[sudo-discuss] about the future (Alan Kay)

[J Clark]

Wondered if some sudoers might be interested in this video, with awesome-smart guy Alan Kay and Vishal Sikka of SAP, hosted by futurist guy Paul Saffo.

3.26.13 Technology and Transformation: Vishal Sikka and Alan Kay in Conversation with Paul Saffo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPsZyfGCaKs

Ah, tropes, memes, symbols, and change. hurrah!

Also on the Alan Kay theme, a written interview:

An Interview with Computing Pioneer Alan Kay
By David Greelish
April 02 2013
<http://techland.time.com/2013/04/02/an-interview-with-computing-pioneer-alan-kay/>

Born in 1940, computer scientist Alan Curtis Kay is one of a handful of visionaries most responsible for the concepts which have propelled personal computing forward over the past thirty years — and surely the most quotable one.

He’s the man who said that “The best way to predict the future is to invent it” and that “Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born” and that “If you don’t fail at least 90 percent of the time, you’re not aiming high enough.” And when I first saw Microsoft‘s Surface tablet last June, a Kay maxim helped me understand it: “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.”

Above all, however, Kay is known for the Dynabook — his decades-old vision of a portable suite of hardware, software, programming tools and services which would add up to the ultimate creative environment for kids of all ages. Every modern portable computer reflects elements of the Dynabook concept — the One Laptop Per Child project’s XO above all others — and yet none of them have fully realized the concept which Kay was writing about in the early 1970s.

Actually, Kay says that some gadgets with superficial Dynabook-like qualities, such as the iPad, have not only failed to realize the Dynabook dream, but have in some senses betrayed it. That’s one of the points he makes in this interview, conducted by computer historian David Greelish, proprietor of the Classic Computing Blog and organizer of this month’s Vintage Computer Festival Southeast in Atlanta. (The Festival will feature a pop-up Apple museum featuring Xerox’s groundbreaking Alto workstation, which Kay worked on, as well as devices which deeply reflected his influence, including the Lisa, the original Macintosh and the Newton.)

Kay and Greelish also discuss Kay’s experiences at some of the big outfits where he’s worked, including Xerox’s fabled PARC labs, Apple, Disney and HP. Today, Kay continues his research about children and technology at his own organization, the Viewpoints Research Institute.

–Harry McCracken

David Greelish: Do you agree that we now essentially have the Dynabook, as expressed in the three tiers of modern personal computing; the notebook, tablet and smartphone? If not, what critical features do you see missing from these? Have they delivered on the promise of improving education?

Alan Kay: I have been asked versions of this question for the last twenty years or so. Ninety-five percent of the Dynabook idea was a “service conception,” and five percent had to do with physical forms, of which only one — the slim notebook — is generally in the public view. (The other two were an extrapolated version of Ivan Sutherland’s head mounted display, and an extrapolated version of Nicholas Negroponte’s ideas about ubiquitous computers embedded and networked everywhere.)

[snip]
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