alankay1

10 ms·

31.
by alankay1 9y ago
See the comment by scroot above. It meshes with yours, but recognizes that the underlying culture has gone in directions that are undermining real progress and value of life. This is why I've put a fair amount of time along with many o
32.
by alankay1 9y ago
Clear thoughts and summary!
33.
by alankay1 9y ago
Take a look at the first implemented Smalltalk (-72). It implemented objects internally as a "receive the message" mechanism -- a kind of quick parser -- and didn't have dedicated selectors. (You can find "The Early Hist
34.
by alankay1 9y ago
Yes re: FPGAs -- they are definitely the modern placeholder of microcode (and better because you can organize how the computation and state are hooked together). The old culprit -- Intel -- is now offering hybrid chips with both an ARM and
35.
by alankay1 9y ago
Nothing is technically stored with the class object (everything is made from objects related by object-references). Semantically everything is "together". Pragmatically, things are where they need to be for particular implementati
36.
by alankay1 9y ago
Actually ... only the first version of Smalltalk was done in terms of the NOVA (and not using BCPL). The subsequent versions (Smalltalk-76 on) were done by making a custom virtual machine in the Alto's microcode that could run Smalltal
37.
by alankay1 9y ago
> The more interesting/optimized ways to map this would be where a single object in the software internet somehow maps to multiple computers ... Yes, this is the essence of Dave Reed's 1978 MIT thesis on the design of a distrib
38.
by alankay1 9y ago
"More or less" ... I can see that it's hard after decades of "data-centric" perspectives to think in terms of "computers" rather than "data", and about semantics rather than pragmatics. It's
39.
by alankay1 9y ago
Yes, you have the gist of our approach in the 60s and especially at Parc in the 70s. And the Doug McIlroy parts of Unix also got this (the "pipes" programming and other ideas). What I called "objects" ca 1966 was a takeo
40.
by alankay1 9y ago
I think more needs to be done to understand why some really hard things to do -- like hitting a baseball, shooting 3 pointers, etc. -- are not considered elitist, and have literally millions of children spending many hours practicing them.
41.
by alankay1 9y ago
Closer to home -- for example in the US public educational system -- we have prime examples of your (and Easterly's) point about "band-aids" vs. "health". After acknowledging how politics works, I think we can see o
42.
by alankay1 9y ago
Actually, just what could be done 40 years ago. Much more can be (and should be) done today. That's the biggest point.
43.
by alankay1 9y ago
It's not about "deserve" but about what people "need" to be part of a civilization and help sustain and grow it. We tend to lose sight of what is not happening right in front of us and take the larger surround as a
44.
by alankay1 9y ago
My reason for drawing your attention to this section of the talk is to show some of the ideas (now 40-50 year old) were about "dynamic media" - of course live computing should be part of the combined media experience on a personal
45.
by alankay1 9y ago
One perspective on this is to think about your definition of "civilization" and compare it with both "human universals" and what we know about the general lives of hunter-gatherers and the extent that we can use this to
46.
by alankay1 9y ago
Hi -- making up coherent stories is not a good way to find out what is going on. In this case, there is a lot of background information that could help to create a more supported opinion. (Humans can't help having opinions but we shoul
47.
by alankay1 9y ago
Yes, you are wrong. Do a little more work and reading, and you'll readily find out a bit more.
48.
by alankay1 9y ago
How do you presume to know all this? This is the kind of made up BS that pollutes any attempt to get at what is going on. What is your motivation for such pronouncements?
49.
by alankay1 9y ago
We weren't "engineers" at Parc, but a combination of many talents (check out the actual histories of the place -- why waste time speculating when there is much you could learn?)
50.
by alankay1 9y ago
You folks are missing some easily found and verified knowledge. For example, I knew Steve very well after this while I was Chief Scientist at Atari, and he hired me as an Apple Fellow in 1984. I was the person who took Steve to the group in
51.
by alankay1 9y ago
Always worth checking with the source ... (a) I'm quite sure I didn't tell him that I started a new book every day (note that this contradicts with a later sentence where he attributes me saying that I now read about 4 books a wee
52.
by alankay1 9y ago
Alan Kay majored in molecular biology and mathematics ... so he probably does understand just how evolution works. (Hint: the Internet is a good source of bios to look at before making assumptions). We put in a fair amount of work many year
53.
by alankay1 9y ago
And perhaps there was a back button on the video? (This is not to ding you for this, but to acknowledge that you are helping to make an important point for our times.) I've been amazed and depressed to find that CS majors in major univ
54.
by alankay1 9y ago
Many were requests for deeper looks at "communicating with aliens". Many were about more information for how to get around our "bad brains".
55.
by alankay1 9y ago
I'm glad you mentioned it. There's lots of evidence (even from the emails I've been getting) that most people might be skimming even sentences and guessing, rather than actually reading the words. This could partly be from th
56.
by alankay1 9y ago
P.S. The audience did get around to "disabuse me of the latter" -- I finally started getting a lot of emails, most of them very thoughtful and worth reading, and replying to.
57.
by alankay1 9y ago
I asked whether you typed "The power of the context" not what you read "The power of context". Try to do just what I suggested and see what you get.
58.
by alankay1 9y ago
Wayne Gretsky: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take". Baseball: 70% not hitting is just the overhead for the 30% hitting. I.e. it's no big deal if you don't wrap your identity around it. My self criticism was
59.
by alankay1 9y ago
One way to approach this question is to ask "how can I always cut and paste -something- from one regime to another?" Take a look at capability protection -- it covers most of these cases reasonably well.
60.
by alankay1 9y ago
If people realize they are effectively blind and are actively trying to see in as many ways as possible, they are not being lazy. If they realize they are blind and are not trying to see, then they are lazy. Most people just think they can

More ›