Alan Kay at MacFest (1985)

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the old Fang Swiss met Allan when he was
in the AI lab Stanford University many years ago
Allan job is to achieve some University Utah sent a short time at the artificial
intelligence laboratory today I then
went to part with many ideas bubble ride
out Alan I remember seeing something called a cookie monster machine some
things some ideas from that probably ended up in my plane I remember how I'm
talking excitedly about the diner blood still has to be realized idea and then
Alan went bad showed up at a time he's
at a college for a while Alan is now an Apple fellow besides doing an
outstanding teacher decided and knows just about everything is to know about
could you define well I actually know quite a bit about anything he any
subject you might pick to talk about Alan probably just read a book about it
last week on the airplane do about it
from college you can talk to Alan about this body
that mm and be any fun not about the young person today as in go five is just
a lot of pay attention at all in today
[Music] also speedo follow that model also so in
addition to his wide breadth of knowledge I think the thing that really counts is imperative talented enthusiasm
about how do we engage new assets and how to have fun I think you Jennie demonstrate a lot of that today in the
title as a job in common
windows and the gate panel because for some years now I exist as in the demise
of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago this in the couch oxygen caused by a jet
comet that as a pilot would come along
and wipe out my window that's always
been around for 12 or 13 years now and my surely be getting obsolete Henry
James said that early I he has ice cream three phases and places to announce
they're being absurd then this remark as the commonplace and
[Music]
my smurfy absolution a couple and
finally get daddy's house and they say G
mark alfieri when they sing but when
tidings to his sentence drunks according
to the Troy and enraged a Beckett
because when this official new eyes disgusting event in February and you
Madame are in decidedly others but in
the morning I will be indisputably sober
there's all the way talk to you is that in the morning it's still ugly
so I said he wears any pies that require
new clothes
tonight
Jack thinks is changing quite a bit I think 20 or 25 years ago when people
started thinking about interactive
because almost to that I like to point out the people that the British say
could actually see it the unhappiness resonates the Pacific police in the
included event by the way I became
because of that you know all the other wonderful things can happen in the
hinges I say stay a little bit energetic
so my big complaint about my toy
industry is sort of the opposite
argument as what Newton said when he was
commended for having done all these wonderful things in fact Lacroix monthly
market anybody has only one set of laws and meeting where's Eli unfortunate to
have each other day said all the same
city but when movie was commended for all
things that he did he made a Trinity my Sevilla day only as they started
attacking people's attention because one
could make money with it and he said five I'm very fond of money myself but
in fact what I had talked to you about tonight a little bit is how all these
things require art in order for to use techniques we live in a century in fact
has found a lot of favor
Whitehead whom I expect a great invention of the 19th century was
invention and the way he can coax he
said is because of the enormous members of the distillation plants that have
been editing the Patent Office driving around 1800 before that the ideas caught
need a really good way
the idea that they should invent an addiction gonna change all over the
place book tours my Kaiser an automatic
hot tipping machine that United your head a little bit more so in fact this
wave of invention not only brought out
all manner of ideas from people but it also got a whole nother group of people
that had never invented anything before to contribute injection plant now the 20th century rj invention was
not invention but in the 20th century came to a whole notion of what change
means to change inattentive what it means to go from one thing to another
has saying so much say actually orient my entire world year every three to five
years and you know people in this field know exactly what that means exactly
learning one design said design but
about and we examine what we mean by the
computer status I have a couple of things here to leave you about my
favorite machine he's a random will
fantasy at eyes on his claims that their
fears of the military and war machine directly stretches of unsurpassed
complexity and beauty instruments of the devil
God has order to induce associated a gluttonous revelry I'm needed very nasty
this practice as good kind in the clip for anything that must be about computer
scientists on manufacturers one must
alert is he aware of fundraising Bacchus many manufactures appear so strongly to
their preconceived notions that will not abandon them even when defeated by
incontrovertible arguments one must carefully reusability time travel now
actually all of these sentences were written before 1690 I got confirmed I'm
a pipe organ buck and I got thinkin various old books I had the most complex
mechanism back then they had the
simultaneously has thousands and thousands of pipes they were in machine
but they also had machinery had to deal
with which appear between the soul of the person playing it even the soul of
the composer and they - minds of the audience whistling here now America
thing about musical instrument is how
most of them started out I think it makes a bit of an analogy for what we're
trying to give almost all musical
instruments amazingly enough started out process and in fact almost no musical
contract to keep the brass instrument tried out in order to signal in battle
and during the hunt the pipe organ was
designed mainly to make noise first
action creature antiquities I in fact the first hydrogen that we know about in
Western civilization go Jackie
to 1100 AD and this incident had
something minority a 26 rank the type
standing the first 15 or 16 natural harmonics of the note T that we this
wide they're tightly v the organ players are called organ beaters back then and
they had something like 25 months pumping away on the dollar and the
estimated output of this organ was about
a hundred were eligible say it was not a
musical instrument by any standards in physics if you want to know why organs
has shot jazz and Joe says when you took
Shannon you know all the grants that pays a natural harmonics found that it
went so you have this incredibly loud child and it took several hundred years
before summary society I could buy it occurs in a new mechanism I could stop
off some of these types and get it to be sausage for more residential worth it
harpsichord was a prosthetic the people
he didn't want to learn how to play the Lisa quick music to the day that they
started winning a secret supplier with that the Kennedy HIV 18th and 19th
century was in the south so what we see
a musical instrument from many many years ago instrument is psycho were
three people are involved there's a composer a performer and a builder and
promotions going to need to cook at least 150 years for them to settle down
pretty tempting that could be expressed as the way their computers are going I
strongly today that by 2100 and
30-second TV people after all he's only
been in the 14 years he came to get into the cycle that what I'd like to do is at
the risk of acting like and showing old
slides from long ago I would like to revisit some of the great ideas of the
50 I'm not going to say message at Xerox PARC because the only thing that people
don't realize about jazz park is that almost every idea that we had here which
fills on people people are almost
nameless now and I want to show you some of the things that they did first so
soon and sweetly talking about pipe organ to that's connected detergent and
it means I can crease a little bit before the collection
so I claim it there's an image people
dialing call the dream the dream is
simple information manipulator regional
ideas it could be so portable 25 amazing
survival is not portability
so a personal information initiator could be something really simple and
what we've actually built in but these
two are close enough between dream and reality we need to work on this again a
homily from Paul Hindemith is that the greatest in and I a John Gurdon as
economists approach that lack of support so I technology is not boring but it's a
little bit too much by television television is what the lastt after they
take you away
this is always a good one to show the University how you could be America and
long ago I said when I went to the Santa a I tried it I took the Jim Watson book
called the molecular biology of the cell
bacterium which we had millions in our stomach about 500 1/2 500 - volume of
expanded and Aliens cell and if you
model it as an Internet compositing machine back down to the atomic level
the down to the level in which information still has meaning one in
coli contains 100 billion bytes so you
can see what company I was working for here when I increased the describes 12 million 8
the course made my former management a
retiree immediately asked me how can I get them away Vito
of course I'm headed in the feather
I shall just showed you and Roger later sake for it
for my present company fifty thousand
two megabyte leaders aqua assistance for
those of you in the liberal I took hundred repainted so what this said Jake
the show is in fact we couldn't be too pad about reject what we've done so far
that our understanding of the architecture of information is clinic
infancy and in fact has learned how to
cope too early in the sense that we had danger absenting are great bikes away
when I want went to the library the
other day and I got this so I can engineer this this is a place a has four
pages
[Music]
who violated all the canons of a profession procedure is written in 1951
had called a new approach to essential design of a digital computers and in it
Bob lays out the architecture to be 5000
vigil at the b-57 had in 1961 virtual
memory of objects tried ways to capture the first capability machine infatuated
mean machine commit the entire concept of capabilities - virtual data which
means that any piece of data could be simulated by a teacher visiting the
highway MAC address with flight cage
uniform calling stretches this is independent of whether you were working
on something called an array attempting call the procedure for the multi package a the radiation scene had two packages
did hide we're multitasking so integrated stack the stayed in control
all of the programming that was done in a higher-level language there's never
any assemblers for it and there are couple things as I my fam here that it
didn't quite be right didn't quite use virtual data right had a couple of
assistive attention to that assessment
but if you look at this this machine has
seven out of the ten greatest software ideas and we thought up in the hardware
product by one person around 1950 as
open to anything that machine could be on a processor today if anybody knew
about it for in fact nobody dies because nobody reads
pathetic but I thought this case were lying to failure because it's really
only four pages multiple column is that
but still
there's a photograph taken in 1962 my
jokes - the first personal computer this is a machine called the link done at
Lincoln labs by Wes Clark and this little machine in 1963 had its own
destroy it had its own display editor in
had an interactive debugger the cakes that look like duct tape he actually
invented for this machine and they held not file but the pages of the virtual
memory that this machine enjoy so the world's first personal computer had a
virtual memory and many of the ideas
initiating the later adapted by Jack except they tritter's forgot what it was
supposed to be about they said well
please this is a fantastic way of building small names and displays
essentially to look at so let's take the display off and lo and behold we had the
mini computer especially the heck of it years before the mini computer is
advantage the personal computer was invented and about 2008 needs to
businesses were eventually built the
senior design for biomedical technician and remarkably about 80% of these
machines are still working today the reason is that they're almost perfectly
designed for what they are supposed to do is to go ab machine to Bionicle
technicians you can have built in either areas and a disease and all kinda slide
I'll show you a first take which is a
software system from the same earth
that's outside first place is the first
summer Jeff - Ivan said when this is the
earliest movie every John has just a glass cup Chad what are you doing at
2200 hours and says I want you all to be mutually perpendicular and address so if
dad is the first traffic system yes it's the first windowing system the window
the palettes didn't drawing line is about 256 miles an aside how he's
telling them to be parallel and perpendicular to the lines this
necklaces be telling me - Koli there was
a lines down below they suspect that is
not only the first graphic system but it's also the first non procedural
programming system everything is done here by carrying out constraints this
system was done by Ivan Sutherland in one year with the assistance of a fight
my impression away leaving the display blinks so much because they didn't have
graphics display back then and the PSP
who is putting up every guy individually says appeasing the entire worded memory
for each side on the scene as he's a mad
at the center for an arc he can draw now
again he was saying click that side that guy is after and after I listened
mutually perpendicular of course hearing
that constrains the center which concerns where the the head of the
sandwich the Jenner is telling you no matter how you destroyed it
that'll always settle into a little high state except I was one other
synthesizing the first graphics system in the first non procedural programming system who was also the first
object-oriented software system this is
actually what we today call a class that
with it and here he's gonna make an infantry spectacular called master so
here's an instance of that with it
in fact we consider this for artificial intelligence but the particular set of
techniques to either news here are analogous to theorem proving in a hurry
on stage so many ways this is one of the first real-time artificial intelligence
extra assistance so here's the Mauryan consider earlier image you can see that
the increase in is dynamic he's getting rid of these federalized you're telling me to be invisible and all the
interested interested herself there can dynamically
of course any combination of change that you make can also do a class so he just
made this landry terrific in it and I was gonna use that
okay some of the techniques she's just dad has lived on but that is a
particularly dramatic example some of
the things that people initially dad I went to ask ties in a long time ago how
could she possibly have done three the greatest range in computer science
forty-three Caesars in one year in the future because well I didn't know it was
hard to ideas about graphics it could
either be like audacity at the time they
said of a drafting table yeah fantastic and Ivan had put the other task which
was well they completed its way the naturally good to look at so you must
use some other is saying at the computer has that this is a way of capturing
dynamics is it directly is the action that brings up explosion which I think
it was very cool
when they're elysian can be directly initiated so we're talking about
something much more like theatrics now than computer science whatever a person
uses an interactive system they're really dealing with a little theater the
screen is like a proscenium arch and what goes on there brings a mess into
the users mind we know computers that you don't have to have a purchase
display or a perfect set of scenery to get that miss join what you must do is
not violate whatever method is that they may attack when you design user
interface what you try to do we suggest what the math is going to do
and by making that Jeff research return almost every gesture they make is going
to work out for example is patrick in
math painting great thrill in using that
for the first time that conservative Joe Atkinson had to actually allows you to
type characters in there and move the hand in there in every command so you
could use was actually simulated there as registering actually were a
magnifying glass that's good design because that's the kind of thing you hope now I always say
that remark to my wife who garage Mac principal why should it be that way
I realized that one of the problems of doing things in computer science is that
you're beaten around the head and shoulder so much by recognition that he
tried not believing the new fairy godmother benefactor to drive by the
ordinary I do it I need to bring the
fairy godmother out today I'm not going to talk very much about direct leverage
wreck leverage by saying that I think
there's a she'll accept the things that expand our reach like word processors
and drawing systems and so forth later on in the talk and then talk more of
that agents began as a very old idea of dramatizing wrote a paper into 1958
which is about a call of a Celtic a few
years later but this idea of the computer acting as an agent and a way of
allowing me to send your eccentric perfect into the computer stack is
something that it's now just become impossible and furthermore it's becoming
necessary and we'll talk about why that is in a in a few minutes five years into
the future this is a personal computer that played Peter and I designed in 1967
58 which is in fact that picture of it on its own display called the Flex
machine and the great little cocking
warmer at about 700 very lonely indicated
circuits in the Catena fact the Senate side of designers Racine was the rumor
of the possibility of a 1k Ron
I won't do any more stories but the
astronauts flew to the moon on a set of computers built out of a way of doing
things called core rope and correlate is where you have little magnetic genesis
chapter 1 and 0 on the string many wireless freedom the swinging of the
wires gives you a way of leaving out
them as a sort of a lie and exactly is that that program that failed when the
first moon flight had to be taken over by these excited the astronaut that's
the way we could be computers back then Koro said yeah the 1k Ron brought this
machine on and in fact it was fairly
powerful is about two microseconds 15 that machine very much like to be 5000
and was a complete plot as far as any
users were concerned that we tried to document the programming language was my
first attempt at designing a nicer programming language in Simula and it
was so nice and so rich that it affected people roughly the way HDL usually does
which it looks like a bunch of little projects crawling about on the same now
I first realized that power and Kazue ality don't necessarily go together I'll
show you now a plate if we can turn the slides off this is 1968 recognizing
watch the Box now recognized in his handwriting
[Music]
to the box and going smokes on it this
can we then erase the foils attached to
the process [Music]
this allows us to draw a new ball again
it was what you wanted to work on this
is done by the same team of people at rancor serration to inject his jock this
is probably the best designed interactive system for novice community in the 60 its from Jacques that we owe
the idea of direction indirect evaluation and economists they had only
one complaint of that JA and that is that none of the United tight palace
invented the land tablet the very first tablet in order to allow this very fast
handwriting algorithm that was done by brother and you can see that it was done
very fast indeed the handwriting was pipeline so he didn't have to pause in
between it just recognized as fast as you went along and so even though they
like to keyboard out nobody objected close in 1958 conducted so those were
for ideas for many other ones for ideas
that we had to go on when we set up the last part some other ones were Doug
Engelbart's work she at Fri the first
idea processor actually could be considerably more than
around right now so these people were
people who as they say to the prescription jacket a client
[Music]
and Justins who drive which is how high it was they just didn't care how highway
but he's a know how high the way all of these things resigning million-dollar
machines stretch to church they wanted to sit to the human in a much more close
to stack and they had that and when i
justed as amicus community to see what i fishes at is it a complacent because in
fact we may use the word displays personal computers but I don't believe
it I don't see one here yet I don't see
any in this room for a really personal we have a whole but where are they now
what we really need is to push on one more round what's not but soggies at the
IBM PC as a as a standard or the Macintosh II just an image to that
matters the driver I I believe it's only
news is really quite pleased they actually joining to deal with you day
now let me give you some ammunition say well that model was actually made in
under when 1970 or something like that was actually the idea for it came in
1968 because that was the year as the first flat panel display through the
alto from 1972
that's according to 1972 now one of the
small talk Windows 10 you know matures a crack and the slide I left that track in
purposely to return to my earlier point
the excited Apple we have to start thinking of other way that's kind of get
rid of Windows completely but I want to get to a sense about the things that
sometimes are more employers can a simple way doing these interactions the
other things just as important we're going to talk about them right now
now some of you have already seen what's wrong with this picture
and I don't mean that it's upside-down
so here it looks like right-side up notice that some nasty person is taking
this lovely young lady's eyes and mouth
and turned them upside down and blended them back in
we'd like to show this slide is the simplest way I know in a cost of
illustrating a couple of points about the the way I mind is organized or not
organized depending on how you want to look at it there couple of important
ideas here one is that whether we like you tonight we live inside a
hallucination that we have devised from
the moment that we were born maximum way
of doing that it resists you hold up so
that one is twice as far away as the other and look to see how small the five
of the way summary is you'll notice that the farther away one is not half the
size even though on your retina it is half the size that your brain knows how
there's a summary and what you're assuming there's not way your eyes are
saying that a reconstruction so in that
Lincoln section is unfortunately done by modular elements they don't always agree
you can find out a lot about the way the mind works or how mentalities function
by looking at the example I so this is one of those this is one in fact where
the anatomical function of this illusion is known to spots about an inch apart on
your brain one of them interacted in taste white thin which is that one is
recording it upside down safe and the other part is interested in eyes and now
valleys recording okay eyes open now
so we go to this one we face guy is
saying that's a right-side up straight and the eyes and mouth is saying something is very wrong
and we can guess why evolution has decided that this one wouldn't have such
a great reaction because you might get killed in the next there are quite a few
minor mentality roaming around in China hedge and a bunch of major one major
ones that I'm gonna talk a little bit about okay that's all of the slide let's
take a general name in cognitive psychology is that a child mentality
develops in stages and three of the main
ones which characterises of doing or a muscular stage a whole is to dig
residual stage or an auditory stage that's one way they suggest the water
point experiment Ron go from a squat
glass into a tall thin one and the kid will say there's more water there and
there's a symbolic stage and with reasoning the Dunwich fact rather than
the present situation a Bruner in a
bunch of intervention experiments and others has shown that actually the
stages appear to be parallel mentality
and what's happening as a child the tourists is that a scenes of dominance
occurs so Sal goes from been dominated
by a doing mentality to being dominated by an image and I'm a licensed mentality this
happens around 10:00 or 11:00 is Joe and
one of the Senate's winners in which kind of innocence is the paj water coin
Hispanic with a quit he was right about in here and poured the water from the
front glass into the tall thin one because there's always more water and
when it's just a cardboard he covered up to the glass and the clips of growth
either must be the same amount of water because we're to the south and when they
took it away and the kid looked at the glass and said well there must be more water because looking at it we put it
back in the kitchen oh yeah so much there have to be the same so if you have
any 20 rows of like Superman
we all have at least one I'm sure had a
mind of the internet catamite and form trying to atone for subjecting
generations of students to having to learn this the later years of his life
protege trust called psychology of invention in the mathematical field and
in this book to being a Finnish acquisition in salfi energy the people
he thought that we're the Hot 100 mathematicians in the world and this
books anyway so available is Dover paperback from 1947 excellent book and
results where they claimed that they
only use or something else that they
resemble only to claims they use symbols at all in doing mathematics and about 30
percent surprisingly said they were down in this range
Einstein said he had sensations of a kinesthetic and muscular height Kapila
spaces he was working with we had sensations that planteth his arms and
very much to exact the sculpture as
these sensations of thinking about clay so at a genius is ability that we have
to childhood it will is not so far and
what most people who like this lying a theory thanks occurs that people resent
other penises are able to set some of
these other mentality to work I'll give an example of an experiment
this variation a few more topics did
some years ago which was the idea of
getting children to draw circles in mojo
and he was interested in how young a child you could get to draw a circle and
we got interested in the different ways
that children have ages through circles so 25 year-old the driver says well he's
in this muscular stage we just had to close his eyes so he can't please that's
important because he he'll fight himself if he tries to see and just like to draw
a circle through the death dividing
those perfectly well how to do it and after you sent it for why you asked and
what do you do him this is why enjoying a little and turning a little he typed
that into logo who's got a perfect circle go a little 10 a little over and
over that's because the five-year-old owns the essential equation
[Music]
these actors will see you about one-and-a-half the Riveter is better off
than anybody else to do this much she's
grown up to play what if I zero will do give him a compass to let him draw
circles and after a while his discovery that the points on the rim are equidistant from the center so he
there's a much more laborious Rajjo program cannot go out to the rim make
them rise back up to the center turn one degrees okay it's a perfectly good
circle the locus that point algorithm and a question I wouldn't be telling the
story if he fifteen-year-old didn't serve as well in fact the
fifteen-year-old is absolutely unable to draw a circle and Laura go
because he's in the symbolic stage and he knows the worst fact in the known
universe the worst coordinate system you
can possibly be in would be somebody else's that has almost no operational
him about it okay so I set a derivative
remember that chapter 16 a calculus book that we never learned is that one about
curvatures day and there's a horrible formula from drawing from Cartesian
coordinates to the curvature coordinates and is about one and a half riveted that
is why Roseau is perfectly designed that way of course we included this story as
if you can trick people into using parts
of their mentality at all we know the answers to change even though they may
not see the I situate symbolic ones that we've introduced you can get much greater ahead so with that in mind I'll
show you finish oh wait for it take
three and don't tell it until I tell you
all jokes have to be prepared 1,300
state is that a person who was to become a friend of mine when twins always who
lived in Malibu California wrote a book
called the Entertainer tank which he proposed that there's no reason why
people had the struggle aligned in a beginning stage no reason whatsoever you
should be able to the intermediate level tennis almost immediately to jump over
this divinity stage because your body already knew how to do it and this
who was working for ABC attacks that time apparently from Iowa or some the
western state and a dredging tennis player the worst time and so he sent out
an agency hockey squad to be attend all I in how did this place for Malibu know
anything about playing tennis it's awfully difficult support so they
rounded up a whole bunch of people who signed affidavits saying they'd never played tennis in their life and the
agency through which the worst one of these who was Molly Grogan by six 240
pounds overweight 55 years old in a muumuu she's not even
exercise in 20 years they turned the
cameras on inside the clock at the side of the court saying the 10 you have 20
minutes to teach them how to play tennis what happened
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