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

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 example  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

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

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 think  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

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