Alan Kay
I first seriously got into Alan Kay’s ideas about ten years ago, when YouTube became a thing. I watched The Computer Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet (YouTube). My eyes were opened. The typical story of personal computing is one of innovation, revolution, exploding possibilities, exponential curves of processing power per dollar. However, Alan Kay has a much bleaker view of the current timeline because he dreamed a bigger dream before it all started.
Alan Kay invented Smalltalk and Object-Oriented Programming. He reads more than a book per day. He has worked at Xerox PARC, Atari, and Apple. He’s currently the president of the Viewpoints Research Institute.
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A Conversation with Alan Kay
TextInterviewMost software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.
Statements like this make me sad. I want to help but what can I do?
A Conversation with CMU Faculty & Students
VideoInterviewA Dynamic Medium for Creative Thought
VideoPresentationAlan Kay, back in 1972, presenting bitmapped fonts, images inline with text, and other crazy stuff from his research.
A to Z of programming languages: Smalltalk-80
TextInterviewAlan Kay - 2012 SCIx Keynote Presentation
VideoPresentationIn this talk, Alan Kay explains the who, how, and why of the research done at Xerox PARC, and why that kind of research doesn’t happen nowadays.
Alan Kay CES Jan 2010
VideoPresentationAlan Kay Interview (1990)
VideoInterviewAs an Alan Kay fan, I was surprised to discover this gem of an interview. It’s almost three hours long. He talks about the history of computing, education, and some of the research at Xerox PARC.
An Interview with Computing Pioneer Alan Kay
VideoInterviewAn Interview with Computing Pioneer Alan Kay (Time Magazine)
TextInterviewBest Paper Award Presentation
VideoPresentationBeyond Printing (medium)
VideoPresentationCHI 2016 Plenary: Alan Kay in conversation with Vishal Sikka
VideoInterviewCoors Television
VideoPresentationDoing with Images Makes Symbols
VideoPresentationAlan Kay talks about the educational ideas behind Smalltalk. This is an amazing lesson in theories of how we learn, especially learning by doing. If you don’t know, much of Alan Kay’s work has centered around how to make computing into a medium for kids to learn in.
History of the User Interface Edit
VideoPresentationHow Simply and Understandably Could The “Personal Computing Experience” Be Programmed?
VideoPresentationInterview in *Rolling Stone* by Stewart Brand
TextInterviewInterview with Alan Kay
VideoInterviewInterview with Alan Kay (Dr. Dobbs)
TextInterviewInventing the Future Part 1
VideoPresentationJoe Armstrong interviews Alan Kay
VideoPresentationLampsonFest
VideoPresentationMedia Lab 30
VideoPresentationNormal Considered Harmful
VideoPresentationPersonal Dynamic Media
PDFArticlePoints of View
PDFBooksPortable Portrait
VideoInterviewPower of Simplicity
VideoPresentationPresident, Viewpoints Research Institute
VideoPresentationProgramming and Scaling
VideoPresentationQualcomm
VideoPresentationRethinking CS Education
VideoPresentationRethinking Design, Risk, and Software
VideoPresentationSRII 2011 - Keynote Talk by Alan Kay - Q&A Session
VideoPresentationSeminar on Computer Systems
VideoPresentationSketchpad UI
VideoPresentationThe Best Way to Predict the Future is to Invent It
VideoPresentationThe Dynabook—Past Present and Future
VideoPresentationThe Early History of Smalltalk
TextArticleThis paper documents the influences that led up to Smalltalk, how it happened (it was a bet!), and the lessons they learned about it.
The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental
VideoPresentationWhen you go into universities or into companies, what are they using? They’re using laptops. These are machines from the past. You’re not going to get anything but incremental improvements with that.
Alan Kay is encouraging large companies to spend more money on research that generates new inventions that change the context. For instance, Apple is still busy reproducing the computing environment they had at PARC, which included OOP, networked computing, and GUIs.
The NITLE Summit 2012 - Keynote Address by Dr. Alan Kay
VideoPresentationThe Reactive Engine
TextPaperAlan Kay’s PhD Thesis, which describes the machine he called “The FLEX Machine”.
The computer revolution hasn't happened yet
VideoPresentationPresented in 1997 at the OOPSLA conference, Alan Kay’s keynote was a harbinger of the ideas he would present in the twenty years hence. This is a must-watch talk.
The Computer Revolution tickled those feelings inside me that were not satisfied with how software is made, with the things we can do with our computers, and how little the computers help us. The talk was already ten years old when I first saw it, but the message is still relevant and probably will be for a long time.
User Group University talk 1987
VideoPresentationVentureBeat’s Tam Vo interviews PC pioneer
VideoInterviewdocumentário biográfico
VideoPresentation