12 ms·

An Interview with Computing Pioneer Alan Kay

91 points by technologizer 14y ago

waterlesscloud 14y ago
"There was always a “cloud” in the ARPA view of things — this is why we invented the networks we did." All part of the plan.
- bitwize 14y ago
  The "cloud" is overhyped precisely because if you scratch off the marketing, what you're left with is just another word for the internet. I suppose it's a better metaphor than "cyberspace", but still...
  - simonh 14y ago
    I think it's still useful to draw a distinction between humans using the internet through browsers, and applications using the internet to access services. Of course applications accessing services through a network has always been part of the plan, but the shift from predominantly using services on the company network towards building businesses based on outsources services on external networks is an important one. I can see why someone like Kay would find the current 'gosh wow' breathlessness about cloud computing a bit sad, but even if it would have been nice for this transition to have happened decades ago, it doesn't change the fact it's still an important and disruptive transition.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    The cloud is overhyped because we're not using Plan9.
    - pjmlp 14y ago
      Thankfully.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    To me, "cloud" is the growing phenomenon of removing the need for individuals and organizations to own their own hardware. That's quite different from the existing network of networks.
    - sodomizer 14y ago
      You mean, sort of like how we all used to log on to mainframes, or rent Linux accounts from our webhosts?
      - scott_s 14y ago
        Yes, sort of. But the scale at which it is happening is not like that. Even a small company still owned that mainframe, and physically stored it onsite. And that Linux account on your webhost wasn't quite as capable as a computer you could own - you couldn't, for example, spin up 10,000 of them and create an ad-hoc cluster to run your giant MPI application. Organizations will start viewing computers as a utility they subscribe to, rather than something they own. Should we buy another server, or just rent them through Amazon? In the future, I think that fewer organizations will own hardware - to the extent that it will change the hardware market completely.
    - alberich 14y ago
      Actually "cloud" can be traced to relatively old ideas like utility computing. It just was not very feasible back then. EDIT: "If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry." (John McCarthy, 1961)
      - scott_s 14y ago
        The idea may be old, but what's new is that it's becoming possible.
nlawalker 14y ago
I'd say it's not modern computing he's unhappy with, but modern people.
- asveikau 14y ago
  OK, he was pretty grumpy and cynical. But is he wrong? Wouldn't a society of people who are reading and writing, thinking and creating be a better place than one where people are capable of no better than SMS-speak and TLDR and letting Siri do their thinking? What if our society turns into YouTube comments?
  - zwieback 14y ago
    I think the reality is that there's always a group of people who are creators and thinkers and the vast majority just wants to be entertained. People like Alan Kay are hoping to somehow convert the majority to be more creative.
    - xradionut 14y ago
      Most people live in the Box, some live outside and some collect the rent.
  - huherto 14y ago
    I personally read and think too much. There is a point where it is useless, it is just a form of entertainment. I wish I created more.
    - reeses 14y ago
      "Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking." Thinking is creative. Now give us some insights from your thinking. :-)
  - ricardobeat 14y ago
    Our society is youtube comments, SMS-speak and TLDR. It's a much bigger challenge to change people and culture, than technology. There is nothing today in the way of being creative and intellectual. Everyone has free access to mountains of knowledge a librarian couldn't dream of 30 years ago. Technology is cheap, ubiquitous and powerful. Blaming our cultural failures on a couple commercial license terms is just deflecting the guilt.
nnq 14y ago
I'm glad smarter folks share my fears: > Social thinking requires very exacting thresholds to be powerful. For example, we’ve had social thinking for 200,000 years and hardly anything happened that could be considered progress over most of that time. This is because what is most pervasive about social thinking is “how to get along and mutually cope.” Modern science was only invented 400 years ago, and it is a good example of what social thinking can do with a high threshold. ...I think that the current social-everything threatens to "devolve" everything or at least slow down progress in lots of fields, not because "social" is bad, but because "primitive/bad social" or is 100x worse than "no social at all": there's no centralized reputation attached to one's identity, there's now way to "dislike" or "-1" on most services and the "groups" or "circles" are locked in proprietary ecosystems and so on. I'd rather have the "dark social" of the 90's with link sharing via IM and all, at least that didn't sucked precious engineering resources! Think of all the bright engineers "mentally masturbating" at Facebook or Google, with "social*" projects hoping to get more advertising money, instead of building things that could change the world!
alexjeffrey 14y ago
I'm a little disappointed that the interview didn't mention COLA/STEPS as I think this is by far the most interesting thing Kay has worked on of recent. Obviously he's been an innovator throughout the history of computing and it makes sense to interview him abotu the overall direction of the industry, but it'd be great to hear about COLA especially as there's very little written about it aimed at a non-academic audience. http://www.vpri.org/vp_wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://www.vpri.org/vp_wiki/index.php/Main_Page is the primary resource about COLA at the moment, if you're curious.
- jcr 14y ago
  His work on Squeak [1], a dialect of Smalltalk, qualifies as both recent and interesting. Similar could be said for his work on OLPC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak
ricardobeat 14y ago
Apple with the iPad and iPhone goes even further and does not allow children to download an Etoy made by another child somewhere in the world. Kids can publish native apps if they want to, there are plenty of examples around. But regardless, you can share anything over the web. What about Android? Does it "not allow children to download etoys" too? This is pure vitriol.
- tensor 14y ago
  I'm not sure what an "etoy" is, but I imagine it's essentially a program and associated source code (e.g. so that you can learn from it). iOS bans, for no reason, compilers or interpretors. Android allows for these. The majority of children will not be publishing native apps.
  - mmariani 14y ago
    Check this out... https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171 https://github.com/TwoLivesLeft/Codea-Runtime https://github.com/TwoLivesLeft/Codea-Runtime
    - abecedarius 14y ago
      You can't export or import your code there, you can only type it in. (Unless something's changed lately.) Even micros in the 70s could save/load cassette tape. (Codea is pretty neat anyway. I get sad to see the potential locked up.)
      - demallien 14y ago
        If we're talking about getting a kids to learn how to use these wonderful tools, that's a feature, not a bug. I for one know that I learned to program precisely because I couldn't just swap cassettes with the other kids. I had a crappy computer that no one else had, so the only games I had were the ones I typed in myself. That act of typing (and hence reading) the source code was how I learned to program.
thewarrior 14y ago
"much of the iPad UI is very poor in a myriad of ways." Why does he say this ?
reeses 14y ago
Alan Kay is 74, despite the fact that he looks 20 years younger. A couple grad students should follow him around 24/7 with a microphone, a tablet computer, and a digital camera and record any ideas he throws out there. He's like the Phillip K. Dick of computer science. He's shaped much of the perception of the world and his weakest works somehow surface 15-20 years later as tacit assumptions.

91 points by technologizer 14y ago

"There was always a “cloud” in the ARPA view of things — this is why we invented the networks we did." All part of the plan.

bitwize 14y ago
The "cloud" is overhyped precisely because if you scratch off the marketing, what you're left with is just another word for the internet. I suppose it's a better metaphor than "cyberspace", but still...
- simonh 14y ago
  I think it's still useful to draw a distinction between humans using the internet through browsers, and applications using the internet to access services. Of course applications accessing services through a network has always been part of the plan, but the shift from predominantly using services on the company network towards building businesses based on outsources services on external networks is an important one. I can see why someone like Kay would find the current 'gosh wow' breathlessness about cloud computing a bit sad, but even if it would have been nice for this transition to have happened decades ago, it doesn't change the fact it's still an important and disruptive transition.
- DanBC 14y ago
  The cloud is overhyped because we're not using Plan9.
  - pjmlp 14y ago
    Thankfully.
- scott_s 14y ago
  To me, "cloud" is the growing phenomenon of removing the need for individuals and organizations to own their own hardware. That's quite different from the existing network of networks.
  - sodomizer 14y ago
    You mean, sort of like how we all used to log on to mainframes, or rent Linux accounts from our webhosts?
    - scott_s 14y ago
      Yes, sort of. But the scale at which it is happening is not like that. Even a small company still owned that mainframe, and physically stored it onsite. And that Linux account on your webhost wasn't quite as capable as a computer you could own - you couldn't, for example, spin up 10,000 of them and create an ad-hoc cluster to run your giant MPI application. Organizations will start viewing computers as a utility they subscribe to, rather than something they own. Should we buy another server, or just rent them through Amazon? In the future, I think that fewer organizations will own hardware - to the extent that it will change the hardware market completely.
  - alberich 14y ago
    Actually "cloud" can be traced to relatively old ideas like utility computing. It just was not very feasible back then. EDIT: "If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry." (John McCarthy, 1961)
    - scott_s 14y ago
      The idea may be old, but what's new is that it's becoming possible.

nlawalker 14y ago

I'd say it's not modern computing he's unhappy with, but modern people.

asveikau 14y ago
OK, he was pretty grumpy and cynical. But is he wrong? Wouldn't a society of people who are reading and writing, thinking and creating be a better place than one where people are capable of no better than SMS-speak and TLDR and letting Siri do their thinking? What if our society turns into YouTube comments?
- zwieback 14y ago
  I think the reality is that there's always a group of people who are creators and thinkers and the vast majority just wants to be entertained. People like Alan Kay are hoping to somehow convert the majority to be more creative.
  - xradionut 14y ago
    Most people live in the Box, some live outside and some collect the rent.
- huherto 14y ago
  I personally read and think too much. There is a point where it is useless, it is just a form of entertainment. I wish I created more.
  - reeses 14y ago
    "Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking." Thinking is creative. Now give us some insights from your thinking. :-)
- ricardobeat 14y ago
  Our society is youtube comments, SMS-speak and TLDR. It's a much bigger challenge to change people and culture, than technology. There is nothing today in the way of being creative and intellectual. Everyone has free access to mountains of knowledge a librarian couldn't dream of 30 years ago. Technology is cheap, ubiquitous and powerful. Blaming our cultural failures on a couple commercial license terms is just deflecting the guilt.

nnq 14y ago

I'm glad smarter folks share my fears: > Social thinking requires very exacting thresholds to be powerful. For example, we’ve had social thinking for 200,000 years and hardly anything happened that could be considered progress over most of that time. This is because what is most pervasive about social thinking is “how to get along and mutually cope.” Modern science was only invented 400 years ago, and it is a good example of what social thinking can do with a high threshold. ...I think that the current social-everything threatens to "devolve" everything or at least slow down progress in lots of fields, not because "social" is bad, but because "primitive/bad social" or is 100x worse than "no social at all": there's no centralized reputation attached to one's identity, there's now way to "dislike" or "-1" on most services and the "groups" or "circles" are locked in proprietary ecosystems and so on. I'd rather have the "dark social" of the 90's with link sharing via IM and all, at least that didn't sucked precious engineering resources! Think of all the bright engineers "mentally masturbating" at Facebook or Google, with "social*" projects hoping to get more advertising money, instead of building things that could change the world!

alexjeffrey 14y ago

I'm a little disappointed that the interview didn't mention COLA/STEPS as I think this is by far the most interesting thing Kay has worked on of recent. Obviously he's been an innovator throughout the history of computing and it makes sense to interview him abotu the overall direction of the industry, but it'd be great to hear about COLA especially as there's very little written about it aimed at a non-academic audience. http://www.vpri.org/vp_wiki/index.php/Main_Page http://www.vpri.org/vp_wiki/index.php/Main_Page is the primary resource about COLA at the moment, if you're curious.

jcr 14y ago
His work on Squeak [1], a dialect of Smalltalk, qualifies as both recent and interesting. Similar could be said for his work on OLPC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak

ricardobeat 14y ago

Apple with the iPad and iPhone goes even further and does not allow children to download an Etoy made by another child somewhere in the world. Kids can publish native apps if they want to, there are plenty of examples around. But regardless, you can share anything over the web. What about Android? Does it "not allow children to download etoys" too? This is pure vitriol.

tensor 14y ago
I'm not sure what an "etoy" is, but I imagine it's essentially a program and associated source code (e.g. so that you can learn from it). iOS bans, for no reason, compilers or interpretors. Android allows for these. The majority of children will not be publishing native apps.
- mmariani 14y ago
  Check this out... https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171 https://github.com/TwoLivesLeft/Codea-Runtime https://github.com/TwoLivesLeft/Codea-Runtime
  - abecedarius 14y ago
    You can't export or import your code there, you can only type it in. (Unless something's changed lately.) Even micros in the 70s could save/load cassette tape. (Codea is pretty neat anyway. I get sad to see the potential locked up.)
    - demallien 14y ago
      If we're talking about getting a kids to learn how to use these wonderful tools, that's a feature, not a bug. I for one know that I learned to program precisely because I couldn't just swap cassettes with the other kids. I had a crappy computer that no one else had, so the only games I had were the ones I typed in myself. That act of typing (and hence reading) the source code was how I learned to program.

thewarrior 14y ago

"much of the iPad UI is very poor in a myriad of ways." Why does he say this ?

reeses 14y ago

Alan Kay is 74, despite the fact that he looks 20 years younger. A couple grad students should follow him around 24/7 with a microphone, a tablet computer, and a digital camera and record any ideas he throws out there. He's like the Phillip K. Dick of computer science. He's shaped much of the perception of the world and his weakest works somehow surface 15-20 years later as tacit assumptions.