alankay1

How old are you? "Old school" to me is what could be done at Parc, etc. ... (hint: quite a bit more than on this website ...)

That was a metaphorical hyperbole to attract the attention of people who think in terms of money rather than in "basic improvements to the world".

The idea is that "qualitatively changing the context in a powerful way" trivially creates enormous potential for everything (including making money).

Books have the same problem, and both are fixable (lots easier than the big ones we should be tending to)

Too much typing into too small apertures!

See elsewhere in this AMA

The Dynabook was/is much more of a "service idea" than a physical manifestation (there were actually 3 physical ideas for it). Today's tablets don't fulfill the service ideas.

For what?

Good question. If we are talking "real OOP", I'm not sure these days. What do other people think?

Smalltalk is very long in the tooth these days, but it is still "rather object-oriented in good ways".

Erlang and its derivatives are fun and good to help that kind of thinking.

Take a nap, play music, take showers, goof off, read junk novels, etc.

Delay ...

Yikes!

Have good parents (and probably some pre-dispositions). Then be really stubborn about wanting to understand what is going on (no one else really wants you to)

What does an "Intergalactic Network" need?

The Simula guys cannot be too highly praised, especially Nygaard.

It would be great for the programs themselves to somehow be "literate". That said, it is quite a bit of work to write an essay (Don Knuth makes it look easy, but ...)

I'm not a big fan of most UIs today (not that I was a big fan of those in the past -- but they seem generally worse in basic outlook)

A PhD program is very much about the context of forefront ideas and people. I lucked into one -- that got me to realize that this is what prospective grad students should be looking for.

See what you can find out from the web on this one ...

I should get you to articulate this yourself

But let's see -- how about UIs giving up on UNDO, not allowing or not showing multiple tasks, not having good ways to teach how to us the UI or the apps, ...

And a zillion more ...

Yikes!

I was really into this stuff 40-50 years ago. It's still an interesting area to ponder.

I'm always working one way or another on helping children grow up to be caretakers of the 21st century.

"Simple" is not the main force in a good programming language

I should probably do this, but also probably won't ...

I'm not really an engineer -- but yes music furnishes many good parallels and metaphors ...

Yes.

Take a look at Hiroshi Ishii's "Clearboard" etc (look on YouTube)

Not close as things are currently and have been ...

I've looked at it -- some good ideas there. Often formal systems have problems in scaling, etc.

This has been done -- many times -- check them out and see what you think ...

Try to understand the nature of "pop culture", especially as it relates to "traditional cultures", to human genetics, etc. What does a pop culture want? (What do people in a pop culture really want?) And why?

What are "developed cultures" all about? What are the strengths and weaknesses etc.

What kinds of criticism obtain and help in various kinds of cultures?

Etc.