Alan Kay at MacFest (1985)

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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