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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

#721

Post by tremon »

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…

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

I know this is bandied about a lot, but is this actually proven? With the exception of drugs, all of those you mention have been within easy reach for me (actually, as a Dutchman, even softdrugs were just one step away if I'd wanted to). Yet I don't consider myself addicted to any of those.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#722

Post by michaelscott »

astrobe_ wrote: post #626
michaelscott wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because when things go sideways a human can't fix anything without copious amounts of reading/testing/poking around? I'm taking your meaning of "explain" literally here, which might be shortsighted. Either way, the idea of machines or systems as "living" and able to communicate intent and process, even if only within their own "umwelt", is really interesting. Even a taste of that would make modern systems easier to d…

I believe he is referring to something like expert systems explanations, which was the holy grail 20 years ago (I don't know if it has been achieved), and as opposed to neural networks which are more like black boxes (at least to me).

Ah I see, that's quite interesting. So the idea of a system that could explain its own decision-making and inferences?

Neural networks definitely are black boxes, at least at an individual level. Sure the concept remains the same generally, but the internals are different and hidden from case to case

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#723

Post by ycombinatorMan »

alankay wrote: post #69
guelo wrote: post #20

When you were envisioning today's computers in the 70s you seemed to have been focused mostly on the educational benefits but it turns out that these devices are even better for entertainment to the point were they are dangerously addictive and steal time away from education. Do you have any thoughts on interfaces that guide the brain away from its worst impulses and towards more productive uses?

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 a decade beyond 1995 (Moore's original extrapolation) that things like television and other "legal drugs" would be possible. We already had a very good sense of this before TV things were possible from noting…

Who is it a problem for? Why is it a problem?

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#724

Post by ycombinatorMan »

>this is stealing my life

Really? Because I quite enjoy my "Wasted" time. I can't imagine what situation you could possibly be in that not only is it not enough for you not to "waste" time being happy, but you need other people to do the same. You are whats wrong with the world.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#725

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

alankay wrote: post #130
di wrote: post #66

Hi Alan, In "The Power of the Context" (2004) you wrote: ...In programming there is a wide-spread 1st order theory that one shouldn’t build one’s own tools, languages, and especially operating systems. This is true—an incredible amount of time and energy has gone down these ratholes. On the 2nd hand, if you can build your own tools, languages and operating systems, then you absolutely should because the leverage that…

This is a tough question. (And always has been in a sense, because every era has had projects where the tool building has sunk the project into a black hole.) It really helped at Parc to work with real geniuses like Chuck Thacker and Dan Ingalls (and quite a few more). There is a very thin boundary between making the 2nd order work vs getting wiped out by the effort. Another perspective on this is to think about "not…

well, in this talk it sounds like you do advocate tool building - isn't tool building a way to try elliptic orbits instead of the circular ones ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs 'Power of simplicity'

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#728

Post by gkya »

tremon wrote: post #721
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…

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 I know this is bandied about a lot, but is this actually proven? With the exception of drugs, all of those you mention have been within easy reach for me (actually, as a Dutchman, even softdrugs were just one step away if…

I'm not a native speaker of English, so I wonder: does kid not mean person not yet adolescent? I'm referring to 0-14 yrs olds when I say kid. If we agree on that, and you still say, it's not proven, we can try, well then I can't do much than hoping you either don't have children or no child's responsibility is on you otherwise.

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#729

Post by randomsearch »

alankay1 wrote: post #674
randomsearch wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

Thanks.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11803165

Re: Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

#730

Post by gkya »

Fr0styMatt88 wrote: post #699
internaut wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, pa…

I never said myself that tech per se will make kids dumber. What I say is, there should be measures governing their exposure, just like there are for other things.

Just like an alcohol drinker and an alcohol addict are different, an internet user and an internet addict are different too. Just because some or most are not addicts, we can't dismiss the addiction altogether.

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