Alan Kay talk at DePaul University (2012)

this

great honor is especially  meaningful to me because

no one knows  more to his research

community than i do  and i feel

the same spirit of family and  community in

the wonderful deep all  commitments to

access to everyone and it  takes a

village to help all of us  succeed in

our dreams when i asked

about  graduation speeches i was

told it is  tradition to give advice and

to be darn  quick about it

but

since we're all  manifestly diverse

everyone needs  somewhat

different advice and after all  of

these years I'm still working on my  own process so

I don't have any lofty  pronouncements from my

own experience  this is probably a relief

on the other  hand

we are all the members of the same  species and

part of what education with

  the capital e should mean is for

us to  gain some understanding and perspective  on

ourselves so after

acquiring a real  education in college

shouldn't we be  able to give

the human race at least one  piece of useful advice

what of

many  perspectives on humanity

would you  choose and what advice would you give

there's a lot of scientific evidence  that

says our species has been on the  planet

for at least 200,000 years an

  anthropologists who

have studied  thousands of societies around the world  and

found that all have language

stories  culture

religion music

dance art several

  hundred categories of behaviors

at all a  child born

into one culture and moved at  birth to another will

grow up as a  member  of the receiving

culture we have to be  very similar

for this to be possible so

  despite all of our manifest differences

  down deep we were also very similar and

what seems to differ from culture to  culture are

not our categories but how  each culture

fills them out for

we don't fight over whether we have  beliefs about

the world but over what  beliefs

so here's what strikes me about  us even

though for hundreds of thousands  of years we've

cared so much about our  beliefs to fight for them

until very  recently we humans

have just taken the  world of our senses and of

our cultures  as they seem with

almost no attempts to  invent ways to

check if our perceptions  and beliefs actually

hold water in

other  words we humans live inside of our heads

  to an astonishing degree so

much so that  we resemble a creature in

a dream that  only occasionally matches

up with the  world that lives in we

live in a kind of  a hallucination of our own devising

  Francis Bacon pointed

this out in 1610  when

he called for methods to be  developed to get around the

blindness  caused by our genetics

how our  individual brains

develop how we use  language and how

we assimilate the  beliefs of our culture's

this was part  of the already started

invention of  science which produced

example after  example we're careful investigations

and  new kinds of thinking's revealed

that  many of our beliefs about the world did  not hold

up we have been fooling  ourselves

so the perspective on humanity  I

would choose is that we are the  species

that fools itself in fact

we  even pay good money to be fooled and

we  have been fooling ourselves for

our  entire 200,000 years and

part of the  nature of this foolery is that

we can see  and that

what we think is there is what  is there a

wonderful line and the Talmud

  says we things not as they are

but as we  are I've often wondered

what happened to  that person Marshall

McLuhan the great  canadian philosopher

said until I  believe it I can't see it

but we need  dreams

and imagination one

of my  greatest heroes was Helen Keller

who was  rendered blind and deaf

before she was  two years old yet

became the first  deafblind person to earn a college

  degree at Radcliffe in

1904 in 1932

  shortly after the empire state building  was

built at the dawn of the depression

  in amazingly less than a year as a

  statement by its contractors about

what  humans can do with purpose and will

  Helen Keller who knew a lot about

  purpose and will took a trip to the top

  she was asked afterwards by

dr. John  Finley what did you think of

the site  when you're on top of

the empire  building here are

a few extracts from  the letter she wrote to Finley

I quote

  frankly I was so entranced seeing

that I  did not think

about the site if

there  was a subconscious thought of it it

was  in the nature of gratitude

to God for  having given

the blind seeing minds as I

  now recall the view i had from the  Empire tower

I'm convinced that until

we  have looked into darkness we cannot

know  what a divine thing vision is I

will  concede that my guide

saw a thousand  things that escaped me from

the top of  the empire building but

i am not envious  for imagination

creates distances and  horizons

  that reach to the end of the world it

is  as easy for the mind to think in stars  as

in cobblestones it

was a thrilling  experience to be whizzed in a

lift a  quarter of a mile heavenward and to

see  New York spread out like a marvelous  tapestry

beneath us there was the Hudson

  more like the flash of a sword blade  than

a noble River the little island

of  Manhattan set like a jewel in its nest  of

rainbow waters stared up into

my face  and the solar system circled

about my  head why I thought

the Sun and stars are  suburbs

of New York and I never knew it  I see

in the Empire State Building  something else

passionate skill arduous  and

fearless idealism the tallest

building is a victory of imagination  instead

of crouching close to the earth  like a beast the

spirit of man soars to  higher regions and

from this new point  of Vantage he

looks upon the impossible  with fortified

courage and dreams yet  more significant enterprises

what did I  see in here from the Empire

tower as I  stood there are twinks to earth

and sky  I saw a romantic structure

wrought by  human brains and hands

that is to the  burning I of the Sun

arrival luminary I  saw it stand erect

and serene in the  midst of storm and the

tumult of n  elemental commotion

I heard the hammer  of Thor ring when the shaft

began to  rise upward I saw the unconquerable

  steal the flash of testing

flames the  sword like rivets I heard

the stream  steam drills and pandemonium I

saw  countless skilled workers welding

  together that mighty symmetry I looked

up on the Marvel of frail yet  indomitable hands

that lifted the tower  to

its dominating height

when I first  read that i said wow

  I say it now every

human being is born  with it potential

to learn to see as  Helen Keller learned to

see with their  hearts body spirits and

minds and to  learn to be as vividly alive

and human  as Helen Keller learned to be

our great  gift is that

though we are the stuff  that dreams are made of we

can invest  those dreams with the clearer knowledge

  brought by careful study beyond our  simple

prejudices there's nothing more  powerful and

imagination coupled with  investigation

imagination allows us to  dream

and conceive of better futures for  us all

investigation finds the powers  and knowledge to

make better futures  happen so

I think my advice to our  species would be we can't learn

to see  until we admit we are blind in

other  words let us learn

how to wake up from  the slumbers of our nervous system  culture

and beliefs try to find out what  is going on

and what is really needed  thank you