>It is a very difficult narrative. Mainly because while reading it, I had to think constantly about survivorship bias and appeal to authority. Would I really read this if it was written by a 20 year old without a track record?
That's not a problem I see, because this is not about Alan Kay's personal track record.
The kind of organizational freedom he describes was available in Park and Bell Labs, and it wasn't just Kay, but tens of people, one after another creating the most important technologies, while it was on.
> appeal to authority. Would I really read this if it was written by a 20 year old without a track record?
First, that's not what appeal to authority means. It doesn't mean, "Don't be interested in what Einstein thought," for example.
Second, ironically, the big problem in our industry is that no one ever listens to those who have gone before. It's Alan Kay, not Alan Key.
We reinvent technology, package it with a new logo, give it a new name, and run into the same problems as before, until someone comes up with a new technology to replace it, which is the same technology again, ad infinitum.
You really need to listen to authority, because, frankly your software sucks. How do I know? Because all software sucks. Alan Kay, not Key, is one of the few people who understand that and understand what kind of creativity might lead us out of this mess. We should all be interested in what he's saying.
And most tellingly the innovations at Bell Labs didn't just arise in computing--the transistor, the solar cell, information theory, statistical process control, the laser, the cell phone, and the discovery of cosmic background radiation are some examples. What Alan Kay is talking about is literally a cornucopia. Long term scientific research directed by scientists works.
That's not a problem I see, because this is not about Alan Kay's personal track record.
The kind of organizational freedom he describes was available in Park and Bell Labs, and it wasn't just Kay, but tens of people, one after another creating the most important technologies, while it was on.