Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today • Hacker News Board

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#661

Post by dredmorbius » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 7:19 PM UTC

alankay1 wrote: post #479

dredmorbius wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What topics, methods, or activities would you see more of? Which less? Is there any specific cognitive, childhood, intellectual, educational, etc., development model that this is based on? How would you account and adapt for different proclivities and/or interests?

So many of the questions point up the problems with the format and media for an AMA. So many of the best questions are out of the scope ... But, let's just pick one biggie here: how about taking on "systems" as a lingua franca and set of perspectives for thinking about: our universe, our world, our cultures and social systems, our technologies, and the systems that we ourselves are? This would be one very good thing…

Your systems-as-a-lingua-franca suggestion seems straight up David Christian's "Big History" concept:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_History

"Big History is an emerging academic discipline which examines history from the Big Bang to the present. It examines long time frames using a multidisciplinary approach based on combining numerous disciplines from science and the humanities,[1][2][3][4][5] and explores human existence in the context of this bigger picture.[6] It integrates studies of the cosmos, Earth, life, and humanity using empirical evidence to explore cause-and-effect relations..."

I'm rather a fan, though I've only explored it quite briefly.

If you're not familiar with the Santa Fe Institute and its work, I suspect you'll find it fascinating. The general rhubric is "complexity science", applied across a large number of fields. Geoffrey West and Sander van der Leuuw are two other fellows. Founders included Murray Gell-Mann and Kenneth Arrow.

"SFI's original mission was to disseminate the notion of a new interdisciplinary research area called complexity theory or simply complex systems. This new effort was intended to provide an alternative to the increasing specialization the founders observed in science by focusing on synthesis across disciplines.[4] As the idea of interdisciplinary science increased in popularity, a number of independent institutes and departments emerged whose focus emphasized similar goals."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Fe_Institute

I keep discovering that the most interesting people -- in multiple fields -- I'm running across are quite often affiliated.

Related to my other question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11941965

And, since many of your responses point at challenges to the AMA (or HN) format, what would your preference be? Is there an existing platform or model that fits, or is there a set of requirements that

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#662

Post by alankay » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 7:19 PM UTC

bcjordan wrote: post #627

alankay1 wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes

Akin to "signals" / "event emitters"?

If you think about the "whole system", even if it's just a Shannon channel, what do you actually need?

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#663

Post by alankay » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 7:20 PM UTC

panic wrote: post #632

alankay wrote: post #610

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There are lots of "old and fundamental" ideas that are not good anymore, if they ever were. The point here is that you were able to find the interpreter of the sentence and ask a question, but the two were still separated. For important negotiations we don't send telegrams, we send ambassadors. This is what objects are all about, and it continues to be amazing to me that the real necessities and practical necessities…

Isn't the interpreter code itself data in the sense that it has no meaning without something (a machine) to run it? How do you avoid having to send an interpreter for the interpreter and so on?

Yes, so think about how to make this work "nicely" in an Intergalactic Network ...

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#664

Post by gkya » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 7:21 PM UTC

internaut wrote: post #615

alankay wrote: post #489

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I once said that "Television is the last technology we should be allowed to invent without a Surgeon General's warning on it"

> Kay: children need to learn how to use the 21st century, or there's a good chance they will lose the 21st century. > Gkya: I myself can't think of a future other than one full of device addicts, and a small bunch that managed to liberate themselves from perennial procrastination and pseudo-socialisation only in their twenties. As a infovore this worries me. If we cannot control ourselves and come up with better sol…

The introduction to technology, well, essentially I'm talking about internet, is so early on a kids life that we can't just say "we should control ourselves". You can't put your kid in a room full of crisps, sweets, alcohol, drugs, pornography, and expect it to come out ten, fifteen years later as a healthy individual that is not an addict to none of them. This is what we essentially do with the internet.

> I myself have seen the effects of good diet, exercise and meditation on a group of people, and it is quite remarkable how changed for the better people are. So there is hope!

You're an adult, I am too. We can realize: this is stealing my life. But a kid can't. And stolen days don't return. This is why I'm commenting: we'd rather raise better individuals than letting them do wtf they want and hoping they'll fix themselves later.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#665

Post by alankay1 » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 7:27 PM UTC

npm83 wrote: post #639

alankay1 wrote: post #578

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Good question. If we are talking "real OOP", I'm not sure these days. What do other people think? Smalltalk is very long in the tooth these days, but it is still "rather object-oriented in good ways". Erlang and its derivatives are fun and good to help that kind of thinking.

What do you think is missing from Smalltalk, and what would you expect for the "21th century Smalltalk" if there was such think? Even though is "old", I find it extremely valuable for learning to think and reason in a pure OO fashion.

It's worth thinking about what scales and what doesn't scale so well. For example, names are relatively local conventions. We could expect to have to find better ways to describe resources, or perhaps "send processes rather than messages". Think about what's really interesting about the way Parc used what became Postscript instead of trying to define a file format for "documents" for printers ... (a programming language can have far few conventions and be more powerful, so ...)

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#666

Post by alankay1 » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

jsprogrammer wrote: post #638

alankay1 wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was a metaphorical hyperbole to attract the attention of people who think in terms of money rather than in "basic improvements to the world". The idea is that "qualitatively changing the context in a powerful way" trivially creates enormous potential for everything (including making money).

I don't think it was hyperbole and I am being 100% serious. You make a good case that PARC contributed $35+ trillion in value, of which Xerox was only able to capture a portion. If we extrapolate out an exponential trend from forty years ago, a quadrillion seems like it might be about right. If I'm doing my math correctly, it is only about $100k value/person. Companies will soon be doing $1 trillion in annual revenue…

I don't dispute the figure, but in most cases when I say that phrase I'm trying to be hyperbolic to make a different point

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#667

Post by mmiller » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

richhickey wrote: post #528

alankay wrote: post #517

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What if "data" is a really bad idea?

Data like that sentence? Or all of the other sentences in this chat? I find 'data' hard to consider a bad idea in and of itself, i.e. if data == information, records of things known/uttered at a point in time. Could you talk more about data being a bad idea?

Take a look here:

https://tekkie.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/sicp-what-is-meant-b...

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#668

Post by alankay1 » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 7:29 PM UTC

shkaboinka wrote: post #649

shkaboinka wrote: post #640

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Trygve Reenskaug (MVC inventer ) and Jim Coplien (Patterns/Hillside) developed the DCI paradigm as a way model code around the roles played by objects, rather than the concrete type (class) of each object. video: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Reflection-OOP-Social PDF: http://fulloo.info/Documents/RestoringFunctionAndFormToPatte... Website: http://fulloo.info/

Alan, of you are aware of DCI, what is your response to it? It (or more specifically, Jim Coplien) claims to build on your vision of OOP, but also criticises "emergence" within the OO vision. (Personally, I think those problems are design issues apart from the OO model)

We had a lot of fun with Trygve and we all learned a lot. I'm glad that they've been pushing at these issues.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#669

Post by alankay » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 7:31 PM UTC

richhickey wrote: post #643

alankay wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of "old and fundamental" ideas that are not good anymore, if they ever were. The point here is that you were able to find the interpreter of the sentence and ask a question, but the two were still separated. For important negotiations we don't send telegrams, we send ambassadors. This is what objects are all about, and it continues to be amazing to me that the real necessities and practical necessities…

Without the 'idea' of data we couldn't even have a conversation about what interpreters interpret. How could it be a "really bad" idea? Data needn't be accompanied by an interpreter. I'm not saying that interpreters are unimportant/uninteresting, but they are separate. Nor have I said or implied that data is inherently meaningful. Take a stream of data from a seismometer. The seismometer might just record a stream of…

2nd Paragraph: How do they know they are even bits? How do they know the bits are supposed to be numbers? What kind of numbers? Relating to what?

Etc

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#670

Post by alankay1 » Tue, Jun 21, 2016, 7:33 PM UTC

alehander42 wrote: post #650

alankay1 wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes.

Do you think some kind of more "flexible/fluid" syntax can help dyslexic people? Sometimes they are excellent at problem solving and architecture, but the micromanagement of syntax limits them.

Sure