An Interview with Computing Pioneer Alan Kay(techland.time.com)
techland.time.com
An Interview with Computing Pioneer Alan Kay
http://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-computing-pioneer-alan-kay/
7 comments
His work on Squeak [1], a dialect of Smalltalk, qualifies as both recent
and interesting. Similar could be said for his work on OLPC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeak
Apple with the iPad and iPhone goes even further and does
not allow children to download an Etoy made by another
child somewhere in the world.
I'm not sure what an "etoy" is, but I imagine it's essentially a program and associated source code (e.g. so that you can learn from it). iOS bans, for no reason, compilers or interpretors. Android allows for these. The majority of children will not be publishing native apps.
Check this out...
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171 https://github.com/TwoLivesLeft/Codea-Runtime
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171 https://github.com/TwoLivesLeft/Codea-Runtime
You can't export or import your code there, you can only type it in. (Unless something's changed lately.) Even micros in the 70s could save/load cassette tape.
(Codea is pretty neat anyway. I get sad to see the potential locked up.)
(Codea is pretty neat anyway. I get sad to see the potential locked up.)
If we're talking about getting a kids to learn how to use these wonderful tools, that's a feature, not a bug. I for one know that I learned to program precisely because I couldn't just swap cassettes with the other kids. I had a crappy computer that no one else had, so the only games I had were the ones I typed in myself. That act of typing (and hence reading) the source code was how I learned to program.
This is neither a feature nor a bug. It's a restriction forced by Apple.
Is an evolution of the Smalltalk environment tailored for children.
There's a Squeak for Android. In iOS you're forbidden to run any programs except through the blessed interpreters (the app store and webkit). I'm sure you know this.
Added: "if we wanted to get Squeak itself into the App Store we would have to cripple it." -- http://forum.world.st/Squeak-VM-for-iPad-Current-progress-td...
Added: "if we wanted to get Squeak itself into the App Store we would have to cripple it." -- http://forum.world.st/Squeak-VM-for-iPad-Current-progress-td...
We should be doing this stuff in the browser, where it's unregulated
I wonder how he proposes to verify the Etoy was made by a child and not harmful or containing "scary" content?
It all was an amazing vision, but the problem is link bait headlines, spammers, and politicians who run committees. In a world where someone had to write a "penis detector", the visions loses some of its shine.
It all was an amazing vision, but the problem is link bait headlines, spammers, and politicians who run committees. In a world where someone had to write a "penis detector", the visions loses some of its shine.
Compared with what Smalltalk allows as development environment, iOS is very far away from the original idea from Alan Kay.
Alan Kay is 74, despite the fact that he looks 20 years younger. A couple grad students should follow him around 24/7 with a microphone, a tablet computer, and a digital camera and record any ideas he throws out there. He's like the Phillip K. Dick of computer science. He's shaped much of the perception of the world and his weakest works somehow surface 15-20 years later as tacit assumptions.
I'd say it's not modern computing he's unhappy with, but modern people.
OK, he was pretty grumpy and cynical. But is he wrong?
Wouldn't a society of people who are reading and writing, thinking and creating be a better place than one where people are capable of no better than SMS-speak and TLDR and letting Siri do their thinking? What if our society turns into YouTube comments?
Wouldn't a society of people who are reading and writing, thinking and creating be a better place than one where people are capable of no better than SMS-speak and TLDR and letting Siri do their thinking? What if our society turns into YouTube comments?
I think the reality is that there's always a group of people who are creators and thinkers and the vast majority just wants to be entertained. People like Alan Kay are hoping to somehow convert the majority to be more creative.
Most people live in the Box, some live outside and some collect the rent.
I personally read and think too much. There is a point where it is useless, it is just a form of entertainment.
I wish I created more.
I wish I created more.
"Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking."
Thinking is creative. Now give us some insights from your thinking. :-)
Thinking is creative. Now give us some insights from your thinking. :-)
Our society is youtube comments, SMS-speak and TLDR. It's a much bigger challenge to change people and culture, than technology.
There is nothing today in the way of being creative and intellectual. Everyone has free access to mountains of knowledge a librarian couldn't dream of 30 years ago. Technology is cheap, ubiquitous and powerful. Blaming our cultural failures on a couple commercial license terms is just deflecting the guilt.
There is nothing today in the way of being creative and intellectual. Everyone has free access to mountains of knowledge a librarian couldn't dream of 30 years ago. Technology is cheap, ubiquitous and powerful. Blaming our cultural failures on a couple commercial license terms is just deflecting the guilt.
You mean... Huxley was right?
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"There was always a “cloud” in the ARPA view of things — this is why we invented the networks we did."
All part of the plan.
All part of the plan.
The "cloud" is overhyped precisely because if you scratch off the marketing, what you're left with is just another word for the internet.
I suppose it's a better metaphor than "cyberspace", but still...
I suppose it's a better metaphor than "cyberspace", but still...
To me, "cloud" is the growing phenomenon of removing the need for individuals and organizations to own their own hardware. That's quite different from the existing network of networks.
Actually "cloud" can be traced to relatively old ideas like utility computing. It just was not very feasible back then.
EDIT: "If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry." (John McCarthy, 1961)
EDIT: "If computers of the kind I have advocated become the computers of the future, then computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility... The computer utility could become the basis of a new and important industry." (John McCarthy, 1961)
The idea may be old, but what's new is that it's becoming possible.
You mean, sort of like how we all used to log on to mainframes, or rent Linux accounts from our webhosts?
Yes, sort of. But the scale at which it is happening is not like that. Even a small company still owned that mainframe, and physically stored it onsite. And that Linux account on your webhost wasn't quite as capable as a computer you could own - you couldn't, for example, spin up 10,000 of them and create an ad-hoc cluster to run your giant MPI application.
Organizations will start viewing computers as a utility they subscribe to, rather than something they own. Should we buy another server, or just rent them through Amazon? In the future, I think that fewer organizations will own hardware - to the extent that it will change the hardware market completely.
Organizations will start viewing computers as a utility they subscribe to, rather than something they own. Should we buy another server, or just rent them through Amazon? In the future, I think that fewer organizations will own hardware - to the extent that it will change the hardware market completely.
I think it's still useful to draw a distinction between humans using the internet through browsers, and applications using the internet to access services.
Of course applications accessing services through a network has always been part of the plan, but the shift from predominantly using services on the company network towards building businesses based on outsources services on external networks is an important one.
I can see why someone like Kay would find the current 'gosh wow' breathlessness about cloud computing a bit sad, but even if it would have been nice for this transition to have happened decades ago, it doesn't change the fact it's still an important and disruptive transition.
Of course applications accessing services through a network has always been part of the plan, but the shift from predominantly using services on the company network towards building businesses based on outsources services on external networks is an important one.
I can see why someone like Kay would find the current 'gosh wow' breathlessness about cloud computing a bit sad, but even if it would have been nice for this transition to have happened decades ago, it doesn't change the fact it's still an important and disruptive transition.
"much of the iPad UI is very poor in a myriad of ways."
http://www.vpri.org/vp_wiki/index.php/Main_Page is the primary resource about COLA at the moment, if you're curious.