Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today."
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Re: Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today."
#2Alan Kaye?!
Re: Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today."
#3Sounds like Alan Kay is looking at the world of business through a pinhole in the floor of his car when he'd be better off looking through the windshield.
Anybody can automate payroll, inventory, order processing, etc. In fact, almost everybody has. I call that "striking out the pitcher".
But only some people have figured out how to use sophisticated software to run simulations, mimic real world processes, and as Michael Gerber puts it, "Work on the business instead of working in the business."
Apparently Alan Kay doesn't see many of these businesses. He should. Because they're the ones who'll be left standing while the "automators" wonder what happened.
Re: Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today."
#4I think that the reason for this is that businesses are very reluctant to adopt revolutionary technologies. They are much more comfortable with technologies that offer a small and defined improvement over what they are using (eg. typewriter to word processor).
If you pitch something completely new, many people will look at you like you are from Mars. My startup's product has the potential to drastically improve the profitability of a lot of businesses. However, when we pitch it for what it is, people tend to react fairly violently, because it runs counter to a lot of their intuitions.
In order to get any traction, we have had to pitch it as an incremental improvement, with the real game changers hidden behind the scenes.
Re: Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today."
#5Sounds like Alan Kay is looking at the world of business through a pinhole in the floor of his car when he'd be better off looking through the windshield. Anybody can automate payroll, inventory, order processing, etc. In fact, almost everybody has. I call that "striking out the pitcher". But only some people have figured out how to use sophisticated software to run simulations, mimic real world processes, and as Mic…
I think this migth be some confusion between Mr Alan Kaye (http://people.forbes.com/profile/alan-kaye/51664) and Alan Kay of SmallTalk & Object Oriented fame.
Re: Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today."
#6I think that the reason for this is that businesses are very reluctant to adopt revolutionary technologies. They are much more comfortable with technologies that offer a small and defined improvement over what they are using (eg. typewriter to word processor). If you pitch something completely new, many people will look at you like you are from Mars. My startup's product has the potential to drastically improve the p…
They had to do that with Javascript, too.
Re: Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today."
#7I think that the reason for this is that businesses are very reluctant to adopt revolutionary technologies. They are much more comfortable with technologies that offer a small and defined improvement over what they are using (eg. typewriter to word processor). If you pitch something completely new, many people will look at you like you are from Mars. My startup's product has the potential to drastically improve the p…
I think you are right on. This is how fiber optics gained their foothold in the communication space. Coax was reaching its limits in terms of transmission amounts and cost of improvements, but people were skeptical of switching over to an unproven medium due to the many different technologies that had to come together to make it work (fibers, lasers, semiconductors). It took many iterations of fiber technology and many years, starting with "large" graded-index fibers with laser-based repeaters to get to tiny single-mode fibers with optical amplifiers.
Re: Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today."
#8I think that the reason for this is that businesses are very reluctant to adopt revolutionary technologies. They are much more comfortable with technologies that offer a small and defined improvement over what they are using (eg. typewriter to word processor). If you pitch something completely new, many people will look at you like you are from Mars. My startup's product has the potential to drastically improve the p…
I think that the reason for this is that businesses are very reluctant to adopt revolutionary technologies.
It's no surprise that the revolutionary technologies of the internet were developed and deployed by (gasp) the Government. It wasn't until the internet was already well-established that commercial interests started to pay attention.
Re: Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today."
#9Interesting side note: Alan Kay challenged the Stack Overflow community several months back asking for "Significant new inventions in computing since 1980" (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in...).
Re: Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today."
#10Sounds like Alan Kay is looking at the world of business through a pinhole in the floor of his car when he'd be better off looking through the windshield. Anybody can automate payroll, inventory, order processing, etc. In fact, almost everybody has. I call that "striking out the pitcher". But only some people have figured out how to use sophisticated software to run simulations, mimic real world processes, and as Mic…
I think this migth be some confusion between Mr Alan Kaye ( http://people.forbes.com/profile/alan-kaye/51664 ) and Alan Kay of SmallTalk & Object Oriented fame.
"Kaye" appears to be a typo. "Alan Kay" was interviewd by Fortune Magazine's "Fast Forward" column in the July 12, 2004 issue: http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/13/1226206.shtml