alankay

14 ms·

61.
by alankay 10y ago
10 years is too close -- 30 years out will generally lose the pernicious connection to the present and "how do we get there?". The idea is to "go out there and bring the ideas back" rather than try to go from the present
62.
by alankay 10y ago
I once said that "Television is the last technology we should be allowed to invent without a Surgeon General's warning on it"
63.
by alankay 10y ago
Now that it is "morning", I'm not sure that I can do justice to this question here... But certainly we have to take back the term "computer science" and try to give it real meaning as to what might constitute an act
64.
by alankay 10y ago
Neil's idea was that all of us should become aware of the environments we live in and how our brain/minds are genetically disposed to accommodate to them without our being very aware of the process, and, most importantly, winding
65.
by alankay 10y ago
I like the vibes here
66.
by alankay 10y ago
Or devolving?
67.
by alankay 10y ago
It's time to do another children's language. My answer a few years ago would have been "in part: Etoys", "in lesser part: Scratch (done by some of the same people but too much of a subset)".
68.
by alankay 10y ago
It used to be the case that people were admonished to "not re-invent the wheel". We now live in an age that spends a lot of time "reinventing the flat tire!" The flat tires come from the reinventors often not being in th
69.
by alankay 10y ago
Talked to a lawyer recently? One of the most interesting processes -- especially in engineering -- is to make a model to find out what it is that you are trying to make. Sounds a little weird, but the model winds up being a great focuser of
70.
by alankay 10y ago
1. I actually don't think this way -- my actual interior is a kind of "hair-ball" and so questions are very helpful. 2. Let's do a dialog about this. Note that taking the process far enough starts resembling prayer to a
71.
by alankay 10y ago
There's coming up with ideas: learn to dream while you are awake, the ideas are there. There's coming up with a good idea: learn how to not get buried in your ideas (most are mediocre down to bad even for people who have "goo
72.
by alankay 10y ago
We were mostly thinking of "human advancement" or as Engelbart's group termed it "Human Augmentation" -- this includes education along with lots of other things. I remember noting that if Moore's Law were to go
73.
by alankay 10y ago
Object oriented to me has always been about encapsulation, sending messages, and late-binding. You tell me ...
74.
by alankay 10y ago
Learn a lot of other things, and at least one real science and one real engineering . This will help to calibrate the somewhat odd lore aka "computing knowledge". I would certainly urge a number of anthropology courses (and soc
75.
Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today
1401 points by alankay 10y ago|893 comments
76.
by alankay 10y ago
I just found your comment. One answer wrt e.g. Javascript is to use it as a "machine code" and just put a whole better designed thing on top of it. Or try to get the web world to get behind Native Client or something better that a
77.
by alankay 10y ago
I don't make notes while I'm reading or do a recap. However, I do use notebooks for "ideas" when I'm trying to get something done, or those that just show up. This is to not get trapped by the ideas -- basically to
78.
by alankay 10y ago
Already lots of good comments and ideas below. My first attempt here on this topic turned out too wordy -- and this attempt is also (I tried to explain things and where the ideas came from). A summary would be better (but Pascal was right).
79.
by alankay 10y ago
I've been asked this a few times. I'm not completely sure about all the keys for this. Looking back -- and also at the process today -- it seems to be a combination of things, and somewhat loosely connected. The first thing to not
80.
by alankay 10y ago
I don't have any strong way to estimate -- I didn't bother counting them as I read (it wasn't a contest). There were many years where I read around 10 books a week (the library limit). They don't take long to read. I&#x2
81.
by alankay 10y ago
I think there are any number of lists that would help getting started. The basic results are "multiple perspectives" and the sense that not all perspectives are equally powerful for given contexts. That list was for adult "bu
82.
by alankay 10y ago
This wasn't actually for my students, and dates back to the early 90s. A number of people at Anderson Consulting (now Accenture) asked for my "top ten" books. This is not possible for anyone who reads extensively, so I came o
83.
by alankay 10y ago
Priority is tricky to nail down e.g. the EDSAC was operational a year before the Mark 1 (which actually was not operational until 1949). Because of the "B" Williams Tube which held the two index registers of the Mark 1, many other
84.
by alankay 10y ago
This quote keeps on showing up out of context. Edsger and I got along quite well. He loved to be the way he was and pushed it. His friend Bob Barton (the great genius of the B5000 design) was very similar in loving to push buttons and being
85.
by alankay 11y ago
No, I didn't come up with the idea before Simula -- but it did happen before Simula-67 (which doesn't matter at all here). How it happened is well chronicled in the history paper I was asked to write by the ACM in 1992-3 "The
86.
by alankay 13y ago
I love Smalltalk :)