Alan Kay interviewed
So Alan Kay has given an interview to David Greelish, published in Time, and excerpted by Forbes.
Alan Kay is always worth my time. He does say the same things a lot, but they're good things, and people clearly haven't listened well, so that's fair enough. Some of them:
- computer people don't know their history (and are always reinventing the flat tire; ie doing badly what people working before have done well)
- computers are tools to think with; the "interface" is what is in the way, the system should support the user evolving it to meet new needs.
- good ideas are often difficult, take a lot of work to master; reading, science -- it is the job of culture and education to make mastering these ideas possible for new generations
He probably subscribes to Sturgeon's Law (90% of everything is crap). He certainly comes across as curmudgeonly, though I think he tries not to. I find his thinking immensely refreshing, the fresh air of sanity, blowing away the foetid miasma of "what everyone knows".
I have a google alert feed for mentions of Alan Kay (along with Ted Nelson, and Doug Englebart). With that one interview, there's been about 20 different excerpts, showing either this image
or this one
and repeating the same few lines from the interview (which to be fair, isn't all that long).
Most seem to have the tone of "Here's this guy, who seems to be important, though we're not sure why, saying the iPad is crappy, and that Jobs, maybe even corporate America, is not all that great. How odd".
Sigh.
Tags: computing
