Alan Kay: Big Ideas are Sometimes Powerful Ideas

so we actually are dealing

with an  academic hour here and

be fitting with  our school setting marvin

minsky once  said school was the greatest invention  anybody

ever came up with to keep you  from

staying interested on anything for  any reasonable length

of time because of  course it has all

these schedules in  assembly line movements

and we have one  of those today and I

also wanted to  leave time for questions

but one of the  ways I want to leave time for questions  is

to encourage you to ask questions as  I

talk so I have no idea how long this  talk is

and I am going to stop after

50  minutes and regardless of what what

  happened so please don't be shy ask

  questions as we go if you like and

  because this talk is

not for me but for  you so

it's

in a series of ideas which  are somewhat

connected I hope so

one  contrast I'd

like you to think about is  the notion beach of common

sense that  most

people take the

world around them  as reality I

once came up with a phrase  that said

technology is anything that  happened after you

were born because

the  technology that you're born into is just  part

of your world and it's taken to be  normal there and most people take the

internet Prince the Internet is one of  the great inventions of all time not

the  web but the internet itself one of the

great maybe one of the greatest  engineering feats

of all time and it

  worked so well that hardly

anybody  appreciates it particularly

where they should pay more attention to  why it works so

well so here's a  common-sense

deduction that

has been  made by most people on

the planet for  the slightly less than 200,000

years  modern humans have been here and

that is  something like a king

  natural and normal extension

of the head  of the family

hunted leaders of

hunting  groups and etc etcetera so this is just

  regarded as common sense and in fact

was  not regarded as it as an idea it was  just

part of the part of the world that  people lived

in then in January

1776  Thomas Paine wrote a book

which he  ironically titled common sense everybody

here has heard of Tom Paine's Common  Sense

but

he had a big idea in it which  was

instead of having the King be the  law we

can have the law be the king and  what he meant

was we can design a much  better society than

the what the natural  seeming

hereditary monarchy as we can  take our future into

our own hands we  can come up with a better plan this

is  an idea that surfaced

a couple of times  in Greece but not not

before not after  and

this book which

pain published at  his own expense initially just

gave it  away had a press run of somewhere  between

six hundred thousand and nine  hundred thousand in six

months so that's  a lot

by today's standards and there

  were 1.5 million non slaves

in the  thirteen colonies back

then and so this  press run encompassed

somewhere between  almost a half to more

than a half of all  men women and children in all

13  colonies so imagine just trying to

reach  that number of people today there

medium that you could do it with except  with the internet

I try to

get sixty  percent of 300

million people no  newspaper

could do it so so

this is a  big idea but

  the powerful idea and

istinction I want to make was the  Constitution

as a big idea is

kind of an  insight and often

insights insights

are  wonderful but they're lightweight  they're

relatively easy to have compared  to doing

something about it so the  Constitution

said

we should shape  society into a self-organizing

self-correcting shared idea and resource  system and

that is a very radical idea  even

for today for instance most  Americans have no idea

what the design  of the United States

was or is it's  simply not

taught in schools it's not  the way American history

is is taught  and

so most

societies on earth haven't

gotten this idea even at the societal  level most

human beings on earth don't  have this idea

but this is one of these  powerful ideas that

makes qualitative  differences

in almost every area of

life  and it's related to an even bigger

set  of ideas so another

common sense

whoops

  another another common sense

notion  which is actually

with most Americans  today according to the surveys I've seen

which is the world is pretty much as it  seems

so we this is what our

nervous  systems are set up to do we're basically

  weren't set up by nature to think we're

  set up by nature to cope and so our

primary mechanism is whatever  environment we find

ourselves in so the  answer anthropologists

know that you can  take a child at

birth from any culture  on the planet and take it anywhere

on the planet  that child will grow up as a member

of  that culture you took it too that's

because humans are rather more similar  than they are different

we have about  300

traits that anthropologists have  identified that

seem to be quite genetic  including things

like language having  culture telling stories and

those  mechanisms get

embodied with the local  varieties

of those and so the reality  you

grow up within the language you grew  up with

is the language and the reality

  of the culture you you're born in Q so

now this big ideas have been had

number of times in history I happen to  like the Talmud

version of it we see  things

not as they are but as we are so

  this is a bit I'd love to know

what  actually happened

to the person who came  up with this idea did

they take it to  its logical conclusion

considering and  was

interesting that was published in  this Talmud is part of the

commentary  but

this is one of

the great big ideas  of all time this is

a really hard one  because it completely

relative izes  what's going

on however it's not a  powerful idea

but had numerous times and

powerful

idea came in the 17th

century  and you could point to a

number of  people and you could point to various

  societies but 17th

century has a has a  perfect

atomic bomb place

where science  started

because we had Galileo and  Kepler and maybe

Copernicus beforehand

  and a few other people but in fact when

  Newton did the Principia

he actually  revolutionized human

thought and it's  probably the largest leap in human

thought of this kind that we know of  historically

this is why most scientists

think of Newton as being the greatest  scientist and he

was almost the first  scientist and

not just in relative terms  but

in absolute terms the amount of  distance

he was able to cover not just  in terms of

knowledge but in terms of  about look and

the powerful idea of  science is not so

easy to state  everything else comes

out pretty nicely  as slogans and there's

more to science  than just this but

this is one half of  it which

knowledge  as niels bohr

said science is not there  to tell us about the

universe is what  most people think most

non-scientists  most kids in school are taught

what is  called science as in

roughly the same  way they learn religion in

when they go  to church or synagogue or

mosque but as  in what science

is at all it's not about  knowledge it's

about relating the stuff  we can

do and can't do in here all

the  things that we can do with our  representational

systems to stuff out  there that

we can't get to directly  because

everything we do is filtered  through our nervous systems

as filtered  through our culture's is filtered for

  through the the difficulties we have  with

making relationships about

things  and this was not an easy idea

to have  we'll see in

a bit but what's

happened  in the last 400 years in

many many  dimensions has

been more than has  happened in the rest of

the 200,000  years and you

know the cliche that most

  scientists 90 more than ninety percent

of all the scientists who ever lived  you're alive today and

most of the  things that are happening

today and some  of the problems and

some of the  solutions to those problems are

all  caused this by different way of looking  at the world

and

much is made particularly in

the pop  culture of bringing

bright this

is  because pop culture's

or cultures  without a lot of developed

knowledge  basically live by

their wits and so you  out

with each other and you compete at

  the level of width but imagine

being  born with an IQ of 500

who knows how  smart

leonardo was let's just

no 203 who  because those figures

don't what does IQ  me in any way but let's

just say hey  suppose you're just a

hell of a lot  smarter than anybody who ever lived but

  you were born in 10,000 BC how

far you  going to get so

you can probably out wit  everybody around you before they burn  you at

the stake

but in fact Leonardo  who

we know is very very bright could  not

invent a single engine for

any of  the vehicles that he designed so he's  famous

for designing things that look  like planes and

things that maybe look  like helicopters and I'll

and they're  wonderful and he did a lot of wonderful  things but

he couldn't make a single  goddamn one of them work

that is and  that's because he

wasn't smart enough to  think himself out of the

era he had been  born into as

has the closest person who's ever  thought himself out

of the era he was  born into his Newton

so

you have this  odd paradox that whoops

sorry that

Henry

Ford who is not nearly as smart as  Leonardo just

happened to be born in the  right time and so

he did revolutionize  one of the areas

that Leonardo wanted to  revolutionize by

being able to do

adaptive engineering and a little bit of  invention

to the stuff that was already  around so

his knowledge was processed  knowledge

and this was very powerful and  what

was the difference between these  two these two guys

was this change

of  outlook that Newton

was one of the  promulgate errs of so

one of the ways I  when

I talked to grabs grad students or  children

I say well knowledge is silver

  but outlook is gold

our world is

built  on changes of outlook that was what the  Constitution

was that was what Tom Paine  did and that's what science

did and IQ

  is led

because there is no we know

of no  developed field knowledge in which you  can get

by with just talent there's

developed sport in which you can get by  with just talent

and some of the most

  difficult sports have been excelled

in  by people who are not as athletic

so for  instance Chris effort as

an example who  is not a particularly athletic tennis

  player but man that you know how to work  and

so she got very very good at it

and  most things have this

thing an Outlook  also

tells you what kind of knowledge to  go after

because of course every group  in history had

a zillion amount of not  you going to the Australian outback

  without a

native Australian there to  help

you you're going to die whereas for

  them is just a walk in the park because  everything

is food they know how to get  water and it's there

just they know  where the dangers are they avoid them  it's

no big deal  so every group has lots of

knowledge the  real thing to think about is what kind

  of knowledge is that what's the quality  level what's

the level of flexibility  what can you you

do with

outlook changes are more pine Steiners  another one so

about a hundred years ago

something that

Newton in a slightly

different Einstein was quite sure that  Newton if

he lived longer and had not

  been put in had a head of the Treasury  in

England that Newton would have  actually come up with

a theory of  relativity I don't know

whether he could  have could have actually done

that  because but Newton

didn't know that he

thought it was ridiculous that his  equations had action

at a distance so

he  said so in letters as just that nobody

  could measure well enough and what they

  did measure the

gravitational forces  seem to transmit

instantly but

from  Newton standpoint that was ridiculous

okay

so that was the first section so

  the second section is to look at what  children can actually

do under ideal  conditions and

this is not easy to find  so a couple

of these things are results  of just

dealing with hundreds and  hundreds

of teachers over more than 40  years and

in this case this was an  accident because

we were working in the  fourth and

fifth grades in the school  and of course I started

the school and I happen to poke my nose  into

first grade and what

I saw was  quite shocking to me

i should mention I  have a degree

in mathematics and another  one in molecular biology as

well as the  computer science degrees so

walked into this math this first grade  classroom and SAT

minutes  I gradually

realize that this teacher

  was doing real math with first

graders  not school math but

real math the real  deal and as I got to know her

Julia  nishijima was her name

I found she was  that she have not

taken any math in  college but

she was like one of these  musician friends you might have who

was  just a natural musician she was a net

she just saw the world in terms of math  and her outlook

was in the world of the  kindergarten and

first grade child so  over

a couple of years I saw some of the  most amazing

things I've ever seen in  any classroom at any age this

done after the kids have been there for  about three months

and the school is a  busing

school in LA and what that means

  is that the children in order to induce  the

parents to

get on the that have  their children but

if you think about  bus driving

a car in LA as ridiculous so  let's

put our children on buses twice  twice

a day to try

and deal with some of  the racial imbalance

problems and but  they

did and there was some really  interesting

inducements to get the  parents to do that but the law was

that  for each of the busing schools had

to  have the same demographic as

the city as  a whole so

these busing schools were the  perfect

discovery learning both of this both  these are absolute vs

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