An Interview with Computing Pioneer Alan Kay

okay mister okay your

Paderborn  right now we

see a quote at a at a  building as a great

honor to you it was  great surprise

when they told me they  were doing it the

quote has been  everywhere on the internet

it will  probably go on my tombstone people

like  the optimism in the

quote and of course  there are other quotes that are less  optimistic

that I've made and those have  not gone on any building that I

know of  the research community I

was a part of  was much

more concerned with making  progress than anything and

so the  important part about the

quote is not  who said it but

who reads it okay and

so  from the standpoint I

would be just as  happy if my name weren't on the

quote  because that's irrelevant

  okay there's no information content in  Alan Kay

but there is a little bit of  information content

in the idea that the  future is in our hands

do something about it  so from

the way I am my research  community from

40 years ago looked at  things that was what

was more important  so I might even have picked a different

  quote which one well

one of the ones I  came up with is the idea that context

or  point of view is worth ad IQ

points and  so

you know we're if we're

born in  10,000 BC with

the IQ of Leonardo not

a  lot is going to happen because it's

a question of being smart we aren't a  very smart species

we can accumulate  knowledge and that helps

but most  traditional societies have accumulated

lot of knowledge and things that have  made the big changes

are changes in our  context like

the invention of reading  and writing the

invention of modern  science 400 years ago those

completely  changed the way we look at the world

  and to me it's the business

of a  university to supply

to help students

  learn contexts that they're

never aware  of when they're in high school and

so I  think I might put that on a university  building

first because

the you think  about preventing the future

it doesn't  even say it doesn't say

whether the  inventions are plus or minus right

so  it's a very aggressive statement if you

  think about it and people like

it  because it's optimistic and it doesn't  have any

moral consequences the way it's  way it's actually stated

but to me  invention does have moral consequences

and so you have to think about something  else also in 2004

you've got the Turing  award for your life

the you know I got a bunch

of awards  over over the years and

most of us in

  that research community I came from and

  who got awards think that the

the big  the big award was the fact that we got  to do

the work so that was

because  making something out of nothing  is

a process of art and that

is a huge  reward to

be able to do that and then  almost

as equal in the amount of award  is

the fact that people were willing to  fund us before we done

the work so if  you think about getting a medal

40 years  later for something that was is

now  completely obvious was a good idea

it's  small compared to somebody

being willing  to fund you before

the idea is a good idea and especially  if you happen

to be in your 20s like I  was so the

the awards are

we think are  more to

recognize the field because  nobody remembers

who last year's Nobel  Prize winner in physics was

but we  remember the public remembers

there is a  thing called physics because there is a  Nobel

Prize and somebody  wins it each year and that's the

feel about awards like the Turing award  and the Draper prize and

and the Kyoto  prize and so forth that

there are really  recognitions of the field for

the public  and we show up to them when we get these  awards to

help the public understand  there

that there are these processes  going on that

are not completely in the  public eye

yeah so so the the

we gotta

say the real recognition usually comes  much earlier than getting

a major award  of

the stuff that counts okay

our global economic economy

is  increasingly growing and

the  characteristics are mainly

or the the  main point

the development of the IT

you  talk about a revolution

at which

a state  of this well

I think that you

know  economics ultimately depends on our

  ability to convert things

in nature to  energy which we can

then use to make  things and so

you know

over the over the  years we've used water flow

we've used  heat we've used petroleum and so

forth  and information

has a content

that can  be transformed from from

one way to  another and so

the ability of people to  cooperate

has done more for civilization  than

almost any other thing even though  it's

in our genes to  to compete

but in fact the civilizations

that are the most wealthy are the ones  that have

learned how to cooperate  because that gives

you the most  potential wealth

to be able to make  things out of so

that's something that  the general human race hasn't really

  understood yet and many people in  business

don't understand it because  businesses are always competing they

  haven't invented agriculture yet

in the  sense of thinking of a stable large

very  powerful

very abundant system of

things  and in the

realm of computing what

has  happened now is to

to be able to do what  always happens when something new

comes  along like when the Gutenberg Bible was

  shown at the Nuremberg fair

in 1454

it  was shown as a way

of making things that  looked exactly like what the monks

did  including the illuminations so

though it's cheaper to print they got  people in to

make the drawings in there  by hand because that's what books look  like

the books were big like this so you  couldn't they

weren't really portable  because books beforehand

we're so  expensive that they're too

expensive to  move around and there

are people in the  first few years after

understood what the book the printing  press was actually

about but Europe  didn't understand

it for 150 years so it  was until

the 17th century that what the  printing press was all about

starting to  get used and so

that lag is what we're  in right now and

it's interesting that  commercial computing

started about 500

years after the printing presses started  in the early 50s printing

presses 1454  and

so in this for in this first 50  years if

you look at what most people  use their computers for it's

almost  entirely automating old media

  right so it's textual

media pictures  movies accounting

things

automating  warehouses full of records

and except  for science almost

uses computers for what they're actually  good for

they're using them for the  secondary thing the ability

of the  computer to imitate old media just

he printing press could imitate what  the monks did but

so the real revolution  and the

revolution and that happened  with the printing press changes the way  Europe

thought and not just  scientifically it changed

how Europe  thought about itself from the standpoint

  of nationalism wasn't until books

tarted being printed in the vernacular  for each country people

started so  governance changed

there there wasn't  anything like a democratic

republic in  Europe until after

the printing press  because they have to be argued into

  effect so the real revolution of the

printing press happened in the 17th  century and when

we when we invented the  personal computer in the internet

in the  70s we realized it was

going to take a  while for the uptake

and it could take a  hundred years and

the reason is is that  the

commercial reason

is that the  commercial consumer economy

is not  interested in having the buyers

of  technology learn anything and so

they  are selling things that are explicitly

  aimed at imitating old media and don't

give you access to the new media so for  instance the iPad

is a wonderful piece  of technology but it's

not really set up  for anybody to write a program on  whether

you're a child or an adult or a  scientist or anybody

else so it's in  exactly an imitator

for for old media  and it's been very successful

because  the general public doesn't have to learn  how

to use it ok so so

that is not a  revolution that is simply

automating  something that's familiar and making

  money by selling sir

convenient services so the real  revolution happens

when  we'll start thinking differently

well

you know nobody does what I do  who isn't optimistic

so because  otherwise

the you know working on really  hard

problems the you it

helps being  optimistic even if

you don't have a good  reason for it because

an optimist will  try more things and

if the optimist  doesn't worry about failing the optimist

  has a much better chance even in a tough

  area than a pessimist does and

and I  think that

the one one way of

looking at  the human race is to go back 500 years  to

when the printing press was just  happening

and to ask are things  generally better now than they were

then  and the answer is yeah over 500

years we  can see improvement if we look

at how  are things over the last 10 years or

the  last 50 years it doesn't look so good

  but in fact it's generally

good even  though humans are

doing many of the same  bad things that they have always done

so  one of the secrets is to

do education of  a particular

kind and hope that enough  people can

understand the consequences  of their

actions to make these societies  more

stable so it's tough you know my

my  wife always gets worried because

I work  on these problems that look like they

  will take forever and I say well the  people who built

the cathedrals knew  they were gonna die before the

cathedrals were done but they put their  bricks in there so

for these hard  problems I think what we what we need  are

people are willing to put their  bricks into the cathedral

and eventually  maybe over a hundred years or so

you get  an you get something new on the planet

  there's a nice picture was a

Cathedral  so  yeah

you found out the the viewpoints  Research Institute

I did what are your  objectives

to date and who are the

  supporters of these goals yeah so I got

  very spoiled in the 60s and 70s as

I  mentioned by having

incredible research  funding so

a lot a lot of us who got  medals from

the stuff we did then we  think that the funders should get

the  medals because they set

up the context  and that

context attracted people like  me and

we just did what came naturally

  within that context and some good things  happened

so I I think that the climate

  of funding what the funders are out

  after what extent do

they allow new  ideas to happen is

the is the  determining factor

on on this and

so  after that really

good funding went away  in the end of the 70s Xerox

PARC  happened because that funding went away  because

it's more difficult to do this  stuff within a company they

have many  objectives that don't have to do with  truth

and beauty and so about 10

years  ago I decided to try and make a

  nonprofit research organization that

was  like the processes

that we had back in  the 60s of course is much

harder to get  funding because we

have to decouple the  goals that we

work on from what the  funders goals are so

funders that are willing to just give us  money a couple

million dollars a year

  which is about ten or twelve people and

  we try and do the best we can

with this  and then when we have a success we give

it away we don't retain the intellectual  property

to it so it's a public benefit

  company and we've

done three or four  good things so far we've given them  given

them away and we work on kind of a  combination

of advanced systems design  and

education for children they

sound  like two completely different things but

  there's a lot to make

nvironments for children you have to do  advanced systems

design and many of the  ones that we've done in the past are

used by everybody today for instance the  the GUI

was something I designed  originally for children

and now two  billion people use

it because it was  designed to be fairly

easy to use it was  designed to be able to be very

general  and the kinds of things that could deal  with designed

to be easily learn about

  intuitive and so forth so

the having  children is a focus helpful helped

us  make that design and it just happened to  work well

for adults also

Geneva they  may

be found

  awesome I

think what this depends

on  what newspaper you read but if you talk  to I'm

you know I'm a real scientist and

  so the so if you look

at what scientists  say to each other there

is extremely  high probability that they

found a  particle so

the way they talk about it  is this is actually

a discovery because

  they have to go out to five six sigma of

  it being not being

chance and that's  what they've got and they've gotten it  from several

points of view from  different places and in the world

so  there is there is a particle

  that exists

at that mass and nobody

  knows whether it's the Higgs particle

  okay but do you think with

computer  technology in the near future well we  will

discover more of these things

like  maybe

yeah well I mean this is what's

interesting about computing is that  scientists actually need computers

for  what they are computers are there

to be  able to deal with models that are

more  complicated than we can hold in a single  brain

and to be able to run those models

in a way that is very difficult to do  with classical mathematics

and so they  they are a way they're

an imagination  amplifier in the one hand and they're

also a future predictor on the other  hand and

so much of modern

science is  not is not possible without computers so

it's not a question of them being useful  a lot

of what's going on in modern  science is only done because

there are  computers in the the amount of data

sifting that had to be done to identify  this particle

is not possible without  without

a computers and so

the so most  things

that people are thinking about  scientifically in the future

are  thinking about in terms of

now we've got  a new part

of something that was like  mathematics where

we can model our ideas  in the world we can model

observations  we can try and make machines that

seem  to work like the way nature does

and  this is going to affect everybody so for

  example being able to model large

  molecule interactions how proteins

react  to other molecules is

revolutionizing  the synthesis

of drugs now and this  simply

not possible to do without

  computers or without killing

lots of  animals and humans doing

experiments to  find out which which how

which drugs  influence the 20,000

we  our body so

I think this is something  that the public needs to understand

for  instance AIDS has not

been an enormous  factor in countries

that have science

  because we can

model epidemics we  understand how epidemics work it

doesn't  matter how long the

an epidemic  so

AIDS is particularly tricky because  it

takes five to seven years of  incubation

to develop the disease if

you  don't know how you're in real trouble  because

most of your population can be  infected

before you start seeing any  deaths but

if you have these models and  you can say

okay here's what this thing  is doing oh this

is this is going to  kill us eventually but

we have to get  busy now and of course

the number one  things still in all disease

in the world  that's more effective than anything is

  sanitation so a lot of the

control of  AIDS has just been done by using  sanitation

and now drugs are being  developed

to to help with it but the  virus itself

is a virus that changes  there's not

just one kind of AIDS and so

and this is going to be true of many of  the diseases that we

are now faced with  a lot of the

these flu variants are  constantly

mutating in animals and

there  are more and more pathways for getting

  diseases from animals yeah

in the  diseases that

give us a chance we

have  an excellent chance with computers now

  to try and do the modeling that will  tell

us how to build defenses against  these these drugs

I'm against these  diseases

very interesting if you've got  the time

please tell us about the  Dynabook concept

from 70s the Dynabook

  was

so in the early

60s what this great  funding I mentioned

got interested in  the idea of

computers being interactive  which was a

new idea back then and they

  would be some

form of amplifier to

our  own intellectual it's

an interactive  intellectual amplifier and

then the  other part of it is they would be  networked

over the entire world so this

  idea was in in pretty

full form in the  early 60s so

basically I built a desktop  computer when

I was in graduate school  and I

came across Seymour Papert who had  been working

with children and computers  and he was a mathematician like

I was  and I realized that he had

hooked onto  something very important about computers

  that would help children

learn to think  mathematically much

earlier and much  easier then had

had ever been done  before this got

me to think of the  computer not so much as

a as a the  transition

from public transportation  like a

train to an automobile but it got  me to

think of the computer as something  much more

like the printing

it was actually going to change the way  we thought and

if it's something like  the printing press you want to be able  to find

out how to teach children how to  use it because adults who

go to  adulthood without learning how to read  you almost

never learn how to read so

for these are really important things  you have to do therefore so that started  me thinking

about a children's computer  more difficult was it to realize

this  project no

it was easy because the once

I started thinking about children and I  didn't worry about

exactly how you know  the real question

is what would be a  good computer for children so the first  thing was that

had to be portable  because he didn't want to tie children  to

a desk so it had you had to carry it  around

and there were 1 inch square  flatscreen

displays people are starting  to do them in the 60s

Moore's law which  is the prediction of

how silicon was  going to double every 18 months

was  three years old

so in 1968 after meeting  this

guy I just wrote I made a little

  sketch of two children doing

things on  these little flat-screen

notebook  computers that I call

the Dinah book and  when I got back to to

Utah I made a  cardboard model of it and we

filled it  up with lead pellets to see how heavy

ou could make it before you didn't want  to carry it around the

answer is a  little under a kilogram was the right  weight

in 1968 and it's the right weight  now and

so we had everything then when I  when

I went to Xerox PARC we built a

  functional machine to do this which was  again

a desktop computer but it had the  screen like

the Dynabook and the

Macintosh came out of that  so the Macintosh can

trace its lineage  back

to this little cardboard model that  I made in 1968

and yeah and the

the  people always asked how hard was that to

think about and the answer was it was  easy because the

weighted way to think  about these things is

to think about  what you actually need

  before you figure out how you can do it

  all right so you have to have a vision  of

the thing and once I had a vision of  the

thing like this then the next  question

is when can it be built and

the  answer was well about ten years

1978  1980 would be the

first time you could  do one of these things but that was good  because we

figure it would take ten  years to do the software workout

user interface provide all the services  that this

thing would have so most  people don't look at things that way

and  so they've been very firmly

tied to each  existing technology it's come along and  they've

resisted each new technology and

  so you

know the first paper I wrote  about this Dynabook pointed out you  don't

need to have a keyboard you could  have the whole surface

of it touch  sensitive and that's a description of  the iPad

and yet the iPad only

came out  a few years ago could have come out  thirty

years ago so two

different kinds  of people thinking about the world in

  very different ways okay