resources of a large company, the Dynabook will get Pyra levels of adoption and be quickly forgotten about. And no large company wants to take that kind of risk nowadays. Not when there's money to be made pushing "apps" and monetizing eyeballs.

AR / VR might be an interesting place for the ideas.

I'd bet someone at VPRI is porting Croquet to the Oculus as we speak, if it hasn't happened already.

>> And Apple has really doubled down on ease of use, at the expense of everything else wonderful about having a powerful computing device you can hold in one hand. To the point where it's become just like regular, can't-talk-back-to-it television.

Worse, actually. At least those old TV sets didn't spy in on your intimate conversations, neither did they keep track of your whereabouts and generally spy in on you. Your phone, does.

>> On Hackernews there was once a skeptic of postmodernism who got into a debate with a Derrida fan. The skeptic said "If deconstruction is not BS, how about you explain to us, in plain English, what it's all about." The Derrida fan replied "No. How about you demonstrate that you've read Husserl, Heidegger, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, and Levinas. Then we can begin to talk about Derrida.

I find that a valid rebuff of a "skeptic" (on quotes). A true skeptic should know their shit, first and better than anyone they care to er, skepticise.

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