
Alan Kay at Startup School [video] - sama
https://www.startupschool.org/videos/11
======
_pius
I've seen him give this great talk before, but IMO the delivery this time
feels rushed and a bit disjointed. That said, the last few minutes summarize
his powerful "Gretzky Game" idea so succinctly that they're worth the price of
admission alone.

I would recommend watching the last 18 seconds of this version (starting at
[https://youtu.be/ZDM33CMJvp8?t=3452](https://youtu.be/ZDM33CMJvp8?t=3452)),
internalizing the Gretzky Game slide on the screen, backing it up and watching
the fuller explanation in the preceding ~3 minutes (starting at 54:18,
[https://youtu.be/ZDM33CMJvp8?t=3258](https://youtu.be/ZDM33CMJvp8?t=3258)),
and then finally watching a different, more expansive version of the talk like
this one, given at Qualcomm:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs).

Oddly specific advice, I know, but hopefully helpful to somebody.

~~~
leoc
Now this right here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs?t=1362](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs?t=1362)
is the problem: if you follow the idea of computers as virtualisers where it
leads you do _not_ , in the general case, end up with the flat backplane
talked about from 23:15 and shown in the accompanying slide. (Actually, this
is in turn probably just a symptom of another, more general problem.)

------
poppingtonic
I just realized where the 'V' logo in "Viewpoints Research Institute" came
from (you can see it here: [0]):

The diagram comes from the book "The Act of Creation"[1], where Arthur
Koestler discusses the common themes in creative acts, including the idea of
juxtaposition.

In research, you start with a baseline level of knowledge and do a random walk
until you encounter a (not necessarily) totally orthogonal set of ideas. Once
you combine the two, boom! Something new is created. A lovely book, that I'd
recommend to anyone.

[0] [http://www.vpri.org](http://www.vpri.org) [1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Creation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Creation)

------
ericssmith
Kay mentions The Dream Machine, which in my opinion is one of the better books
on some of the early work in computing systems. Heartily recommend it.

[http://amzn.to/2r5cf0h](http://amzn.to/2r5cf0h)

~~~
stanlarroque
Indeed this book is incredible. He talks about it here :
[https://www.quora.com/What-made-Xerox-PARC-special-Who-
else-...](https://www.quora.com/What-made-Xerox-PARC-special-Who-else-today-
is-like-them/answer/Alan-Kay-11?share=1) I highly recommend it.

------
Suncho
I like the philosophy of going out into the future and bringing it back into
the present. I feel like a lot of startups are making an error in failing to
do this.

For example, in the not-to-distant future, we won't need parking spaces.
You'll just hail the self-driving car (or similar) using your phone. People
won't own their own cars.

So if your startup is designed to help people get parking spaces, how much
potential is it really going to have? Probably not much.

Similarly, the internet is transforming education. Information is everywhere.
A startup focused on helping kids get into college feels a little shortsighted
to me. It might provide a useful service to some people today in the context
of present challenges, but there's no way it's going to turn into a unicorn.

Anything related to helping people find jobs is also probably a non-starter.
Do you imagine a future in which we need everyone to contribute to the extent
that it's worth paying them what today we would consider a "fair salary" for
their labor? I certainly don't.

Take the salary part out of the job and maybe you have something. What about a
platform for helping people find interesting ways to spend their time?

Take the college part out of education and all kinds of possibilities open up.
For that matter, take the job training part out too. I've become pretty
disgusted as Udacity, Coursera, and edX have gradually shifted toward teaching
people "career skills." There are still some good MOOCs out there, but you
have to wade through all the "learn these skills to make more money in your
career" crap.

What about a platform to foster pure intellectual curiosity? That's what I was
hoping these MOOCs would be.

~~~
a_d
> like the philosophy of going out into the future and bringing it back into
> the present. I feel like a lot of startups are making an error in failing to
> do this. > For example, in the not-to-distant future, we won't need parking
> spaces. You'll just hail the self-driving car (or similar) using your phone.
> People won't own their own cars.

You are right about the philosophy. But a thought regarding your specific
example: even if self-driving tech were to be available tomorrow, it will take
many years for all the cars (the "fleet") to be self-driving. There are about
2B cars on the road, and every year about 100M new ones are made. It would
take 20 years to replace the fleet. So the "parking problem" isn't made
immediately redundant with the invention of self-driving tech. There is still
room (and in my opinion) worthwhile for a startup to solve the parking problem
(however they attempt to solve it). Just saying that I wouldn't discourage
anyone from attempting this :)

~~~
gavinpc
Dr. Kay might also observe that this is an instance of problem _solving_ ,
which he associates with incrementalism (since the context is already
understood), while inventing the future is about problem _finding_ , which
requires creating a new context.

------
a_d
6 powerful ideas that I took away from this:

1\. Live in the future: If you live in the present your ideas are going to
derived from the present, and therefore will be incremental. Paul graham
points to a similar idea in his essay here
[http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

2\. Learn the rules and break them like pro: An important idea that says learn
deeply about a field (industry or language or medium - whatever) before you go
about breaking its rules. This is something that should be discussed more. On
one hand, this implies that rules need to be broken carefully by understanding
something very well. On the other hand, a certain "naivete" also has been
proven to be successful (As he himself says in another portion of this talk).
Requires more thinking... I have to say that I have worked with two geniuses
who changed industries (caused a "Disruption"), but while they were
"outsiders" they understood the industry they were changing very deeply, and
could point to very specific flaws in them (legacy rules) that were ready to
be broken.

3\. Scientists and engineers working together: I love this specific idea. He
points to the Manhattan project and the Radar project as successful examples
(and ofcourse, Xerox PARC itself). I also understand why OpenAI is organized
the way it is -- they must have taken inspiration from Alan's ideas.

4\. Progress is the only important thing: This is very similar to YC's idea of
have a metric and grow it by X% week over week. One of the big things (IMHO)
that YC cracked was to find way to fund hard tech problems, using this very
specific idea that worked very well in software. Break a big problem into
small parts and show progress on it every week/month/quarter etc. It is a
simple and elegant way to think (and work).

5\. Advance something very important: This idea is dedicating your life to an
important goal / problem. This idea stirred me the most (for personal
reasons). This especially rings true for me, esp when I meet someon who found
"overnight success" after toiling aways at something for 10-15 years. This
idea requires a lot of reflection. Alan says: "Fix big human problems"

6\. Argue for clarity, not to win: An amazingly simple yet powerful message.
So much of our interactions would be better if we (if I) did more of this.

3 Sidenotes:

a) I wish he had answered the question about "What caused the regression?"
that someone asks (I think Sam) after watching a demo of an early "iPad" from
the 1960s. It is really important to understand this. Elon Musk often says
that tech advancements don't just happen automatically, some group of smart
people need to work together to make it happen. I think something happens that
governments, VCs, technologists stop working on advancing tech in some areas.
Some of it is explained by lack of a "great adversary" (WW II, Cold War etc),
but still it would be great to understand this very deeply. Thiel's famous
book also talks about regression in tech, without fully explaining it. It is
an important observation, that merits a deep discussion. I would be curious to
hear what Alan says. Maybe @Sama can fill in (?)]

b) Special mentions to two ideas, not because of the ideas, but because how he
puts them. a) "Fund people not projects" (basically how early stage funding
works) - but Alan says, these are "artists are people who do their art because
they must". And b) While talking about "build your own tools if you have the
chops" he says "...Otherwise you are working the past on some vendor's bad
idea of what computing is about". I love how he puts these thoughts across.

c) I recommend the video @_pius links to in the comments: it is called "the
power of simplicity". One of the great Alan Kay talks.

~~~
oretoz
Excellent summary. Covers all the key points that I wanted to take away and
put it so much better.

For me, the theme that runs through his work and talks is this: (Constantly
ask) How to make use of computers to learn and create in ways better than we
do currently?

Now yes, the above sentence seems like incremental and not so far out but lot
of what he and some of the people he has worked with is trying to answer this.

And I completely agree with him that we haven't fully explored this new
digital interface and in some ways have regressed.

His words are truly inspirational and at the same time it is slightly
disheartening that I am not working on something great.

------
davidivadavid
Crossposting question from other thread: What's the "Visions: Cosmic and
Romantic" that's referred to around 36 minutes into the video? Google doesn't
turn up anything.

------
alexkon
Can anyone clarify the baseball analogy about errors? (It’s at 38:00.) I’m a
bit confused.

~~~
delish
When Kay says (paraphrasing) 65% of your errors are overhead, he's talking
about the difference between say baseball's batting averages and golf.

A batting average of .333 (you hit one ball for every three throws) is
considered very good. But you're missing two out of three. In golf, one wrong
swing can ruin you.

The point is, when you're doing new things you should be failing often. If
you're not you're playing the wrong game.

(I watch many more Alan Kay videos than I do sports, so I hope I'm describing
baseball and golf accurately.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Major_League_Baseball_career_batting_average_leaders)

~~~
runevault
minor nit. 1 hit for every 3 plate appearances, not every 3 throws.

~~~
tomjakubowski
minorer nit: 1 hit for every 3 at bats. plate appearances are the denominator
for OBP, not batting average.

~~~
runevault
Touche, since walks are counted differently. Shows I've only been getting back
into baseball recently.

~~~
rhizome
One of the chief innovations of baseball as a game is its barouque ruleset,
perhaps bested only by Mornington Crescent.

------
pplonski86
thank you!

------
lucidguppy
This is Alan Kay's best explanation of his "inventing the future" philosophy.

To make trillions the big companies of the world (Apple etc..) have to spend
money on big ideas and invent whole new industries.

Apple is sitting on billions of dollars in cash overseas.

~~~
nodesocket
I continue to see comments on HN hypercritical of Apple's cash position but I
have yet to see any rational or deep thoughts about why it's NOT a good idea
for a company or individual's for that matter to have such savings.

You never know what's going to come along in the future, and having a sizeable
cash position allows them to act and perhaps hedge against any unforeseen
situations. It is really just being financially responsible. Hypothetically
what if Apple is planning something huge, something in the healthcare space or
transportation... We as outsiders have no idea.

~~~
endlessvoid94
I don't think OPs post was hypercritical of apple's cash position. It simply
reinforces the notion that big companies can't use the cash effectively.

To call it hypercritical of apple isn't exactly accurate. It's simply reality.
Apple may even be acting more effectively than most by keeping the cash in
reserve. You might imagine they're waiting to spend it intelligently and
effectively rather than on a slow-moving corporate machine.

As a shareholder I'd approve of such a strategy 100%.

