4 ms·

Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today."

63 points by asciilifeform 17y ago

rbanffy 17y ago
Alan Kaye?!
edw519 17y ago
Sounds like Alan Kay is looking at the world of business through a pinhole in the floor of his car when he'd be better off looking through the windshield. Anybody can automate payroll, inventory, order processing, etc. In fact, almost everybody has. I call that "striking out the pitcher". But only some people have figured out how to use sophisticated software to run simulations, mimic real world processes, and as Michael Gerber puts it, "Work on the business instead of working in the business." Apparently Alan Kay doesn't see many of these businesses. He should. Because they're the ones who'll be left standing while the "automators" wonder what happened.
- fsoteras 17y ago
  I think this migth be some confusion between Mr Alan Kaye (http://people.forbes.com/profile/alan-kaye/51664 http://people.forbes.com/profile/alan-kaye/51664) and Alan Kay of SmallTalk & Object Oriented fame.
  - ynniv 17y ago
    "Kaye" appears to be a typo. "Alan Kay" was interviewd by Fortune Magazine's "Fast Forward" column in the July 12, 2004 issue: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/13/1226206.shtml http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/13/1226206.shtml
dlevine 17y ago
I think that the reason for this is that businesses are very reluctant to adopt revolutionary technologies. They are much more comfortable with technologies that offer a small and defined improvement over what they are using (eg. typewriter to word processor). If you pitch something completely new, many people will look at you like you are from Mars. My startup's product has the potential to drastically improve the profitability of a lot of businesses. However, when we pitch it for what it is, people tend to react fairly violently, because it runs counter to a lot of their intuitions. In order to get any traction, we have had to pitch it as an incremental improvement, with the real game changers hidden behind the scenes.
- calcnerd256 17y ago
  They had to do that with Javascript, too.
- arfrank 17y ago
  I think you are right on. This is how fiber optics gained their foothold in the communication space. Coax was reaching its limits in terms of transmission amounts and cost of improvements, but people were skeptical of switching over to an unproven medium due to the many different technologies that had to come together to make it work (fibers, lasers, semiconductors). It took many iterations of fiber technology and many years, starting with "large" graded-index fibers with laser-based repeaters to get to tiny single-mode fibers with optical amplifiers.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  I think that the reason for this is that businesses are very reluctant to adopt revolutionary technologies. It's no surprise that the revolutionary technologies of the internet were developed and deployed by (gasp) the Government. It wasn't until the internet was already well-established that commercial interests started to pay attention.
  - cema 17y ago
    More academia than government, but mostly on government's money.
  - miked 17y ago
    It's no surprise that the revolutionary technologies of the internet were developed and deployed by (gasp) the Government. It wasn't until the internet was already well-established that commercial interests started to pay attention. Actually, the initial development was done almost entirely by think tanks (Rand Corp., BBN, etc.) and academics, with the crucial piece being supplied by the concept of packet switching, invented by Paul Baran at Rand Corp. The essence of government is centralization of power over individuals. The essence of the internet is decentralization of communication among individuals. The internet was a revolutionary invention because it solved a revolutionary problem: how to maintain communications after a massive nuclear attack. Pentagon (DARPA) money was behind most of this because it was the Pentagon that was responsible for solving the problem. More to the point, the key technologies that the internet depended on were the transistor (AT&T/Bell Labs) and the integrated circuit/microprocessor (Intel).
cruise02 17y ago
Interesting side note: Alan Kay challenged the Stack Overflow community several months back asking for "Significant new inventions in computing since 1980" (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...).
richcollins 17y ago
> Think about it this way: if you're in business, then it's likely that the most important process you have is your "order to cash" process wherein an order is received and, eventually, turned into cash. Who owns that process in your business? How was it created? When is it reviewed? Did someone build a model for it that can be simulated to test various scenarios? We don't need to simulate this in many cases. We can just try different things and measure the results. This beats analysis and simulation.
- skmurphy 17y ago
  You cannot extrapolate from running a small business 'by the seat of your pants' to the level of analysis that's applied by large corporations. Large businesses do an enormous amount of simulation of their "quote to cash" process. There are complex demand forecasting, supply chain management, and inventory management software platforms offered by the likes of SAP and Oracle that are used for this. There are a number of decision tree tools used to simulate and analyze billion dollar investment decisions used by pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas firms, and other corporations that need to make large investments. Airline companies run "yield management" software to adjust pricing frequently based on estimates of demand for a particular seat on a particular flight. Wal-Mart adjusts pricing and offers specials based on complex models of how stimulate demand. There are many other examples of business using sophisticated simulation and analysis tools.
whatusername 17y ago
Article is from 2004.
- cubicle67 17y ago
  Yes, but it may as well have been written yesterday
jgroch 17y ago
Maybe it shouldn't be that surprising that most of the big ideas seem to be behind us in computing. Automobiles have been fundamentally the same for decades (speaking broadly). It could be that new areas of technology are more like explorers finding new lands. The newer finds don't tend to be as big within that area after a while. Coincidentally, Freeman Dyson recently said that physics has been undergoing such a slowing down. (His daughter was mentioned in the article). He also mentioned that the field of biology is speeding up. (Link to his Charlie Rose interview http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10560 http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10560 (doesn't go into much detail concerning the given point, but it is Freeman Dyson.)
extension 17y ago
I would speculate that innovation in this domain effectively stopped when the complexity of computer applications surpassed what the layperson was willing or able to wrap their head around. This happened some time just after the spreadsheet. At this point, businesses became highly dependent on skilled IT staff to hand-hold them through everything. IT staff are expensive, scarce and difficult to work with. They are also utterly preoccupied with rejiggering old ideas to work with flashy new technology, devoting very little time to truly new ideas. The problem concerns all of computing, both home and office. A vast knowledge gap leaves most people helpless while the experts are buried in architectural cruft, and often unaware of it.

63 points by asciilifeform 17y ago

Alan Kaye?!

Sounds like Alan Kay is looking at the world of business through a pinhole in the floor of his car when he'd be better off looking through the windshield. Anybody can automate payroll, inventory, order processing, etc. In fact, almost everybody has. I call that "striking out the pitcher". But only some people have figured out how to use sophisticated software to run simulations, mimic real world processes, and as Michael Gerber puts it, "Work on the business instead of working in the business." Apparently Alan Kay doesn't see many of these businesses. He should. Because they're the ones who'll be left standing while the "automators" wonder what happened.

fsoteras 17y ago
I think this migth be some confusion between Mr Alan Kaye (http://people.forbes.com/profile/alan-kaye/51664 http://people.forbes.com/profile/alan-kaye/51664) and Alan Kay of SmallTalk & Object Oriented fame.
- ynniv 17y ago
  "Kaye" appears to be a typo. "Alan Kay" was interviewd by Fortune Magazine's "Fast Forward" column in the July 12, 2004 issue: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/13/1226206.shtml http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/13/1226206.shtml

dlevine 17y ago

I think that the reason for this is that businesses are very reluctant to adopt revolutionary technologies. They are much more comfortable with technologies that offer a small and defined improvement over what they are using (eg. typewriter to word processor). If you pitch something completely new, many people will look at you like you are from Mars. My startup's product has the potential to drastically improve the profitability of a lot of businesses. However, when we pitch it for what it is, people tend to react fairly violently, because it runs counter to a lot of their intuitions. In order to get any traction, we have had to pitch it as an incremental improvement, with the real game changers hidden behind the scenes.

calcnerd256 17y ago
They had to do that with Javascript, too.
arfrank 17y ago
I think you are right on. This is how fiber optics gained their foothold in the communication space. Coax was reaching its limits in terms of transmission amounts and cost of improvements, but people were skeptical of switching over to an unproven medium due to the many different technologies that had to come together to make it work (fibers, lasers, semiconductors). It took many iterations of fiber technology and many years, starting with "large" graded-index fibers with laser-based repeaters to get to tiny single-mode fibers with optical amplifiers.
RyanMcGreal 17y ago
I think that the reason for this is that businesses are very reluctant to adopt revolutionary technologies. It's no surprise that the revolutionary technologies of the internet were developed and deployed by (gasp) the Government. It wasn't until the internet was already well-established that commercial interests started to pay attention.
- cema 17y ago
  More academia than government, but mostly on government's money.
- miked 17y ago
  It's no surprise that the revolutionary technologies of the internet were developed and deployed by (gasp) the Government. It wasn't until the internet was already well-established that commercial interests started to pay attention. Actually, the initial development was done almost entirely by think tanks (Rand Corp., BBN, etc.) and academics, with the crucial piece being supplied by the concept of packet switching, invented by Paul Baran at Rand Corp. The essence of government is centralization of power over individuals. The essence of the internet is decentralization of communication among individuals. The internet was a revolutionary invention because it solved a revolutionary problem: how to maintain communications after a massive nuclear attack. Pentagon (DARPA) money was behind most of this because it was the Pentagon that was responsible for solving the problem. More to the point, the key technologies that the internet depended on were the transistor (AT&T/Bell Labs) and the integrated circuit/microprocessor (Intel).

cruise02 17y ago

Interesting side note: Alan Kay challenged the Stack Overflow community several months back asking for "Significant new inventions in computing since 1980" (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...).

richcollins 17y ago

> Think about it this way: if you're in business, then it's likely that the most important process you have is your "order to cash" process wherein an order is received and, eventually, turned into cash. Who owns that process in your business? How was it created? When is it reviewed? Did someone build a model for it that can be simulated to test various scenarios? We don't need to simulate this in many cases. We can just try different things and measure the results. This beats analysis and simulation.

skmurphy 17y ago
You cannot extrapolate from running a small business 'by the seat of your pants' to the level of analysis that's applied by large corporations. Large businesses do an enormous amount of simulation of their "quote to cash" process. There are complex demand forecasting, supply chain management, and inventory management software platforms offered by the likes of SAP and Oracle that are used for this. There are a number of decision tree tools used to simulate and analyze billion dollar investment decisions used by pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas firms, and other corporations that need to make large investments. Airline companies run "yield management" software to adjust pricing frequently based on estimates of demand for a particular seat on a particular flight. Wal-Mart adjusts pricing and offers specials based on complex models of how stimulate demand. There are many other examples of business using sophisticated simulation and analysis tools.

whatusername 17y ago

Article is from 2004.

cubicle67 17y ago
Yes, but it may as well have been written yesterday

jgroch 17y ago

Maybe it shouldn't be that surprising that most of the big ideas seem to be behind us in computing. Automobiles have been fundamentally the same for decades (speaking broadly). It could be that new areas of technology are more like explorers finding new lands. The newer finds don't tend to be as big within that area after a while. Coincidentally, Freeman Dyson recently said that physics has been undergoing such a slowing down. (His daughter was mentioned in the article). He also mentioned that the field of biology is speeding up. (Link to his Charlie Rose interview http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10560 http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10560 (doesn't go into much detail concerning the given point, but it is Freeman Dyson.)

extension 17y ago

I would speculate that innovation in this domain effectively stopped when the complexity of computer applications surpassed what the layperson was willing or able to wrap their head around. This happened some time just after the spreadsheet. At this point, businesses became highly dependent on skilled IT staff to hand-hold them through everything. IT staff are expensive, scarce and difficult to work with. They are also utterly preoccupied with rejiggering old ideas to work with flashy new technology, devoting very little time to truly new ideas. The problem concerns all of computing, both home and office. A vast knowledge gap leaves most people helpless while the experts are buried in architectural cruft, and often unaware of it.