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Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#551

Post by alankay1 »

msutherl wrote: post #378

Hi Alan, I'd like to go deeper into your notion of "pop cultures" vs. "progress", in the context of innovation, but also the arts. Can you recommend some readings that might fill out those concepts?

Try to understand the nature of "pop culture", especially as it relates to "traditional cultures", to human genetics, etc. What does a pop culture want? (What do people in a pop culture really want?) And why?

What are "developed cultures" all about? What are the strengths and weaknesses etc.

What kinds of criticism obtain and help in various kinds of cultures?

Etc.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#552

Post by alankay1 »

westoncb wrote: post #226

Hi Alan, I'm curious whether you think it might be an important/interesting direction for program editors to depart from character sequence manipulation to something along the lines of AST editors. Or is this only a red herring, and perhaps not so deep a change?

This has been done -- many times -- check them out and see what you think ...

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#553

Post by alankay1 »

collint wrote: post #56

Hello Alan, I'm curious if you've read much about Activity Theory. (in particular, Yrjö Engeström's Learning by Expanding.) I feel like it's compatible with much of what I've heard you discuss in lectures. Is it something you have an opinion on?

I've looked at it -- some good ideas there. Often formal systems have problems in scaling, etc.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#555

Post by alankay1 »

duncanawoods wrote: post #55

Hi Alan, Whats the next step to improve remote working? Face to face still seems to be so superior for relationship building and problem solving despite the wealth of video conferencing, social and collaboration tools we have. I don't want to wear goggles... thanks!

Take a look at Hiroshi Ishii's "Clearboard" etc (look on YouTube)

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#557

Post by EdwardCoffin »

LeicesterCity wrote: post #101

Hi Alan, Previously you've mentioned the "Oxbridge approach" to reading, whereby--if my recollection is correct--you take four topics and delve into them as much as possible. Could you elaborate on this approach (I've searched the internet, couldn't find anything)? And do you think this structured approach has more benefits than, say, a non-structured approach of reading whatever of interest? Thanks for your time and…

Was it in The Future of Reading [1] perhaps? From page 6:

In a very different approach, most music and sports learning only has contact with a one on one expert once or twice a week, lots of individual practice, group experiences where “playing” is done, and many years of effort. This works because most learners really have difficulty absorb ing hours of expert instruction every week that may or may not fit their capacities, styles, or rhythms. They are generally much better off spending a few hours every day learning on their own and seeing the expert for assessment and advice and play a few times a week.

A few universities use a process like this for academics—sometimes called the “tutorial system”, they include Oxford and Cambridge Universities in the UK.

[1] http://www.vpri.org/pdf/future_of_reading.pdf

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#558

Post by alankay1 »

Ericson2314 wrote: post #75

Alan, while trying come up with a good question, I learned you are a musician. Great! As a fellow musician (also jazz and classical) I'm curious whether you feel this has influenced your engineering.

I'm not really an engineer -- but yes music furnishes many good parallels and metaphors ...
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