School is basically about one point of view - the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view. Alan Kay More Quotes by Alan Kay More Quotes From Alan Kay Bad User on Device is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools. It is the first metamedium, and as such it has degrees of freedom for representation and expression never before encountered and as yet barely investigated. Alan Kay degrees media expression Artificial intelligence is what we don't know how to do yet Alan Kay artificial-intelligence artificial know-how Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight. Alan Kay silver weight gold A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Point of view is worth 80 IQ points Alan Kay point-of-view perspective views Perl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term. Alan Kay real example needs If the pros at Sun had had a chance to fix Java, the world would be a much more pleasant place. This is not secret knowledge. It's just secret to this pop culture. Alan Kay java secret world I fear - as far as I can tell - that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training. I've heard complaints from even mighty Stanford University with its illustrious faculty that basically the undergraduate computer science program is little more than Java certification. Alan Kay stanford-university java training I hired finishers because I'm a good starter and a poor finisher. Alan Kay finishers starters poor Having an intelligent secretary does not get rid of the need to read, write, and draw, etc. In a well functioning world, tools and agents are complementary. Alan Kay intelligent doe writing As far as Apple goes, it was a different company every few years from the time I joined in 1984. Alan Kay apples different years There is the desire of a consumer society to have no learning curves. This tends to result in very dumbed-down products that are easy to get started on, but are generally worthless and/or debilitating. Alan Kay curves easy desire It's all about long-term, sustaining relationships. Alan Kay long-term term long Computer science inverts the normal. In normal science, you're given a world, and your job is to find out the rules. In computer science, you give the computer the rules, and it creates the world. Alan Kay job you science world If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. Alan Kay high you enough time Because people don't understand what computing is about, they think they have it in the iPhone, and that illusion is as bad as the illusion that 'Guitar Hero' is the same as a real guitar. Alan Kay think guitar hero people Context is worth 80 IQ points. Alan Kay iq points context worth All the companies I've worked for have this deep problem of devolving to something like the hunting and gathering cultures of 100,000 years ago. If businesses could find a way to invent 'agriculture,' we could put the world back together and all would prosper. Alan Kay deep together way world Social thinking requires very exacting thresholds to be powerful. For example, we've had social thinking for 200,000 years, and hardly anything happened that could be considered progress over most of that time. This is because what is most pervasive about social thinking is 'how to get along and mutually cope.' Alan Kay progress powerful time thinking I've been a Fellow in a number of companies: Xerox, Apple, Disney, HP. There are certain similarities because all the Fellows programs were derived from IBM's, which itself was derived from the MIT 'Institute Professor' program. Alan Kay similarities apple been because When I first got to Apple, which was in '84, the Mac was already out, and 'Newsweek' contacted me and asked me what I thought of the Mac. I said, 'Well, the Mac is the first personal computer good enough to be criticized.' Alan Kay thought good me enough
