I heard of Alan Kay via Steve Jobs's intro of the iPhone [1], but otherwise know little about him - can anyone recommend other Alan Kay talks/essays/books?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY
Others have already mentioned The Early History of Smalltalk, highly recommended. You'll probably want to read it a couple of times, revisit from time to time.
The big idea is messaging, or rather "ma"
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/1998-...
"The key in making great and growable systems is much more to design how its modules communicate rather than what their internal properties and behaviors should be."
"I think I recall also pointing out that it is vitally important not just to have a complete metasystem, but to have fences that help guard the crossing of metaboundaries."
" I would say that a system that allowed other metathings to be done in the ordinary course of programming (like changing what inheritance means, or what is an instance) is a bad design. (I believe that systems should allow these things, but the design should be such that there are clear fences that have to be crossed when serious extensions are made.)"
"I would suggest that more progress could be made if the smart and talented Squeak list would think more about what the next step in metaprogramming should be -- how can we get great power, parsimony, AND security of meaning?"
Alan Kay: A powerful idea about teaching ideas at TED (2007) https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Alan_Kay:_A_powerful_idea...
Alan Kay: Normal Considered Harmful (2009) https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Alan_Kay:_Normal_Consider...
Back to the Future of Software Development (2003) https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Back_to_the_Future_of_Sof...
All of the STEPS reports - I especially like appendix E in:
https://tinlizzie.org/VPRIPapers/tr2007008_steps.pdf
> Appendix E: Extended Example: A Tiny TCP/IP Done as a Parser (by Ian Piumarta)
> Our first task is to describe the format of network packets. Perfectly good descriptions already exist in the various IETF Requests For Comments (RFCs) in the form of "ASCII-art diagrams". This form was probably chosen because the structure of a packet is immediately obvious just from glancing at the pictogram.
> If we teach our programming language to recognize pictograms as definitions of accessors for bit fields within structures, our program is the clearest of its own meaning. The following expression cre- ates an IS grammar that describes ASCII art diagrams.
> (...) We can now define accessors for the fields of an IP packet header simply by drawing its structure.
We can then publish some of the topics lists of each talk for others, so they can save time. We can also do this for the many papers [2] book reading lists [3] and lecture notes [4].
[1] https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay
[2] https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Papers_from_Viewpoints_Re...
[3] http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp
[4] https://internetat50.com/references/Kay_How.pdf
By no means this is a complete list, you can contact me morphle at ziggo dot nl for a chat on how to compile a complete list.
* after the talk, we even shared a cab to the airport and he graciously entertained all of my questions.
Is it really "Complex"? Or did we just make it "Complicated"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY
If you're interested in kids + computers + education, this 1955 Technology in Education House Committee Meeting is a surprisingly great watch, and has Kay alongside Seymour Papert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwsQn1Rs-4A
This follows Alan Kay (as well as dozens of others) through their groundbreaking research at Xerox's research lab in Palo Alto, primarily during the 70s.
You will learn how these visionaries and personalities were largely at war with themselves, while HQ (2,000 miles away) largely ignored any of their marvelous outputs... until it was too late.
----
I just checked this morning, and was shocked to see that XRX's total market cap is "only" $2B, when they could have been Apple computer [today ~$2,600B].
An interesting tidbit that many don't know about the Xerox/Apple relationship was that Steve Jobs was allowed into the facility, on two separate tours, because he offered Xerox preferred stock in the then-upcoming Apple IPO — which they then held on to for less than a few years.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22379275
[1] The Dream Machine" by M. Mitchell Waldrop
I've added Dream Machine to my reading list (but will wait a year, as I just finished Dealer's Lightning early 2024).
Xerox did shrink a bit since then.
[1] https://youtu.be/NdSD07U5uBs?t=1828 [2] https://youtu.be/1e8VZlPBx_0?t=975
How much is computer interface restricted by the little window (even a 4k TV) we get as the view into the computer? The promise to me of a VR headset UI is having an arbitrary amount of real estate to display information (and not just 2D!)
And here's the thing about a good VR UI: it wouldn't just be the visible! Your brain can track the location of things subconsciously, so the log tailing window, the metrics window, that upload/download/file copy status window, can all be in some area you turn your head to glance at to get occasional information on.
Because the PARC UI's windowing system is designed to help out with the "limited viewport": it already recognized that people will do more applications/tasks than there is visible screen space, so you need an overlaid windowing system.
But right now, facebook is the sociopaths in control of VR headsets, so ... we'll be waiting for a while.
The talk is so refreshing, so indicative of research in the 1960s. I think in retrospect from listening to the talk is that all researchers had to do was the possible. What they didn't have to think about was the consequences of technology.
That is not the world we live in now. It is apparent that we are a civilization facing the Fermi Paradox/Great Filter. He alluded to it in the human evolution and human organizations part of the intro, but it is fundamentally structured around post-WWII viewpoint, not the modern view where literally every person's consumption is a step towards collective destruction.
>the modern view where literally every person's consumption is a step towards collective destruction.
This is just one POV. From a fiat capitalist POV, consumption is essential to prevent collective destruction... although I agree more with your POV.
Thanks for the great comment.
Quora's a better place, with a better UI, for that almost-blogging sort of thing.
"Alan Kay on “Should web browsers have stuck to being document viewers?” and a discussion of Smalltalk, NeWS and HyperCard:
https://donhopkins.medium.com/alan-kay-on-should-web-browser...
>Alan Kay answered: “Actually quite the opposite, if “document” means an imitation of old static text media (and later including pictures, and audio and video recordings).”
Also here's a collection of HyperTIES discussions from Hacker News (including some discussion with Ben Shneiderman about why hypertext links are blue):
https://donhopkins.medium.com/hyperties-discussions-from-hac...
https://youtu.be/dZQ7x0-MZcI?t=8m33s 'our minds are like theaters. (...) we treat our beliefs as reality. that is the worst thing about human beings. and these theaters are tiny; we can only think of a few things at once, it's hard for us to take in larger things. (...) we grow up in whatever culture we were born into. (...) our conclusions tend to be societal—that's a disaster!'
https://youtu.be/dZQ7x0-MZcI?t=57m9s 'because our brains want to believe, rather than think, these can turn into something like a religion. the reason we don't want to come up with blind belief: there's always more, and what it is, is something that we can't imagine. so when we give a name to something, we (...) hurt our ability to think more about it, because it already has a set of properties, it already is the thing the word denotes.' (beautifully illustrated in the video)
https://youtu.be/dZQ7x0-MZcI?t=60m 'school is the best thing ever invented to keep you from thinking about something important for more than a few minutes'
perhaps unsurprisingly, when i explained this on here two days ago, it got downvoted to -2, because hn's comment section is kind of the intellectual antithesis of alan kay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39586470
i keep being optimistic but you people make me so sad
Where are todays rocks?
This is so very true.
I am not a hippy, but I can't immediately thing of a better phrase than the immense toxic "negative energy" of HN comments.
And yet, when I say this to people outside of HN, they tend to react with astonishment. "But it's my favourite place online! I love it! I learn so much!" etc.
I don't think the site even realises, but its negative responses to this (deeply unwise and ill-considered) "Ask HN" question changed the direction of what was the most innovative company in the Linux space:
(and I have consumed less (books) each decade. :/)
Alan Kay : July 2007 : A Conversation with CMU Faculty & Students