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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]

#81

Post by kjkjadksj »

vasco wrote: post #74
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because computers are dumb servants. And that's a good thing, because computer solutions should be task specific. The human has agency and sometimes imagination, and the computer's job is to solve a problem as transparently as possible with as little cognitive load as possible. Human language is optimised for human relationships , not for task-specific problem solving. It's full of subtext, context, and implic…

> And that's a good thing, because computer solutions should be task specific Why? I enjoyed your comment but I don't follow why this is obvious? Why should computer solutions be task specific rather than general?

So that when you ask what 1+1 is you get 2 and not a general solution

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

#82

Post by kjkjadksj »

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.

Symlink to a shared directory

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

#83

Post by morphle »

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…

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'.

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

#84

Post by gjvc »

coldtea wrote: post #70
boxfire wrote: post #4

The idea of computing as the shared stage to reflect our own intelligence is really what sticks out to me as the best way to frame what interacting with a computer means. It's not new but Alan did a great job of motivating and framing it here. Thanks for posting this great reminder that what we use as computers today are still only poor imitations of what could truly be done if we can transport our minds to be more d…

> The idea of computing as the shared stage to reflect our own intelligence We tried that, and it worked briefly. But the end result is the modern web/app landscape: commercialization, tits and cats, hating, techo-feudal and government control, partisanship bs, spam, narcisism - and rare sprinkles of intelligence here and there.

We tried that, and it worked briefly.

Where and when?

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

#85

Post by morphle »

nomilk wrote: post #51
e12e wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the sibling link, I'd highlight: Alan Kay: A powerful idea about teaching ideas at TED (2007) https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Alan_Kay:_A_powerful_idea... Alan Kay: Normal Considered Harmful (2009) https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Alan_Kay:_Normal_Consider... Back to the Future of Software Development (2003) https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Back_to_the_Future_of_Sof... All of the STEPS reports - I especia…

Thanks a lot for this (and to other posters). 20 minutes into Normal Considered Harmful and can tell I'm going to binge watch/listen to Kay over the next few weeks. Extremely appreciative.

There are more than 142 hours of Alan Kay talks I'm aware of. If you are going to binge-watch some of these, I'd be happy to help filter out the most relevant parts for you. Not all talks are about computing, for example.

We can then publish some of the topics lists of each talk for others, so they can save time. We can also do this for the many papers [2] book reading lists [3] and lecture notes [4].

[1] https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay

[2] https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Papers_from_Viewpoints_Re...

[3] http://www.squeakland.org/resources/books/readingList.jsp

[4] https://internetat50.com/references/Kay_How.pdf

By no means this is a complete list, you can contact me morphle at ziggo dot nl for a chat on how to compile a complete list.

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

#86

Post by cmrdporcupine »

wwweston wrote: post #63
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the machine should be a humanity-amplifier, not a humanity-replacement. “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” Frank Herbert, Dune

Herbert is describing a humanity amplifying phenomenon.

Herbert saw machine-thinking / AI as taking away human-ness, not adding to it. Or at least his Bene Gesserit did. Many quotes throughout the series about the corrosive effects of letting humans defer their complicated choices to machines, etc.

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

#87

Post by morphle »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #52
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

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…

Alan thinks [0] "The Dream Machine" book [1] is the only accurate and good book on Xerox PARC.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22379275

[1] The Dream Machine" by M. Mitchell Waldrop

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

#88

Post by ProllyInfamous »

morphle wrote: post #87
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…

Alan thinks [0] "The Dream Machine" book [1] is the only accurate and good book on Xerox PARC. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22379275 [1] The Dream Machine" by M. Mitchell Waldrop

Wow, thanks for both links! From Alan's HN/u comment, it does still appear that Dealers of Lightning is a worthwhile read ("nowhere near the bottom"—A.Kay), just confusing (chronologically) at times [I agree].

I've added Dream Machine to my reading list (but will wait a year, as I just finished Dealer's Lightning early 2024).

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

#89

Post by morphle »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #52
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

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

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

#90

Post by pholbrook »

Rochus wrote: post #6
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

https://worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOfSmalltalk/

This is an outstanding paper; one of my favorites in all of computing. Read it and marvel at all that Kay has been part of.
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