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Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

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Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#121

Post by kragen »

infinite8s wrote: post #116
kragen wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you'll probably have to talk to the dynamicland folks; i'm not sure what their current strategy is for getting it out into the world, but it doesn't seem to be the obvious 'upload the software to gitlab and hope for the best' approach

Bret plans on publishing everything this Spring - https://twitter.com/worrydream/status/1753116042254340526

that sounds very appealing, but it doesn't say he's publishing everything

> Dynamicland's new research website will be up in the spring.

> current status:

> 1156 pages

> 11,120 images

> 693 videos

> 56 pdfs

(https://nitter.privacydev.net/worrydream/status/175311604225...)

noticeably missing from this list is source code, unless that's on the 1156 pages

i'm sure i'll devour them eagerly, though

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#123

Post by ProllyInfamous »

morphle wrote: post #89
ProllyInfamous wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC This follows Alan Kay (as well as dozens of others) through their groundbreaking research at Xerox's research lab in Palo Alto, primarily during the 70s. You will learn how these visionaries and personalities were largely at war with themselves, while HQ (2,000 miles away) largely ignored any of their marvelous outputs... until it was too late. ---- I just checked this morning, and wa…

Xerox made a ROI of 20000% on the laser printer alone [1]. A better version lecture Alan did for Ycombinator startups [2] but doesn't focus on the return of investment. Xerox did shrink a bit since then. [1] https://youtu.be/NdSD07U5uBs?t=1828 [2] https://youtu.be/1e8VZlPBx_0?t=975

From my few hours of research on Xerox PARC, the laser printer did make a huge return (as you note, correctly); it's just "typical Xerox" that the engineers who invented LASER printing (i.e. using a laser to scan) also had to sit on their invention for years because the executive/sales teams didn't believe in an already-functional technology (the first decade of Xerox "non-ink printers" used visible light; the laser literally had to be forced into the Xerox equipment by R&D..!

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#124

Post by cxr »

sp332 wrote: post #79
lawrenceyan wrote: post #45

Wow, this guy Vannevar Bush was the definition of being early: > Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.

Actually I still don't know of a good way to make a path along several links and share that path with someone else later.

We've been doing it. Write a paper (or a comment) with footnotes that link in order to the resources that should be included in the trail. At your peril, feel free to add as little context as possible (down to none—so it's just the links).

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#126

Post by cxr »

morphle wrote: post #104
asolove wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also very curious about this. I’ve been slowly building one myself and would happily give up if another good one already exists. Tried searching the web and can’t find it.

There was a CDClabs github version and the Frank/STEPS code. Contact me, its burried in my 20 TB archive.

CDG Labs. But this is not it: https://github.com/cdglabs/sketchpad14>

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#127

Post by blessedonekobo »

nomilk wrote: post #2

I heard of Alan Kay via Steve Jobs's intro of the iPhone [1], but otherwise know little about him - can anyone recommend other Alan Kay talks/essays/books? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQKMoT-6XSg&t=10m2s

This probably my favorite because it was mostly unscripted

Alan Kay : July 2007 : A Conversation with CMU Faculty & Students

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFc379hu--8

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#128

Post by lproven »

kragen wrote: post #23
6510 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The funniest to me was when he was 5 he read about 150 books: "I hit first grade, and I already knew the teachers were lying to me"

he elaborates on how concepts and ideas and schooling are misleading by nature quite a bit in the talk, though if he says that sentence i haven't gotten to it yet. (i've seen him say it elsewhere) https://youtu.be/dZQ7x0-MZcI?t=8m33s 'our minds are like theaters. (...) we treat our beliefs as reality. that is the worst thing about human beings. and these theaters are tiny; we can only think of a few things at once, i…

> i keep being optimistic but you people make me so sad

This is so very true.

I am not a hippy, but I can't immediately thing of a better phrase than the immense toxic "negative energy" of HN comments.

And yet, when I say this to people outside of HN, they tend to react with astonishment. "But it's my favourite place online! I love it! I learn so much!" etc.

I don't think the site even realises, but its negative responses to this (deeply unwise and ill-considered) "Ask HN" question changed the direction of what was the most innovative company in the Linux space:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14002821

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#129

Post by lproven »

linguae wrote: post #39
skadamat wrote: post #13

I wish we had a popular operating system for end users like ourselves that was “live” all the way down. It’s unfortunate we’ve been stuck with Windows, Mac, and Linux only

I have the same dream. A part of me wishes Richard Stallman set out on making a Lisp OS instead of making a Unix clone, but this was the mid-1980s and thus I understand the technical limitations and the social environment of the time. The 1990s could’ve been a better time; workstations and commodity PCs were powerful enough to run an entire Lisp or Smalltalk operating system, and there would’ve been substantial inter…

> A part of me wishes Richard Stallman set out on making a Lisp OS instead of making a Unix clone

Oh so very much so, yes!

Re: Alan Kay's talk at UCLA – Feb 2024 [video]

#130

Post by lproven »

infinite8s wrote: post #93
morphle wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dream isn't dead, a number of people are working on it. Several live systems are demonstrated in talks on Youtube. There are several working systems and even a real OS with native device drivers on modern bare hardware. You can run legacy code under its qemu sandbox, but that is added only to broaden its appeal to customers as this part is not 'live'.

Sadly the work from the STEPS project seems to have disappeared, especially the Frank software he used in some talks. That looks like it would have been very interesting to play with.

> Sadly the work from the STEPS project seems to have disappeared

Unfortunately that phrase -- steps project -- is effectively un-Googleable.

Do you have a link at all please?

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