
Startup School 12: Alan Kay, Part II [video] - sama
https://www.startupschool.org/videos/12
======
tristanho
Probably going to send Mr. Kay an email about this, but since it seems he's
lurking about in these comments too:

You mention Outlook being "Gold", while IQ is lead. Outlook seems to be
something we can improve, both on a collective level, and also on an
individual level. You discuss a lot how to use this Outlook to invent the
future, but how can we develop our Outlook at more of a meta-level? If we want
to be the people capable of looking 50 years into the future and then bringing
our insights back to the present, how can we develop this skill?

I suspect the answer has something to do with reading good books and learning
from people who already have great outlooks.

~~~
alankay1
This is a really good question! It partly has to do with the "pink-plane/blue-
plane" idea (shown in lecture II and in lots of talks I've given) that I
adapted from Arthur Koestler's terrific book "Act of Creation". There is much
to think about there.

We are on the good side of this because we can look at history and get some
sense of qualitative changes of Outlook, and we can also look at Anthropology
and other behavioral sciences to get some sense of ways in which we are able
to get past some of our genetic behaviors to "piggy-back" new thoughts on top
of old mechanisms. Jerry Bruner used to call this "Goedelization" (which is an
interesting way to look at it -- it is a kind of Turing machine idea to make
more interesting machines from existing machines).

A key point is that "blue-plane explosions" like all ideas are most likely to
be mediocre down to bad. Because they seem to come from the heavens, in the
old days people would create religions around them; today we are expected to
vet ideas very carefully before proclaiming and working on them.

~~~
brain5ide
I think Richard Feynman explained the scientific progress quite similarly:
most of the time, the scientific understanding grows in complexity, as new
research is included into the existing body of knowledge and explaining more
different things. Then, at certain periods, there comes an idea, that changes
some underlying definitions, and provides a simpler explanation of a bigger
picture.

Elon Musk recently has also talked about, how thought process of physical
science appeals to him, because it tends to deconstruct systems into
fundamental parts, and then rebuild the explanation from them, rather than
using analogies.

So, I thought, that in order to imagine the progress of the next century we'd
need to define sort of a lowest energy state, towards which the humanity
should drift one way or another. However, I didn't have any of the fundamental
pieces, and I think you just laid them down quite nicely in this lecture.
Thanks Alan.

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pilingual
In a world where we 2x our podcasts some of the historical notes can seem slow
but are poignant. The latter part of the lecture has some nuggets that are
worth the 50 minutes.

To me, I think the key is to balance the universal with the non-universal to
forge progress.

One interesting connection is that in an earlier lecture Steve Huffman notes
they tried categories with Reddit but reverted. Here Kay explains why.

Incidentally, someone who calls out UX issues like the absence of a map in the
side entrance of the Gates building is my kind of person.

~~~
da02
I wish he was more direct and too-the-point. But, if he were, people would end
up accusing him of being rude. What's the polite way of saying, "If you can't
put a damn map on your poorly designed building, how are you going to solve
the big problems in the world?!"

~~~
alankay1
The difference between "provocative" and "rude" is probably in the eyes of the
beholders. As I alluded, the main job of giving a talk -- whether university
or elsewhere -- is to help all wake up, including the speaker!

~~~
da02
Right. I agree completely. Unfortunately, most people want to stay "asleep" in
The Swamp of Familiarity.

It also does not help in today's bubble economy: companies are financially
engineered and few innovations and inventions get made. A Big Idea to most
people now-a-days is: "A small idea that makes big profits". So your job to
cut through that and inspire people is a very important one.

~~~
ontouchstart
How can you tell the difference between "visional laziness" and "visional
blindness", i.e., too lazy to see or fail to see?

~~~
alankay1
If people realize they are effectively blind and are actively trying to see in
as many ways as possible, they are not being lazy. If they realize they are
blind and are not trying to see, then they are lazy. Most people just think
they can see and this is the toughest to get around.

~~~
ontouchstart
Good point. That is why we need powerful telescopes and microscopes as well as
powerful mathematical abstractions.

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nicklovescode
For those who haven't seen Bret Victor's incredible Inventing on Principle - I
think you'd like this talk if you enjoyed Alan's:
[https://vimeo.com/36579366](https://vimeo.com/36579366)

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aryehof
A big thank-you to Alan Kay for both videos. I found them very inspirational
and refreshingly... different. My big takeaway is that we need to not accept
the norm - but look to _new_ ways to think, view and do things. We need to
challenge our limited thinking. Love that Wayne Gretzky _method_.

------
asrp
I found that ball animation to paint demo very interesting. But what if
instead of an array of frames, the animation was a function from time to
images such as

circle(x=time, y=-time*time, r=10)

so a render can get the information it needs but there aren't individual
frames to edit.

In general, what happens to interoperability if different programs/projects
represent the same things, like images and animations, very differently?

And how security could be handled in such a system? Either against a malicious
or haywire programs/project?

~~~
alankay1
One way to approach this question is to ask "how can I always cut and paste
-something- from one regime to another?"

Take a look at capability protection -- it covers most of these cases
reasonably well.

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bsaul
Don't mean to be rude, but has alan kay effectively created any successful
start up himself ? I've always loved his historical talks about what research
was like in the 70s, but i find it surprising to see him giving talks in
something called startup school.

~~~
alankay1
I was specifically invited to talk about "invention vs innovation" and about
making "an industry vs a company" \-- that wasn't clear in the syllabus.

However, just to make you feel better (I hope), I did do a startup in grad
school (called "Creative X").

------
alexkon
Okay, let’s wake up and dream away. What kind of distant future would you like
to be part of?

~~~
tim333
The 30 years out from this point is interesting/tricky because at some stage
during that period computer AI will become probably become smarter than humans
which will change a lot of things. It's not really possible to bring super-
intelligent robots back to the now by spending money because Google etc are
already spending a lot of money on AI research so we'll just have to wait a
bit.

Still there a lots of ways it could play out - heaven like or hell like so
maybe it's good to think about it and try stuff.

~~~
alankay1
But is Google spending money on the fruitful ideas? Pick something you care
about that is good for people and see what happens when you take it out and
then bring it back.

~~~
libertine
This may sound odd: but haven't you ever felt overwhelmed when you take it
out, to the point where you don't know where the threshold is, when you try to
bring it back?

Where some kind of inner-voice says: "How do you even dare to think of that,
you have no ideia how to do it...", like if only some are entitled to dream.

I'm afraid that may be the byproduct of the lack of knowledge to try to break
the problem even to the smallest achievable parts, with current or near-future
technology developments.

How can one tackle this? Is there a process? Should we just try to blindly
find what matters/systems are involved, study them, and connect them? Because
we should take responsibility for our vision.

Should we just pack our vision, display it to the world and see if it
resonates on people who have knowledge in such areas required to achieve it?

Or should we simply drop it, and move on to the next one?

~~~
alankay1
Wayne Gretsky: "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take". Baseball: 70% not
hitting is just the overhead for the 30% hitting.

I.e. it's no big deal if you don't wrap your identity around it. My self
criticism was all about being able to grind well enough with my colleagues to
finish some of the ideas rather than my tendency to go off and have more.

As they use to say in the 60s "Keep on a truckin'"

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alishan-l
Dear Mr. Kay,

What are some resources to learn more about the 90% of programming ideas
created at PARC that did not come out? Which do you think hold the most
potential for the future?

Thank you

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QuickOne
Why did biological inspiration for object-oriented programming stop at cell-
to-cell communication? What about levels below (organelles) and above
(tissues, organs)?

~~~
alankay1
It didn't actually, but in this case the computer allows things cleaner than
biology. We could have gone a lot farther in making the interior of an object
a real object space rather than what we did. Years later we did try that, and
it is a good idea.

Also, take a look at the article I wrote for Scientific American in September
1984 "Software" that talks about organizations of active objects as "tissue
programming"

~~~
QuickOne
Thank you, I have found it and I will read it carefully.

------
justin66
Would love to get my hands on the handout from Part I, if nothing else to see
the bibliography :)

~~~
alankay1
I think they are going to post these. But I also think that essay "The Power
of the Context" is available online. Did you even try to type this into
Google? I just did and the pdf seems to be the first hit ...

~~~
xiaoma
When I type "the power of context" into Google, the front page is dominated by
Malcom Gladwell and your essay is absent, sadly.

Fortunately, it looks like the PDF is now linked from the talk:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/knngq11tzdi0tdh/Alan%20Kay%20-%20T...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/knngq11tzdi0tdh/Alan%20Kay%20-%20The%20Power%20of%20the%20Context.pdf?dl=0)

~~~
alankay1
I asked whether you typed "The power of the context" not what you read "The
power of context". Try to do just what I suggested and see what you get.

~~~
xiaoma
Wow! This is really illustrates a theme of the talk. I was completely blind to
the 2nd "the", even the first two times I read your follow-up comment.

~~~
alankay1
I'm glad you mentioned it. There's lots of evidence (even from the emails I've
been getting) that most people might be skimming even sentences and guessing,
rather than actually reading the words. This could partly be from the way they
test reading in schools, and partly from the oral nature of most writed (e.g
Twitter) on the web.

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gleb
Dr. Kay, do you consider Erlang/Elixir object oriented, in your original
meaning of OO?

~~~
alankay1
Very much in the same spirit as I thought about it back in the 60s. I don't
think I invented "Object-oriented" but more or less "noticed" what was really
powerful about just making everything from complete computers communicating
with non-command messages. This was all chronicled in the HOPL II chapter I
wrote "The Early History of Smalltalk".

A critical part of that thought process was the idea of using Carl Hewitt's
PLANNER ideas as the interface to objects -- that was done around 1970, and we
used some of it in the first Smalltalk (72).

------
da02
Did he just tell off the Stanford audience, "No one here reads, except for
Sam."?

He reminded me of this anecdote: In an intro to Anthropology video on
Stanford's YouTube channel. The professor passed out a questionnaire that
included, "Why are you taking this class?". Someone wrote, "Yes". I expected
that kind of response in my biz classes @ CUNY, but not @ Stanford.
Especially, in an Anthropology class.

~~~
tim333
He had a few digs at the audience including saying they were maybe not very
interesting as they hadn't sent him good questions. There seems a bit of I/we
are so great, everything else is crap. Part of his style I guess.

~~~
alankay1
I said "either my talk is not interesting, or you (the audience) is not
interesting, or both. Please try to disabuse me of the latter".

Please try to be more diligent about what you are complaining about. It's
clear that I didn't mean remotely what you imply.

Why wouldn't you take the trouble to check your memory before writing the
above?

~~~
coldwaraaron
Zing.

I enjoyed the hell out of both videos and will be watching them again because
there was so much to unpack there. I didn't send an email because it's
intimidating to email someone who has affected my life in so many ways, but I
will take this opportunity to thank you for your work and for sharing your
ideas in these videos.

~~~
alankay1
Please do email -- I don't even bark much, and bite not at all.

