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Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

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Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#691

Post by kgr »

Hi Alan,

In your paper "A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages", where you introduce the concept of the DynaBook, you explicitly say that the paper should be read as a work of science fiction. I understand that you're a big fan of science fiction. Do you draw any inspiration from science fiction when inventing the future?

Thanks,

Kevin

Related: I've given a talk on "What Computer Scientists can Learn From Science Fiction":

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CaieHjx9j24UFXq0GwmC...

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#692

Post by blihp »

alankay1 wrote: post #665
npm83 wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 langu…

Granted, names have their problems. But as a tactical solution URLs can be used to send high-level messages or at least as a name resolution scheme to initiate communication between two or more OO systems. And URLs are just names... (credit where it is due: I first heard the thought expressed by you and it gets the job done until something better comes along)

Admittedly this does not (directly) address the issue of sending processes (which could be handled indirectly as payload.) Or am I missing the bigger picture you're driving at here?

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#693

Post by alankay1 »

blihp wrote: post #692
alankay1 wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 langu…

Granted, names have their problems. But as a tactical solution URLs can be used to send high-level messages or at least as a name resolution scheme to initiate communication between two or more OO systems. And URLs are just names... (credit where it is due: I first heard the thought expressed by you and it gets the job done until something better comes along) Admittedly this does not (directly) address the issue of s…

Keep on turning the crank ...

What if you need something but don't know its name or URL? Etc.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#694

Post by pcunite »

fchopin wrote: post #421

Hi, Alan! Like many here, I'm a big fan of what you've accomplished in life, and we all owe you a great debt for the great designs and features of technologies we use everyday! The majority of us have not accomplished as much in technology, and many of us, though a minority, are in the top end of the age bell curve. I'm in that top end. I've found over the years that I've gone from being frustrated with the churn of…

>> what advice could you provide?

I'm not Mr. Kay, but great question!

I think we need a system, website, TV show, etc. in which experiences could be posted and rated. The best ideas and past experiences would rise to the top. You could vote and push things into view.

For example, your years of experience have realized that "yet another framework" is not the answer. We need a slower churn. But if the goal is to sell books ... well, now we are fighting capitalism.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#695

Post by gsylvie »

alankay1 wrote: post #224
DeepAndDark wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also like to know if he uses emacs or vim, or whatever. And if he thinks the editor is relevant.

Yikes!

YIKES stands for "Yes, I Kan Edit Stuff." It was designed and built by Alden Bates.

http://www.tetrap.com/software/yikes/

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#696

Post by dmix »

fogus wrote: post #547

I can think of no better person to ask than Alan Kay: What are the best books relevant to programming that have nothing to do with programming? (e.g. How Buildings Learn, Living Systems, etc.)?

I'm intersted in this question as well. I'd like to contribute to your e.g: Ant Encounters by Deborah M. Gordon.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#697

Post by corysama »

alankay1 wrote: post #521
corysama wrote: post #117

What are the first 3 books I should read on the topic of teaching tech to kids? Thanks!

What are the three best books you've read on teaching anything to kids? Let me know, and we'll start from there.

I am completely ignorant. So, it's going take a lot more than three books :) How about I blindly guess at my own answer and ask for alternatives?

1) Start with books like: How To Read A Book, Thinking Fast and Slow

2) Then, move on to books like: The Secret of Childhood, Instead of Education, Mindstorms

3) Then, you are ready for: Flow, The Children's Machine

Thanks for coming back to answer more questions.

If you've missed 'Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind', I do recommend it. IMHO, Gladwell's Blink was HBTM with most of the material replaced with funny stories.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#698

Post by freyir »

randomsearch wrote: post #454
alankay wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more than 23,000,000 books in the Library of Congress, and a good reader might be able to read 23,000 books in a lifetime (I know just a few people who have read more). So we are contemplating a lifetime of reading in which we might touch 1/10th of 1% of the extent books. We would hope that most of the ones we aren't able to touch are not useful or good or etc. So I think we have to put something more than…

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…

Recent research (along with past research) has cast doubt on the plausibility of extreme speed reading [1].

I don't mean to contradict Alan; no doubt he's a fast reader. But if you're actually reading an entire book every day or two, you're spending a lot of every day reading.

[1] http://psi.sagepub.com/content/17/1/4

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#699

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

internaut wrote: post #680
gkya wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mult…

The thing that disturbs me about this argument is that IMHO it's a slippery slope towards "back in my day, we didn't have this new-fangled stuff". We have to be extremely careful that our arguments have more substance than that. That requires a lot of introspection, to be honest.

See, my grandparents worried that the new technology that my parents grew up with would somehow make them dumber (growing up with radio, parents getting television); my parents' generation worried that the technology we grew up with would be bad for us (too much computer, too much gaming, too much Internet). The upcoming generation of parents will grow up wondering whether VR and AR is going to ruin their kids' chances.

Yet kids ALWAYS adapt. They don't view smartphones or tablets as anything particularly out of the ordinary. It's just their ordinary. I'm certain their brains will build on top of this foundation. That's the thing - brains are extremely adaptable. All of us adapted.

There's a term for this worry - it's called 'Juvenoia':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD0x7ho_IYc

http://time.com/19818/whats-really-wrong-with-young-people-t...

Now, I'm not saying that this is a discussion that shouldn't be had - it certainly should. I just think we all need to be mindful about where our concerns might be coming from.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#700

Post by contingencies »

alankay1 wrote: post #511
johntyree wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Love, sweet love.

And ... ????

Immediate, mutual, lucid comprehension of the shared challenges facing humanity (and our fellow beings) that lie beyond the traditional domain of both nations and weak, present-era international political bodies, so as to avoid further needless destruction and suffering. Unfortunately, so many people live on the treadmill of money that the motivational deficit perhaps must be addressed prior to the educational.
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