Alan Kay Talk at MobilFest 2007 - Revision history

Ohshima at 20:35, 23 December 2017

2017-12-23T20:35:37Z

Ohshima at 20:34, 23 December 2017

2017-12-23T20:34:53Z

Ohshima at 20:34, 23 December 2017

2017-12-23T20:34:32Z

Show changes

Da0099: Typos.

2017-12-18T01:20:42Z

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@@ Line 173: / Line 173: @@
 <subtitle id="26:18">So a lot of what we should be thinking about when we're trying to deal with education and make positive changes in education is, "How can we do this stuff better?"</subtitle>
 <subtitle id="26:28">"How can we find more of these guys better?"</subtitle>
-<subtitle id="26:36">Another McLuhan idea here is what I really like he says, "Don't worry about whether it's right or wrong, just try to find out what is going on."</subtitle>
+<subtitle id="26:36">Another McLuhan idea here is what I really like. He says, "Don't worry about whether it's right or wrong, just try to find out what is going on."</subtitle>
 <subtitle id="26:46">What he might mean here is that right or wrong we think of as absolutes but they're always relative to our belief structures.</subtitle>
 <subtitle id="26:54">If there's one thing that we've learned over the last four or five hundred years is that things we believe a few hundred years ago have turned out not to be so.</subtitle>

@@ Line 7: / Line 7: @@
 <subtitle id="0:00">Thanks very much for inviting me to MobilFest.</subtitle>
-<subtitle id="0:04">Today i am going to try and say a few words about some of the mobility ideas originally came from, how they affect children and maybe a little bit about how the future is going to turn out.</subtitle>
+<subtitle id="0:04">Today I am going to try and say a few words about some of the mobility ideas originally came from, how they affect children and maybe a little bit about how the future is going to turn out.</subtitle>
 <subtitle id="0:19">What I would like to do is first to look at perhaps the most important mobile technology to ever been invented.</subtitle>

@@ Line 243: / Line 243: @@
 '''18:03'''
 And they got almost intractable when we start asking questions,
-"But, who is going to help the child learn these things?
+"But, who is going to help the child learn these things? Where is the mentor? Where are the teachers? Where are the informed parents?"
 '''18:15'''
 And this question right now is somewhat unanswerable in the 1st and 2nd world.
-In the developed world we don't have enough elementary school teachers who understand
+In the developed world we don't have enough elementary school teachers who understand  real math and real science. And we certainly don't have enough well and foreign teachers in the developing world.
 '''18:34'''

@@ Line 216: / Line 216: @@
 Thanks primarily to Nicholas Negroponte who was the spearhead behind the one laptop per child XO (OLPC XO).
 This kind of got companies first to be against the idea, but then to develop versions of their own.
-Like the Intel Classmate here and there are others appearing on the scene now that Nicholas
+Like the Intel Classmate here and there are others appearing on the scene now that Nicholas has a topic of conversation and gotten other people to realize that children are a huge potential market
 and a huge untapped resource for making the world better.
 '''16:27'''
 Companies like Nokia, who make a million phones a day, more than 400 million phones a year,
-are another example of a another technology that is actually going to kind of converge with
+are another example of a another technology that is actually going to kind of converge with inexpensive communications technologies with displays with enough pixels to allow thoughts
 about education to seriously be thought about in the next several years.
@@ Line 241: / Line 239: @@
 '''17:39'''
 So it's not that difficult to do technology today.
-The system software and so forth is also a fair amount of work, but it's definitely doable
+The system software and so forth is also a fair amount of work, but it's definitely doable and where things start to get harder here is in thinking about the environments for the children and really harder to start thinking about how we can teach children non-trivial ideas.
 '''18:03'''
@@ Line 260: / Line 256: @@
 So I believe this is actually the the problem that is going to have to be solved
 in order for all the rest of the stuff to make sense.
- And of course most of the attention so far is being directed at the easy parts
+And of course most of the attention so far is being directed at the easy parts
- of the problem and the most physical parts of the problem and and so forth.
+of the problem and the most physical parts of the problem and and so forth.
 '''18:52'''
 The more invisible parts of the problem are just starting to surface now that
- these machines are starting to show up in various countries and people are wondering,
+these machines are starting to show up in various countries and people are wondering,
- "What can we do with them?"
+"What can we do with them?"

← Older revision		Revision as of 01:19, 18 December 2017
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	of knowledge. People have had knowledge of different kinds for hundreds of thousands of years.		of knowledge. People have had knowledge of different kinds for hundreds of thousands of years.
	And so it's not so much the knowledge that is important, but the outlook.		And so it's not so much the knowledge that is important, but the outlook.
		+
		+	'''15:19'''
		+	I'm going to come back to this because the outlook that we have about what we
		+	think knowledge is, how we think we can get it, how we trust the knowledge,
		+	and how we distrust the knowledge, how we teach the knowledge,
		+	and so forth, is actually the key to making progress here.
		+
		+	'''15:39'''
		+	In the last couple of years we've seen the start of real computers for children.
		+	Thanks primarily to Nicholas Negroponte who was the spearhead behind the one laptop per child XO (OLPC XO).
		+	This kind of got companies first to be against the idea, but then to develop versions of their own.
		+	Like the Intel Classmate here and there are others appearing on the scene now that Nicholas
		+	has a topic of conversation and gotten other people to realize that children are a huge potential market
		+	and a huge untapped resource for making the world better.
		+
		+	'''16:27'''
		+	Companies like Nokia, who make a million phones a day, more than 400 million phones a year,
		+	are another example of a another technology that is actually going to kind of converge with
		+	inexpensive communications technologies with displays with enough pixels to allow thoughts
		+	about education to seriously be thought about in the next several years.
		+
		+	'''16:56'''
		+	So this is something that's happening right now.
		+	The OLPC has just started their first real mass build a couple of days ago.
		+	And I'm sure that there are some talks about the OLPC at your conference.
		+
		+	'''17:12'''
		+	When we look at this idea of children's computers and look at what is easy and what's hard,
		+	the easiest thing is actually to make the computer itself.
		+
		+	'''17:25'''
		+	Even though it's kind of a monumental task over the last few years it was still done by a few dozen
		+	people and perhaps a hundred people at Quantum, the company that's making it.
		+
		+	'''17:39'''
		+	So it's not that difficult to do technology today.
		+	The system software and so forth is also a fair amount of work, but it's definitely doable
		+	and where things start to get harder here is in thinking about the environments for the children
		+	and really harder to start thinking about how we can teach children non-trivial ideas.
		+
		+	'''18:03'''
		+	And they got almost intractable when we start asking questions,
		+	"But, who is going to help the child learn these things?
		+	Where is the mentor?
		+	Where are the teachers? Where are the informed parents?"
		+
		+	'''18:15'''
		+	And this question right now is somewhat unanswerable in the 1st and 2nd world.
		+	In the developed world we don't have enough elementary school teachers who understand
		+	real math and real science.
		+	And we certainly don't have enough well and foreign teachers in the developing world.
		+
		+	'''18:34'''
		+	So I believe this is actually the the problem that is going to have to be solved
		+	in order for all the rest of the stuff to make sense.
		+	And of course most of the attention so far is being directed at the easy parts
		+	of the problem and the most physical parts of the problem and and so forth.
		+
		+	'''18:52'''
		+	The more invisible parts of the problem are just starting to surface now that
		+	these machines are starting to show up in various countries and people are wondering,
		+	"What can we do with them?"

← Older revision		Revision as of 00:51, 18 December 2017
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	the physical and informational universe and that is sufficient to allow entirely new inventions to be		the physical and informational universe and that is sufficient to allow entirely new inventions to be
	made and spread around.		made and spread around.
		+
		+	'''13:12'''
		+	So if we look at these three slides together and think about the Third World
		+	or the non-developed world what this says is that the development in the non-developed world
		+	can primarily take place through education by learning new points of view and
		+	new ways of using the points of view. That the the need for huge steel mills
		+	or a billion-dollar integrated circuit factories to make computers or in the realm of biology
		+	of rather large installations to make fermentations of various kinds of bacteria and stuff,
		+	this is going to change to something that's more like a kitchen science and the key to it is
		+	going to be the points of view and the kinds of knowledge that people can exert.
		+
		+	'''14:09'''
		+	So what we're talking about here is an education revolution.
		+	Now most people in the regular world prize IQ.
		+	So Leonardo is very justly celebrated for having a high IQ.
		+	But, we have to ask what it would be like if you were born with an IQ of 500,
		+	but in 10,000 BC. How far would you get?
		+	How far did Leonardo get with his huge IQ, borned when he was born?
		+	He designed many, many machines, but he couldn't invent a single-engine
		+	for any of them that would make them work. He was just born in the wrong time and his IQ
		+	wasn't strong enough to surmount the general knowledge of the time.
		+	So knowledge tends to trump IQ and always has, but basically there's so much different kinds
		+	of knowledge. People have had knowledge of different kinds for hundreds of thousands of years.
		+	And so it's not so much the knowledge that is important, but the outlook.

← Older revision		Revision as of 00:28, 18 December 2017
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	or somebody anywhere in the world who gets an idea for a computer, both hardware and software,		or somebody anywhere in the world who gets an idea for a computer, both hardware and software,
	and can make the entire thing just on their desktop.		and can make the entire thing just on their desktop.
		+
		+	'''12:20'''
		+	This is going to be an absolute revolution in both the cost of what it takes to make computers
		+	but also who will be able to make them. So if we think about what is behind all this it's as
		+	Mick Jagger would say, "It's only Math. and Science."
		+
		+	'''12:43'''
		+	So essentially what's happening here is instead of requiring 200,000 people to make an Egyptian pyramid
		+	out of old material what we basically need are 5 to 15 people who really know how to deal with the both
		+	the physical and informational universe and that is sufficient to allow entirely new inventions to be
		+	made and spread around.

← Older revision		Revision as of 00:23, 18 December 2017
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	DynaBook and we can make them inexpensively enough for children.		DynaBook and we can make them inexpensively enough for children.
	We could try a lot of Seymour Papert's ideas on them.		We could try a lot of Seymour Papert's ideas on them.
		+
		+	'''10:19'''
		+	Then right after that this idea and a bunch of others from other people got concentrated
		+	at Xerox Parc.
		+	Here's a cardboard model I made of the that cartoon idea and we decided to build a desktop computer
		+	again but one that was kind of like what the DynaBook was going to be.
		+	We invented much of the modern technology that you used today.
		+
		+	'''10:49'''
		+	So we had object-oriented programming, dynamic animation, the windows user interface,
		+	desktop publishing, the ethernet, the laser printer. We invented part of The Internet and so forth.
		+	So there's a whole suite of technologies here.
		+
		+	'''11:07'''
		+	Looking ahead to just a few years ahead that set of inventions done at XEROX PARC
		+	was done by only two dozen people. The reason two dozen people were able to do all that
		+	is the technology had changed from discrete transistors to integrated circuits that had
		+	enough components on them so that relatively small numbers of people can build computers all by themselves.
		+
		+	'''11:34'''
		+	The next revolution along these lines is happening now and is just starting to be seen
		+	in the in the marketplace. But, by about 10 years from now not just displays will be made out of
		+	conductive plastics, but actually the Entire Computer and these conductive plastic some of them
		+	can be made by something like an inkjet printer sitting right on your desk.
		+
		+	'''12:03'''
		+	So you imagine now a high school student or college student or computer scientist
		+	or somebody anywhere in the world who gets an idea for a computer, both hardware and software,
		+	and can make the entire thing just on their desktop.

← Older revision		Revision as of 22:35, 17 December 2017
Line 124:		Line 124:
	It doesn't need Cartesian coordinates. It doesn't even need a center because the circle		It doesn't need Cartesian coordinates. It doesn't even need a center because the circle
	is that geometric figure that has constant curvature.		is that geometric figure that has constant curvature.
		+
		+	'''8:58'''
		+	So I thought this is the best idea that anybody ever had for computing.
		+	Which is, "Here is an area where it actually went beyond the book to be able to embody
		+	a special kind of powerful mathematics in a way that very young children could learn it."
		+	So I got very excited about that.
		+
		+	'''9:18'''
		+	And my reaction to this was to draw a cartoon on the plane home that showed a couple
		+	of kids sitting out in the middle of a grass field having just programmed their own game
		+	of Space War and learned about "f = m a" and other parts of physics.
		+	Their little DynaBooks here are communicating with each other with wireless communication.
		+	The research community I was embedded in at that time, the ARPA Research Community, had
		+	been working on the ARPAnet. I had also started on a wireless version and so I have this notion
		+	that finally there is a real reason for thinking ahead, that there would be machines like this
		+	DynaBook and we can make them inexpensively enough for children.
		+	We could try a lot of Seymour Papert's ideas on them.