

Celebrating 70 years of Alan Kay - timclark
http://vpri.org/pov/
A nice book to celebrate his birthday, click on the picture for pdf.
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moserware
Excellent! It's fun to read about his impact from his friend's perspective
after meeting Alan in person (
[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/01/a-visit-with-
alan-k...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/01/a-visit-with-alan-
kay.html) )

Btw, the 32MB PDF under CC license: <http://piumarta.com/pov/points-of-
view.pdf>

~~~
abstractbill
From your first link:

 _Alan likes to use the example that our "pop culture" is more concerned with
"air guitar" and "Guitar Hero" rather than appreciating genuine beauty and
expressiveness of real instruments (even though it takes a bit longer to
master)._

I thought this was interesting, because I have a music teacher friend who says
she can fairly reliably tell which families have a games console at home. The
kids that do, and play Rock Band or something like it, are a long way ahead of
everyone else in developing a sense of rhythm and pitch.

~~~
SkyMarshal
They may have a sense of rhythm and pitch, but can they create beautiful (or
even just non-displeasing) music themselves?

Clicking colored buttons in order corresponding to colored lights on screen in
time to a beat != creative endeavor.

~~~
abstractbill
_Clicking colored buttons..._

If you've never played something like Rock Band (and it sounds like you
haven't), you should really give it a try. The drums are practically identical
to the real thing, and the vocal scoring is very good - if you get a high
score on one of those instruments, then you _are_ a good drummer or singer.
It's only the guitar that's done by clicking buttons.

~~~
SkyMarshal
I've played the on the Wii, forgot the name. Only did the guitar, though. Glad
to hear there's some artistic merit in it.

Having said that, singing/playing along to someone else's tune is a far cry
from actually composing the music yourself.

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jf
Lots of cool papers over at VPRI: <http://vpri.org/html/writings.php>

I'm particularly excited about STEPS:
<http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2009016_steps09.pdf>

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david927
Happy Birthday, Alan. Your vision and deep understanding of what we do and how
far we have to go, especially in an industry that thinks, like that apocryphal
Charles Duell quote, that we're already there, is a present to us all.

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temptemptemp2
More like 100 years of jackie chan.

I think this deserves a reddit quote cause I hate decade based
retrospectives/top 10 lists.

Alan kay is important enough to celebrate at all the time.

