Not Alan Kay

@geoffreylitt @ShriramKMurthi @yminsky @Gilad_Bracha @Bootstrapworld Hopefully we’re all trying to maximize Sistine Chapel ceilings per lifetime.

I am too much of a romantic to fully let go of the beauty of Alan's ideas, but I really enjoy hearing your perspective which is so grounded in real world experience :) a general worry I do have with the anti-constructionist view is always that it focuses more on efficient short term learning (did you master the subject this quarter) over a vague long term sense of self-direction, which is much harder to measure. feels like some connection to over-scheduling kids in enrichment programs vs. letting them run around all summer.

I wonder how many people get the reference

@syntacrobat I’m proud of you, my son.

can't believe i'm saying this but i'm only just now *really* understanding object-oriented programming

@azlenelza Thank you for digitizing these old clips. Important historical context that most people have never bothered to learn.

Computer history by Balenciaga

@gypsydave5 @a_sarentorbic @davefarley77 I never left

@a_sarentorbic @davefarley77 Just going to leave this here: blog.khinsen.net/posts/2020/05/… This isn't going to happen until the tooling improves. We need Smalltalk! Come back Alan Kay, all is forgiven!

Top prediction for the 'future of software development'? 👇

@pvh @_adamwiggins_ Technology is anything invented after you were born.

@_adamwiggins_ Absolutely. To quote Douglas Adams: "Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works." Of course we can better predict where things might go if we understand how things got to be where they are.

It's just not an Ink & Switch essay without a few historical plates...

@jonathoda Glad to hear it. Informed criticism has completely been done in by the web. Because the web has produced so much uninformed criticism. Bad criticism drives good criticism out of circulation. You just can't criticize anything.

Thanks for all the support! I've undeleted those blog posts. I added a bit to the end of alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=1475 acknowledging the progress in technology needed by the MegaTechCorps

@dennnis @JanPaul123 @JeffBezos I hope not!

@JanPaul123 @NotAlanKay @JeffBezos Bezos enlightened, Alan Kay pedestrian.

Two interviews about invention, with @NotAlanKay / @JeffBezos. One is incredibly enlightened, and one is surprisingly pedestrian. Guess which is which. youtube.com/watch?v=tXoSK4… and youtube.com/watch?v=xBF7cs…

@abee2 Looking good

Oculus Quest 2 is a personal computer. I mean it is a kind of interim Dynabook of Alan Kay. In other words, it is the latest version of Alto. vpri.org/pdf/hc_pers_co…

@drscotthawley Thanks !

Last night I watched 1 hour 30 minutes of Alan Kay from 1987. This video does not disappoint! re. pedagogy, learning, interactivity, neuroscience,... youtu.be/p2LZLYcu_JY

@harshad_geek @vedang @worrydream Glad to hear it

@vedang @worrydream Thanks and I agree. Bret Victor's links got me to Alan Kay. Which got me to Papert. Solid stuff!

When I read Mindstorms by Seymour Papert, I want to run around, scream at the top of my voice, ask everyone to read it. It sets off a powerful surge of ideas. Then you realise the book was written in 1987. And look at the world around and think.. "What happened to the future?"

@viveka @JennaPrice @whereisdaz True, it is very hard to get the right type of funding.

This asks some good questions about how universities are responding to the crisis @JennaPrice, but all those people lost to higher-ed aren’t going to evaporate, they’re just taking their energy and ideas elsewhere. smh.com.au/national/austr…

@modernserf Ouch!

i know this is very specific to my niche but maybe your confusion is because alan kay is as full of shit as anyone else is

@otto_thorpe I do

@mdbergmann Thanks!

@otto_thorpe @OnlySams69 @GeorgieTarr Thanks

@hellbox Thanks, we all need to try to escape the current context to do it.

@SriniKadamati @AdamMarblestone @Jonathan_Blow Happy to help

@AdamMarblestone @Jonathan_Blow Read the Dream Machine and email Alan Kay to get the PARC / “good ol research days” context! Lots of fresh ideas I feel that just need rejuvenating

After an awesome two years at DeepMind, I’m leaving tomorrow and will be working full-time on identifying and roadmapping promising new “mini-Manhattan projects”, i.e., “Focused Research Organizations (FROs)”, and trying to help them happen. Talk to me if you have one in mind!

@Kishore65612592 It was easy because the GUI that I was creating was meant for children...

@NotAlanKay I've heard Alan can read a book in under a minute whilst inventing the GUI whilst playing a Charlie Christian guitar solo without breaking a sweat.

I've often said I read 100s of books a year. This actually a slight underestimate. It's closer to about 100 books a week.

@PhD_Frog Sorry about that, I had things to do! When can I come pick up my stuff?

@6a68 @ianbicking I covered some of this here (on the Smalltalk side of things) worrydream.com/EarlyHistoryOf…

@ianbicking In terms of history of ideas, feel like Alan Kay and Dan Ingalls covered this in their work: fitting language features to a "yardstick of expressive power", point of view being worth 80 IQ points, etc. Peter Norvig and Dijkstra touched on this stuff too