Alan Kay Talk at 40th Anniversary of Mother of All Demos (2008)

introduction he's widely known as the  inventor of the small talk

so our last speaker today is Alan

who's president of viewpoints Research  Institute he

really needs no  introduction he's widely known as the

inventor of the small talk programming  language among many

other things like  Doug he was inspired to persuade

computers to become our assistance and  intelligent tasks

especially teaching  and learning his Holy

Grail was the  dynabook a portable personal computer  nestled

in the lap of a young student in  a park who is casually

pursuing her own  Learning Path Alan

has 30 minutes Alan

so

they asked me to speak last and

with  a lineup of people

that were on the  program I figure it would be suicide

to  try and prepare a talk ahead of time

  because why I

figured with great luck  all

the points I would have talked about  will they have been covered

already and  so the very

first thing I wrote in my  notebook here

was thank you all for  coming

but the idea

was to perhaps look  at

a couple of things from a slightly  different angle and

talk

a little bit  about the significance of

this marvelous  work we're celebrating

today and these  marvelous people

who did it I like to

  think of things

in terms of threes and  we

are very rightly celebrating Doug  Engelbart but

it was fantastic to have  Bob Taylor

here who is the funder and

if  you think about the rewards and awards

  people get later in life doug has

gotten  all the ones you can get but

there's  nothing like a funder because a funder

is giving you that gold medal ahead of  time on

spec

and moreover they

know that two-thirds  of those gold

medals if they're lucky  are going to turn to lead before

the end  of the work and so

it's the faith of the  second group of people

who bob was

  characteristically subtle

about  expressing his

opinion about how funding  is today I

remember him once I

guess 15  or 20 years ago giving

a talk about

the  60s in the in the 70s

and somebody in  the audience accused him of being an

old  fogey again because old fogies

always  are referring back to a golden

age and  today is never as good as

it wasn't  Taylor thought for a few minutes and he

  looked up and he said damn it it was a  golden

age

thorough I

have a hard time  pronouncing it the way you're supposed

to be out in the world because I come  from Massachusetts

and Thoreau was  pronounced thorough there

so my my  tongue is wagging

back and forth here's  an interesting guy and

very late in his  life

in 1865

when the first  transatlantic cable

went in between our  country and England

he was asked what he  thought of it and

he said he was afraid  he would find

out that a European  princess had just gotten a

nd I

believe that is the one of the  earliest

examples of completely nailing

  the two sides of

Technology here's one  of the most difficult feats they

fail  this of course could be used

for  expressing really important

information  back and forth but throw understood

  exactly who human beings are and

what  they're likely to do with any good

idea  another

great line of his Express a  little earlier was

that we become the  tools of our tools and

McLuhan used this  idea many

years later when he said we  first

shaped tools and then they turn  around and reshape us

and all

of these  ideas are basically double-edged swords

  so that every technology

is usually done  to amplify something in

every amplifier  we make and also act as a

prosthetic if  you put a prosthetic on

a healthy limb  it starts to wither and so

there's this  interesting problem of when

I make  something that is supposed to augment

us  how can I help people avoid

using it to  replace something

that we already have  and we wind up with less I believe

this  is the fundamental problem of the

20th  century and especially of our age

now  one of ways I think

of it is that when  ever

a new idea an idea comes along

  there's news and there's new

so news is

  stuff that's incremental on what we  already know

news can be told in just a  couple

of minutes it's the kind of thing  that people are always

exchanging with  each other and they often mistake

news  for ideas but

in fact news is so simple  that it

leverages almost everything we  know and it's just pushing things

one  way or another and so when Gutenberg

did  his Bible

  it

was treated enthusiastically as

news  and in fact

they made the bible's to  look as much like handwritten

  manuscripts as possible i'm sure many  people

here have seen a Gutenberg Bible  but they were illuminated

by hand after  they were printed

and the fonts the  Gutenberg used

were had

I think 100 250  three separate characters

because every  ligature every

abbreviation that people  are used

to reading from them from the  scribes Gutenberg

copied and used

the  best ink in the best paper and

of these Gutenberg Bibles look like they  were printed yesterday

and they were  treated as a

really great idea and also

  unremarkable and so in fact

the Catholic  Church which was

in power at that time  thought

the printing press was a good  idea also

but

also when an idea comes  along if the

idea is a good one there's  also new and

new is something

that  doesn't isn't explainable in what

you  already know and so it's

something that  people very often

find a way of

ignoring  in favor of the news part of

things what  was knew about the printing press we saw  in

the 17th century when our entire

  conception of thought changed

with the  invention of science and our entire

  conception of government changed

with  the invention of representative  democracies

of various kinds and this is  the

two paired together or not and what  not an accident

a favorite

phrase of  mine from Tom Paine's Common Sense

which  is written in

January 1776 and

before  the

Declaration of Independence was  pinned

and put out in July in

those six  months or so somewhere

hundred thousand and nine hundred  thousand

copies of common sense were  printed and distributed

throughout the  thirteen colonies and

to give you an  idea of the scale of that there

are 1.5  million people in the 13

colonies at  that side so you can imagine the

medium that you could have today that  could have that level

of coverage for an  idea would be the internet

today if you  could get a significant

number of people  to read one thing on

the internet and in  that

argument that pain

wrote there's a  important

line that's relevant to today  where pain

was basically the title of it

  was a joke because he was actually

expressing something it wasn't kind was  common sense to

have a king and this  pamphlet was an argument

against the  monarchy and in the middle of it he says

  well instead of

having the king be the  law why we

can have the law be the king  in other words we can

invent a new way  of governing ourselves and

organizing  ourselves and we can write this into law  and

that is how we can invert everything

that people thought to be true if we  have the courage to

do it and as McLuhan

pointed out you can argue with a lot  about a lot of things with

stained glass  windows but democracy is not one

of them  so the point here is that

democracy and  what it actually meant

particularly in  our country was not possible

without a  new medium of expression

for arguing in  a very special way the

old oral ways and  the old pictorial ways

were not  sufficient and

so one of the

dilemmas I  think we've had in the 20th century is

that

the electronic technologies

even  the ones that are not programmable

have  this double edged sword this amplifier

  and prosthetic aspect and I think many  people

in this crowd will have noticed  how many of

the new communications  technologies of the last

hundred years  or so have actually been used by

people  as a way of getting back into the oral  modes

of thought that would be  completely familiar to

cave people a  hundred thousand years ago and

in fact  many of the games we make electronically

  we would be completely familiar to cave  people

a hundred thousand years ago so

  these electronic devices are

being used  partially as prosthetics as a way of  avoiding

the modes of thought associated  with reading

so one of the ways we can  think about is when something that

can  imitate anything comes along like

a  computer that well

we could use it to go  back to oral modes of thought

we could  use it to imitate the

technologies that  we're familiar with like printing

and  movies and recordings or

we could do  something almost unthinkable which

is to  try and ask the same question that  people a

few people started asking the  printing press which is let's

not worry  about the news about computers we

understand the news about computers they  can be programmed to do things

they can  be programmed to imitate things what's  new

about computers and I think the  significance of

Doug Engelbart's work is  that he

is one of the very few people  very

very early on who are able to  understand

that as Taylor pointed

out  that computers could

do a lot of things  that were quite familiar

but there was  something new about computers that

allow us to think in a very different  way and likely

in a stronger way than  the printing press brought us

and I  believe the significance of

this demo  that we're celebrating I was sitting

right over there right where that blonde  headed

woman was shivering like mad  because I had

104 temperature doing this  but I was determined

to see this demo  that

the significance of the demo was  that it actually

took something that was  merely

an opinion  and opinions are cheap

and easy and even  good ideas are cheap and easy

but  because of the third component

between  visionary and funder we

also had Bill  English and his team of

doers who are  able to

take this set of ideas and reify

  it into something that was much much  more

understandable to everybody who's  sitting there experiencing

it we could  actually see that

ideas can be organized  in a different

way they could be  filtered in a different way that what we  were

looking at was not something that  was trying to imitate printing

and what  we were hearing about was not

something  that was trying to automate

current  modes of thought but there was

a strong  set of ideas as christina

has just  talked about that

we should be able to  improve our process and there

is should  be an amplification

relationship between  us and this new technology

rather than  one that is a prosthetic

and a sapping  one so i think i

think the the jury is  still out

on whether in how long

it's  going to take for people to understand

  this when i got

interested in this and  in

no small part from from seeing doug

  Engelbart's nls system and from seeing

  ivan sutherland sketch pad system in

  from reading McLuhan my thought

was well  thank goodness we understand

how the  printing press transformed human thought

  and will never wait a hundred and fifty

  years again and

in fact so

that was my  thought back then of course I was just a  28

year old graduate student with stars

  in his eyes about what this stuff

could  actually actually mean but

in fact I  believe news  particularly

for Americans is incredibly  powerful compared

to new I think

of the  strong

nations in the world we are  possibly the least well educated

and  because we're the lease well-educated we

lack the perspective even of  understanding

what the printing press  did do and even

understanding how our  country

was set up because of this and  how we were

able to argue ourself into

a  better state of living so I think this

  is the this is the key and I think

that  the the questions about

voting machines  which I think

are important questions  but I believe

that they are much less  interesting than the humans

who come to  the machines and that

democracy cannot  survive without taking

much more heed of  all the

stuff besides the mouse that  Doug Engelbart understood

we should work  on and

the thing that's interesting  about

this is that no invented system

of  thought has been more successful in

  science it's probably

the greatest  single invention of the human race and  the

invention as we know it in its most  effective

form is only about four  hundred years old and

what's

interesting  to me about science is

how poorly it's  taught in

most countries in the world  especially ours

and what this means is  that this

most successful thing that

has  changed our lives tremendously not

because it was able to hook up with  engineering

in a powerful way but it  changed our way of looking

at things are  very pissed

Emma logical stances that we  took towards knowledge

in spite of all  this success

it's actually a backwater  for the

vast majority of people and this  is dangerous

in a democracy where  majorities count so

if you think about  where we're actually going

  we are actually in this very

dangerous  area now where

the power of our tools

  has completely outstripped the

pace at  which education can absorb the ideas

and  to teach in the mass so

we haven't  probably the widest

sparus thinnest

  distribution of understanding of the  various powers

that have been created  over the last several

hundred years or  certainly

the ratio between power and  understanding i think

is at its worst  right now this shouldn't

be because of  course we have the internet

and there's

  a least a billion nodes on the internet  and everybody

has personal computers  that was the dream of ARPA

ARPA didn't  care whether it was done

on a  time-sharing system in a cloud or

on  networked computers the whole idea

somehow it had to be connected and  somehow everybody had

to have their own  personal access

to this stuff whenever  they wanted and

yet the commercial

  explosion of what

bunch of very good inventions that were  done in the 60s

and 70s has completely  trumped

almost all of the powerful ideas

  that that fostered these inventions back

  in the 60s and 70s and

when i get called  on to give a talk i

spent a fair amount  of my time in the beginning

of the talk  explaining what Doug Engelbart

and his  group we're trying to do because the  ideas

are not only

as good as they were  back then in many ways they're better  now

than they were back then because now

e don't have to worry about naysayers  about whether you can do the technology

  or not now it is clear what the problem

  is and the problem is us that we

actually have gotten interested in  whether the European princess

is going  to get a new hat and

we put that kind of  interest on every

invented  in the 20th and

now the 21st century so

  if we want to make these

ideas as  significant as

I think they are we have  to do

much more than celebrate a 40th

  anniversary we actually have to

be much  more proactive and I

believe that

the  one of the biggest problems

in this area  even more generally than what computers

  are all about is if you go to almost any

  elementary school anywhere in the  country the

chances that you'll find an  adult mathematician

scientist or  computer scientist in

there helping a  teacher help the kids understand

something that the teachers don't  understand and the kids need

to the  chances of that are vanishingly small

so  the hell of it is

that though we have  resources

in our professions

somehow we  find a way of not going into the schools

and then we complain the hell out of  what the schools are actually

doing and  yet if you think about the lag of

doing  official training the only way we can

  possibly make a difference is by taking  our knowledge

into the schools now we  cannot

wait for the education system to  try

and figure out what it was that we  were doing 20 years ago we

have to go in  and volunteer to help and I

don't  believe that any

officially sanctioned

  large-scale attempt at reforming at  American

education which has been tried  any number of times

in my life time  since Sputnik

all of those have failed  miserably because

in the end it has

treated more like a dirty task in the  end and the

scientists and  mathematicians and computer scientists

tay out of the classrooms and somehow  expect the teachers

to learn things are  almost impossible to

learn in the  position that they're in

the last idea

  here is

  a

kind of an idea from McLuhan

but it's  also something that we can notice about  ourselves if

we go to a foreign country  and stay for more than a

week and that  is that after

about a week we actually  find ourselves acting

like we live in  this country because we're

fitting into  the rhythms and our brains are naturally  set up

to normalize to any environment  if

you think about what normalizing to  an environment actually is

it is

  somewhat like learning to

drive a car  when you start off driving a

car the  there's

a lot of stuff going on and it's  very chaotic and what

gear you in and  how fast you're going where's the stop  sign and

what's your parents saying to  you and where's the kid

ball on the road it's all completely  chaotic and

six or eight weeks later

there are little experts inside of our  head they're automatically

paying  attention to these and that's good  that's

what happens when we normalize we

normalize to the things that are  expected in the environment by

building  little experts but the other

edge of the  sword is that normalization

disappears  what we just became in

order to get  skilled and

McLuhan pointed out it  doesn't matter really what you

print in  a book what matters is whether

you have  become a reader or not because that

has  changed your whole approach to how

you're getting information doesn't  really matter that much what is put

on  television in the first

matters is that you're watching it at  all if

you're watching it enough for it  to become an environment

then it's  what's on television that starts  creating

what's normal for you it's a  scary

thought if you think about it that  way and you should and

on the positive  vein if you create

an nls and get

at it and that was part of the idea in  this system wasn't a

system for  beginners there's a system for experts  people

were going to spend hours at a  computer now some

people poo-pooed dug

in his group because they said well  nobody's going to spend  hours sitting

in front of it a screen

but they knew differently

they knew if  you're going to spend hours sitting in

the front in front of a screen you might  as well get expert at it you

noticed that their systems response time  is just a little

bit faster than you're  used to today

so

a picture on your  screen just this size is 192

k which is  exactly the

size of the memory on the

  sts 9 40 and it

was about a half MIT  computer

so you can multiply that out by

  factors of millions and so

fact it doesn't matter because a bad  design is a bad

design and if you run a  sufficiently bad design

sufficiently fast computer it's still  going to be bad and slow

that's what  we've got

so the flip side of this is if  you get

expert in something that is good  this is the

whole aim and significance  of

the augmentation of human

intellect  Center that

then that normalization is  going to turn you

into a different kind  of thinker than you were before

going to turn you into a different kind  of thinker than

people were in the 18th  century and that's it will

different kind of thinker than people  were in the middle ages and

different  kind of thinker than they were 100,000  years

ago that's the whole idea that in  order for these

huge reforms in our

  process of getting at the world

we have  to get fluent in them and so no

f not getting fluent in science is  going to help you

because it is actually  a way of thinking

and so all of these  things have to get beyond

the air guitar  stage or guitar hero

stage in our  culture and get into something

that is  much more like expert playing of a  musical

instrument and that is what nls  felt to me

when I first learned how

to  use it that here was  the

phrase I made up was the computers  and

is an instrument whose music is  ideas this

is the first embodiment of of

  what this incredible

new idea became

and  I I never thought

that I would actually  live to this age and not

see these ideas  adopted and

now I can see maybe another  hundred

years might be required in and

  here's the interesting thing it could be

  because of the computers ability to

  imitate television and things

like  television that it could be

that the  current media miliar

that we have today  could successfully

hold off all  competitors that have to do with deep

  ideas we could have made

the pop most  powerful medium ever for

distracting  ourselves to death and

the shame of it

is that people understood all of this  while this was going on

and even a bunch  of us who are doing it understood

while it was going on yet the general  knowledge of this was

not present in the  environment when it burst on the scene

the

last idea I think this is the

real  tribute to today is reality is kind

of a  low-pass filter

so the average good idea  gets

low pass down into a dial tone

and  as forgotten

but we haven't forgotten  nls

after 40 years we haven't forgotten  it

and it's as vivid to us today

as it  was when we first saw we

forgotten the ideas behind it and  perhaps

the real significance of nls is  that

it put an idea into the world

that  is a difficult one but it put it into  the world

so well that it's an idea none  of us can

forget and every one of us  after

this meeting will go out and try  to get other people

to  understand that idea thank

you