
Alan Kay on Marshal McLuhan and the Personal Computer - antoniuschan99
http://kokonautlabs.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/alan-kay-on-marshal-mcluhan-and-the-personal-computer/
======
networked
A essentially similar view of technology's interrelation with media seems to
be held by the computing pioneer Ted Nelson. He, however, frames it in a much
more cynical way. In fact, the lack of care about its role as a medium with
which the computer was (and continues to be) developed left him disgruntled
with "technologists" as the social group responsible for this development.

 _A frying-pan is technology. All human artifacts are technology. But beware
anybody who uses this term. Like "maturity" and "reality" and "progress", the
word "technology" has an agenda for your behavior: usually what is being
referred to as "technology" is something that somebody wants you to submit to.
"Technology" often implicitly refers to something you are expected to turn
over to "the guys who understand it."_

 _This is actually almost always a political move. Somebody wants you to give
certain things to them to design and decide. Perhaps you should, but perhaps
not._

 _This applies especially to "media". I have always considered designing the
media of tomorrow to be an art form (though an art form especially troubled by
the politics of standardization). Someone like Prof. Negroponte of MIT, with
whom I have long had a good-natured feud, wants to position the design of
digital media as "technology". That would make it implicitly beyond the
comprehension of citizens or ordinary corporation presidents, therefore to be
left to the "technologists"-- like you-know-who._

[...]

 _Hypertext is not technology but Literature. Literature is the information
that we package and save (first just books and newspapers and magazines, now
movies and recordings and CD-ROMs and what-all). The design of tomorrow's
literature determines what the human race will be able to keep track of and
understand. These are not issues to be left to "technologists"._

(Source: <http://hyperland.com/TedCompOneLiners>)

Edit: What irks me somewhat about the above quote (and his other writings) is
Nelson's choice of the word "technologist", which he sometimes shortens to
"tekkie", to describe the kind of person who's too blinded by the shiny new
thing and too oblivious of his/her users' needs to care about the designing
whatever he or she produces for the long-term benefit of those users. I can't
think of a better alternative, though. Care to suggest one?

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Its so archaic to see terms like "the computer" thrown around. The term is
meaningless today as it was back then. What do we mean by this? My 286 DOS box
in my basement has nothing in common with Nexus. My 64 core server has nothing
to do with your newest Macbook. What he's really takling about is whole slew
of things like interfaces, UI, networking, protocols, etc. Sorry, but those
things are technology and should be worked on by technologists because there's
literally no on else who can work on them.

I hate this catch-all term that's just a strawman for critics to bash nerds
with. If "the computer" is awful, then it might have more to do with
management and the business owning class's inability to leverage all these
amazing technologies into a product the end user is comfortable with. While
nerds make an easy target, it behooves the ivory tower cynic to spread his
hate more evenly.

This is like Nelson pissing on the internal combustion engine and calling
every engineer in Detroit, Seoul, and Tokyo a dimwitted anti-social jerk
because his 1986 Datsun was a piece of crap. More than likely it was the
engineers who were breathlessly fighting against requirements that forced them
to deliver a substandard product. There's something too corportist for my
tastes about pissing on nerds and ignoring the business owners and upper
management who actually make the calls that determine how things will work in
the end.

Also, I really want to stress that the linked piece shows a very thoughtful
essay from Alan Kay regarding his thoughts on the dynabook and its intended
audience. So wait, Kay is the "tekkie" strawman we're supposed to hate? Sorry,
but if Nelson can't handle guys like Kay then who exactly is going to design
the future? Nelson? A group of elites he picks, making sure to carefully
discriminate against anyone who shows the slightest inclination towards
"tekkieness" which he solely identifies? Honestly, would Nelson even tolerate
Alan Kay? I doubt it.

Never meet your heroes. Heck, never read their opinion pieces.

~~~
mjn
_Sorry, but those things are technology and should be worked on by
technologists because there's literally no on else who can work on them._

That's exactly the viewpoint that he's arguing against: setting up
"technologists" as a kind of high-priest class, the only ones who understand
"computers", some nebulous thing that regular people shouldn't bother their
heads with, and instead should buy polished, well-engineered consumer
experiences. Like Kay and others, he's much more interested in a model of
technology that's less black-box. In particular, the thing they object to is
the merger of technology/business/design into designing these overarching
"experiences" which regular people are just supposed to "use". When such
experiences increasingly structure large parts of society, it becomes a bit
dangerous of they're all black boxes that regular people aren't supposed to
understand or exercise meaningful control over.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
A "high-priest class" that has tough salary caps and doesn't call the shots? A
"high-priest class" that openly publishes its documents and begs others to
learn coding and technology? A "high-priest class" whos majority is obsessed
with open source, open protocols, etc? Where is this black box? Oh right, it
comes down from upper management who is afraid that anything that isn't
completely locked down isn't profitable.

If anything technologists are an unusually egalitarian and idealistic group.
We're the good guys here. If you need a badguy here, go against the companies
that refuse to open code, spread FUD, and use embrace/extinguish strategies,
not the guy running his pet OSS project that he hopes will change the world.

Sorry, but this isn't the middle ages. There's no elite cabal controlling
information. The open exchange of ideas, the open market, and letting the best
product rise to the top is the winning strategy, and probably will always be
the winning strategy. Whining about elitists and conspiracies and having some
kind of "I knows a tekkie whens I sees one" attitude is insane.

~~~
antoniuschan99
If you watched the code.org
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nKIu9yen5nc))
it does shed some light that "Tekkies", are still the high priests.

I think everyone has encountered the situation where a friend says, "I have an
idea for an app! But I don't know how to build it." (Nor would they be eager
to learn). My friend who just started learning programming is an Financial
Analyst at Cisco and graduated with Honours in Finance. Even a smart guy like
him complains and groans as to how hard it is to learn this stuff. And he
hasn't even touched MVC and design patterns!

The web is still very open and I think there is a major cultural shift going
on where programmers are not seen as lowly geeks but as some sort of rockstar
(I think this attributes to Steve and Apple showing the world the sexy side of
computers, the wealth the Valley has created in an era of recession, and the
democratization of software, and also the ubiquity of computing).

But I do agree we're the good guys here. Perhaps we're being too general about
this and not including "managers in pointy hats" (who don't know how to code)
as Tekkies too? Since they dictate large portion of what programmers can and
cannot do?

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david927
This is a huge thought that will take me some time to digest.

By the way, the link at the bottom is broken. Here's a working link to the
paper: <http://proteus.fau.edu/practicum/texts/kay.pdf>

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jgrahamc
I think McLuhan's ideas are very relevant to the PC and services we use
through the Internet. I've argued this before on HN:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3836757>

------
vixen99
"If you want to read the essay, you can access it here." Sadly, not!

~~~
antoniuschan99
Hey, sorry about that!

I fixed it. Here's the link

<http://meidosem.com/work/articles/kay1990.pdf>

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nacker
"I find McLuhan hard to understand partly because I’m just not that smart.
Alan Kay on the other hand…" didn't understand him particularly well either,
finding much of what he wrote "obscure and arguable". In that, he is hardly
unusual:

<http://marshallmcluhanspeaks.com/introduction>

In fact, McLuhan put most of his emphasis on warning of the _dangers_ of
technology rather than being some design guru.

<http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhan.html>

~~~
antoniuschan99
thanks for this!

