Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

671–680 of 931 posts

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#671

Post by randomsearch »

alankay wrote: post #470
randomsearch wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General question about this figure, which I've seen before: > read 23,000 books in a lifetime As a very conservative lower bound, a person who lives to the age of 80 would have to read 0.79 books per day, from the day they were born, to reach this figure. Or, to put it another way, who has read 288+ books in the last year? I'm quite sceptical about this figure. Any thoughts as to how this might be possible? Are the p…

Yes, it is possible. It is partly developing a kind of fluency that is very similar to sight-reading music (this is a nice one to think about because you really have to grok what is there to do it, and you have to do it in real time at "prima vista"). Doing a lot of it is one of the keys! Doing it in a way that various short and long-term memories are involved is another key (rapid reading with comprehension of both…

I was late to this and didn't expect a reply, so thanks for taking the time to come back and respond!

I agree with the practice, as for some periods I've noticed an increase in speed when I've been consistently reading every day.

Regarding the second point - short and long-term memory - do you have a link or other suggestion for where to learn more, please?

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#672

Post by randomsearch »

di4na wrote: post #457
randomsearch wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

General question about this figure, which I've seen before: > read 23,000 books in a lifetime As a very conservative lower bound, a person who lives to the age of 80 would have to read 0.79 books per day, from the day they were born, to reach this figure. Or, to put it another way, who has read 288+ books in the last year? I'm quite sceptical about this figure. Any thoughts as to how this might be possible? Are the p…

AS someone that read at least one book per day if not more since the age of 6, yes it is possible. I can read between 100 to 200 page per hour, depending of the book. You reach a storage and money problem fast (Ebook are a savior nowadays). And you tend to have multiple books open at the same time. How does it work? There are several strategy. First i read fast. Experience and training make you read really fast. Seco…

Thanks. What type of training did you do?

I'm not keen on skipping chapters! Do you do the same with non-fiction?

Another question - how do you keep track of what you've read? (would be happy to hear from others esp. Alan on the same topic)

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#673

Post by alankay1 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #661
alankay1 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 huma…

I will just reply that many of my best friends wound up at SFI and I've had a long association, etc.

And that -- I think you realize this -- what I was advocating is something simpler than the "Big History" idea ...

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#674

Post by alankay1 »

randomsearch wrote: post #671
alankay wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is possible. It is partly developing a kind of fluency that is very similar to sight-reading music (this is a nice one to think about because you really have to grok what is there to do it, and you have to do it in real time at "prima vista"). Doing a lot of it is one of the keys! Doing it in a way that various short and long-term memories are involved is another key (rapid reading with comprehension of both…

I was late to this and didn't expect a reply, so thanks for taking the time to come back and respond! I agree with the practice, as for some periods I've noticed an increase in speed when I've been consistently reading every day. Regarding the second point - short and long-term memory - do you have a link or other suggestion for where to learn more, please?

There was quite a bit of discussion about this on the HN gig about my long ago "reading list"

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#675

Post by alankay1 »

lucasArg wrote: post #644
alankay1 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Simple" is not the main force in a good programming language

And, in your opinion, what is the _main force_ in a good programming language? Or maybe the top 3 :)

Why don't you try to pick a few, and I'll try to comment?

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#676

Post by discreteevent »

alankay1 wrote: post #480
discreteevent wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I've been thinking about your questions. I might be misreading you but I think that the answer is probably yes to both. So we should try to get out of the middle ages by inventing new theories and criticising and testing them like physics. But maybe just the physicists should do that. In the meantime the engineers should focus on being able to communicate clearly with the best tools that are currently availab…

Engineering is wonderful -- but think of what happened after real science got invented! Today's "computer science" is much more like "library science" than it should be on the one hand, and too much coincident with engineering on the other (and usually not great engineering at that). It's way past time for our not-quite-a-field to grow up more in important ways.

Agreed. It's really motivating to have someone who has shown a few times what can be done continuing to push for better. It's also helpful for you call a spade a spade when you talk of reinventing the flat tire. If more people would recognise both of these then maybe we could have a better future and more stable engineering present (rather than framework/language of the week!)

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#677

Post by richhickey »

mmiller wrote: post #667
richhickey wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Data, and the entirety of human understanding and knowledge derived from recording, measurement and analysis of data, predates computing, so I don't see the relevance of these recent, programming-centric notions in a discussion of its value.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#678

Post by alankay1 »

discreteevent wrote: post #676
alankay1 wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineering is wonderful -- but think of what happened after real science got invented! Today's "computer science" is much more like "library science" than it should be on the one hand, and too much coincident with engineering on the other (and usually not great engineering at that). It's way past time for our not-quite-a-field to grow up more in important ways.

Agreed. It's really motivating to have someone who has shown a few times what can be done continuing to push for better. It's also helpful for you call a spade a spade when you talk of reinventing the flat tire. If more people would recognise both of these then maybe we could have a better future and more stable engineering present (rather than framework/language of the week!)

It would be very good if we starting to do real engineering and real science wrt software and most design ...

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#679

Post by duncanawoods »

alankay1 wrote: post #555
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)

Thanks for your time!

I remember Sama saying that you thought the missing component of remote tools could be something chemical so I was hoping to hear something along those lines. Discovering such mechanisms would be truly exciting!

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#680

Post by internaut »

gkya wrote: post #664
internaut wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I agree. it is pretty sobering.

Just yesterday before this thread even started (I work as part-time cleaner) I was polishing a window. Through it I saw some children in a sitting room, one of who was literally standing centimeters away from a giant flat screen television. Glued to it.

I thought: "Fuck, they don't have a chance". Their attention spans will be torn to pieces like balls of wool by tiny kittens. Now multiply that effect with the Net + VR and you have an extraordinary psychological effect best compared to a drug.

I didn't have a television in my childhood. I read countless books, and without them, I wouldn't be sitting here, I wouldn't have done any of the things I could reasonably consider inventive or innovative. They might not be world changing things, but they were mine and my life was better for doing so.

I was speaking to a friend who has children a few months ago. He was in the process of uploading photos of his family to Facebook. I asked him whether he considered what he was doing to be a moral act, since he is for practical purposes feeding his children's biometrics into a system that they personally have not, and could not, opt in to. He was poleaxed by the thought. He was about to say something along the lines of 'well everybody's doing this' but I could visibly see the thought struck him that "wow, that's actually a really bad line of reasoning I was about to make". Instead he agreed with me, uncomfortably, but he got it.

I don't know how you get millions of people to have that kind of realization. I do think parental responsibility has a huge role though. My parents got rid of the television in the 80s. It was the right thing to do.

Post reply on HN