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I agree with your observations. I can't speak for Kay but I think his comment to Jobs about the size was based on the premis that the iPad would be a production

I agree with your observations. I can't speak for Kay but I think his comment to Jobs about the size was based on the premis that the iPad would be a production device. The percentage of users that use computing devices primarily for something other than content consumption is pretty small. I actually think an argument could be made that phones are used more for productive tasks than tablets.

alankay 9y ago
But the deep point of the inventions of personal computing and the Internet was not primarily to make old media more convenient, but to "augment human intellect" by making the next qualitative media after writing and the printing press. The commercialization of these went after the lowest simplest properties, and this hid from most people what the computer is really about. Computing has augmented human intellect, but right now almost exclusively for scientists, engineers, the medical profession, and other professionals. The real computer revolution will happen when the general public are able to boost their own intellects internally and to boost their reach externally with the help of computers. Getting fixated on a poor problem can mask the problems that need to be worked on. A big one is "real education". Another is "real governance and democracy". An analogy is to the Kennedy moonshot, which set back space travel more than 50 years. Real space travel has to be done quite differently than just relying on chemical rocketry, and the better ways to do it were swamped by the "stunt" to this day.
- mercer 9y ago
  > Computing has augmented human intellect, but right now almost exclusively for scientists, engineers, the medical profession, and other professionals. The real computer revolution will happen when the general public are able to boost their own intellects internally and to boost their reach externally with the help of computers. Isn't this already well under way, considering people's day-to-day use of phones and tablets for google searches, wikipedia, calendars, maps, and various 'helper' apps (for meditation, productivity, project planning, etc.)?

alankay 9y ago

But the deep point of the inventions of personal computing and the Internet was not primarily to make old media more convenient, but to "augment human intellect" by making the next qualitative media after writing and the printing press. The commercialization of these went after the lowest simplest properties, and this hid from most people what the computer is really about. Computing has augmented human intellect, but right now almost exclusively for scientists, engineers, the medical profession, and other professionals. The real computer revolution will happen when the general public are able to boost their own intellects internally and to boost their reach externally with the help of computers. Getting fixated on a poor problem can mask the problems that need to be worked on. A big one is "real education". Another is "real governance and democracy". An analogy is to the Kennedy moonshot, which set back space travel more than 50 years. Real space travel has to be done quite differently than just relying on chemical rocketry, and the better ways to do it were swamped by the "stunt" to this day.

mercer 9y ago
> Computing has augmented human intellect, but right now almost exclusively for scientists, engineers, the medical profession, and other professionals. The real computer revolution will happen when the general public are able to boost their own intellects internally and to boost their reach externally with the help of computers. Isn't this already well under way, considering people's day-to-day use of phones and tablets for google searches, wikipedia, calendars, maps, and various 'helper' apps (for meditation, productivity, project planning, etc.)?