
Alan Kay: "We're running on fumes technologically today." - asciilifeform
http://www.windley.com/essays/2004/anemic_applications
======
dlevine
I think that the reason for this is that businesses are very reluctant to
adopt revolutionary technologies. They are much more comfortable with
technologies that offer a small and defined improvement over what they are
using (eg. typewriter to word processor).

If you pitch something completely new, many people will look at you like you
are from Mars. My startup's product has the potential to drastically improve
the profitability of a lot of businesses. However, when we pitch it for what
it is, people tend to react fairly violently, because it runs counter to a lot
of their intuitions.

In order to get any traction, we have had to pitch it as an incremental
improvement, with the real game changers hidden behind the scenes.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
_I think that the reason for this is that businesses are very reluctant to
adopt revolutionary technologies._

It's no surprise that the revolutionary technologies of the internet were
developed and deployed by (gasp) the Government. It wasn't until the internet
was already well-established that commercial interests started to pay
attention.

~~~
miked
_It's no surprise that the revolutionary technologies of the internet were
developed and deployed by (gasp) the Government. It wasn't until the internet
was already well-established that commercial interests started to pay
attention._

Actually, the initial development was done almost entirely by think tanks
(Rand Corp., BBN, etc.) and academics, with the crucial piece being supplied
by the concept of packet switching, invented by Paul Baran at Rand Corp.

The essence of government is centralization of power over individuals. The
essence of the internet is decentralization of communication among
individuals.

The internet was a revolutionary invention because it solved a revolutionary
problem: how to maintain communications after a massive nuclear attack.
Pentagon (DARPA) money was behind most of this because it was the Pentagon
that was responsible for solving the problem. More to the point, the key
technologies that the internet depended on were the transistor (AT&T/Bell
Labs) and the integrated circuit/microprocessor (Intel).

~~~
tayssir
Transistors are an interesting case. AT&T was a government-supported monopoly,
allowing it to pursue expensive blue-sky research. And since transistors were
expensive, the government purchased 100% of the advanced transistors until
they were viable on the market. <http://tech.mit.edu/V128/N51/chomsky.html>

The New York Times discusses how technology flows from federally-funded
research to industry.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/technology/02darpa.html>

I agree that national states are centralized institutions, but corporations
are another type of hierarchical power structure with their own set of
disadvantages.

------
cruise02
Interesting side note: Alan Kay challenged the Stack Overflow community
several months back asking for "Significant new inventions in computing since
1980" ([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-
in...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-
in-computing-since-1980)).

------
edw519
Sounds like Alan Kay is looking at the world of business through a pinhole in
the floor of his car when he'd be better off looking through the windshield.

Anybody can automate payroll, inventory, order processing, etc. In fact,
almost everybody has. I call that "striking out the pitcher".

But only some people have figured out how to use sophisticated software to run
simulations, mimic real world processes, and as Michael Gerber puts it, "Work
_on_ the business instead of working _in_ the business."

Apparently Alan Kay doesn't see many of these businesses. He should. Because
they're the ones who'll be left standing while the "automators" wonder what
happened.

~~~
fsoteras
I think this migth be some confusion between Mr Alan Kaye
(<http://people.forbes.com/profile/alan-kaye/51664>) and Alan Kay of SmallTalk
& Object Oriented fame.

~~~
ynniv
"Kaye" appears to be a typo. "Alan Kay" was interviewd by Fortune Magazine's
"Fast Forward" column in the July 12, 2004 issue:
<http://slashdot.org/articles/04/07/13/1226206.shtml>

------
extension
I would speculate that innovation in this domain effectively stopped when the
complexity of computer applications surpassed what the layperson was willing
or able to wrap their head around. This happened some time just after the
spreadsheet.

At this point, businesses became highly dependent on skilled IT staff to hand-
hold them through everything. IT staff are expensive, scarce and difficult to
work with. They are also utterly preoccupied with rejiggering old ideas to
work with flashy new technology, devoting very little time to truly new ideas.

The problem concerns all of computing, both home and office. A vast knowledge
gap leaves most people helpless while the experts are buried in architectural
cruft, and often unaware of it.

------
jgroch
Maybe it shouldn't be that surprising that most of the big ideas seem to be
behind us in computing. Automobiles have been fundamentally the same for
decades (speaking broadly). It could be that new areas of technology are more
like explorers finding new lands. The newer finds don't tend to be as big
within that area after a while.

Coincidentally, Freeman Dyson recently said that physics has been undergoing
such a slowing down. (His daughter was mentioned in the article). He also
mentioned that the field of biology is speeding up. (Link to his Charlie Rose
interview <http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10560> (doesn't go into
much detail concerning the given point, but it is Freeman Dyson.)

------
richcollins
> Think about it this way: if you're in business, then it's likely that the
> most important process you have is your "order to cash" process wherein an
> order is received and, eventually, turned into cash. Who owns that process
> in your business? How was it created? When is it reviewed? Did someone build
> a model for it that can be simulated to test various scenarios?

We don't need to simulate this in many cases. We can just try different things
and measure the results. This beats analysis and simulation.

~~~
skmurphy
You cannot extrapolate from running a small business 'by the seat of your
pants' to the level of analysis that's applied by large corporations.

Large businesses do an enormous amount of simulation of their "quote to cash"
process. There are complex demand forecasting, supply chain management, and
inventory management software platforms offered by the likes of SAP and Oracle
that are used for this. There are a number of decision tree tools used to
simulate and analyze billion dollar investment decisions used by
pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas firms, and other corporations that need
to make large investments. Airline companies run "yield management" software
to adjust pricing frequently based on estimates of demand for a particular
seat on a particular flight. Wal-Mart adjusts pricing and offers specials
based on complex models of how stimulate demand. There are many other examples
of business using sophisticated simulation and analysis tools.

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whatusername
Article is from 2004.

~~~
cubicle67
Yes, but it may as well have been written yesterday

