Alan Kay Keynote at NATF 2013 Part 2

okay so here's another idea we love news

  and we are very troubled by new I

can  think about it

news is completely  incremental to

what we already know it

deals entirely in categories that we  already have

so news is oh there's

been  a shooting over here a car crash over

  here somebody did a good deed over here  etc

etc so you can

get through a whole  bunch of news items in 20 minutes or so

  new has the problem that if it's really

  new it's like those flies

or something  that your

your dream and your

ghost  haven't seen before so

it might be truly  invisible might be right in front of you

  but you might not even be able to see it

or you might convert it into something  you've seen before and

miss what it was  and so forth and news

is about campfires  and new

is about learning

because we have to learn some of the  things

we've learned genetically there's  a lot known about what babies

know when  they were born there's a bunch of things  that

we learn very readily as we'll see  in a second and

then there's some new  stuff that's appeared in the

hundred years that is actually rather  difficult to learn and

it was only  discovered recently in

large part  because it is not at all obvious to

our  nervous system and those kind of things

  were the things that caused schools to  be invented

and

so I'm trying

to talk  about new here but I can't this

is a  campfire right this

is why Nicholas told  a bunch of wonderful

stories because  that is how you communicate in a

  campfire and the problem

with campfires  is we had them for two hundred thousand  years

and didn't accomplish a goddamn  thing is

when we got out of the  campfires and started

trying to deal  maybe getting

around what our senses are  even trying to tell

us that we started  making progress so I have to

talk about  the new in terms of something

that  always has to be manifested

in a news  forum and

our built-in learning

is  essentially

remembering we're actually  not very good at

learning for a variety  of reasons and

most of learning  throughout most of human

history is  rather like erosion

anybody have any  erosion gullies in there

we don't have  them that

much in California because in  theory it never rains here

of course  outside it's a heavy

dude today  but

basically what happens is you don't  know where

the rain is going it disturbs  something

there's maybe a pebble that  doesn't get

disturbed and something else  does get disturb you get a little gully  then

the cool thing about gullies is  because

they have this slope once you

get the thing started it starts running  a lot of water

into that random thing

and all of a sudden you get one of these  guys this

is our memory system it's

basically always building on what's  there it's very hard

for us to forget  one of the things people

who do talks  are told

by talk advisors is

the chances  that they'll remember anything

you say  are low but they'll absolutely

remember  how you made them feel

because that is

what is actually going  on here I'm just trying

to get past that  a little bit

yeah so almost all learning  and throughout

history and even a lot of  it's still in the United

States and  other countries to do is by rote

  thinking that remembering some pattern

  is good enough for 21st

century learning  turns out that could not

be farther from  the case

but we even test for it and

  when we have we love explanations

the  problem is we're not very critical of  the explanations

so we get one of these  guys I'm

really miss them out here in  California

but the most popular idea

in  history has been there's some guy up  there

with superpowers throwing  lightning bolts around

and would you  like to be

that guy

and we just hate

  it's things that are better explanations

  if they don't have any punch

and sizzle  to them and now

Maxwell's equations has  beauty but

it doesn't have a plot it

  doesn't have a hero except Maxwell and

  he's not there and so we love

stories  and we're quite

indifferent as a species  to science it's

actually developed taste  and

so vastly more people in the world

  still believe in stories and this is the  problem with

kids kids are incredibly  curious as Nicholas

pointed out the  problem is

is that we humans when we're  curious

and we want an explanation for

something our brains are satisfied with  a story

so every time we express

curiosity as a child unless we're that  one child

in a thousand we will accept  the

story and okay that's the that's the  reason for

this and this is the reason  for that and so forth this produces

adults that have the same thing and they  tell their children stories

  get nowhere

so we love religion and  relief and

thinking is painful

another  thing we are

social social means a lot

  of things notice I'm using here

some  alliteration here because

it's our  brains are so bad that

alliterations  actually are easier

to learn everybody

remember if the glove doesn't fit then  you must acquit

how dumb was Johnny Cochran no

no I know  I'm changing

the subject that's

an  alliteration but

the reason he did that  is because our

brains happen to think  things that rhyme are more true and

  Johnny Cochran is not a dumb guy

and he  was dealing with jurors who weren't

  sophisticated so

one of the exit  interviews in that trial

was to a juror  who was asked well what about the DNA  evidence

and she said well that's just  science

literally I saw that review my  that

interview myself

so important

thing  here is is there's a trade-off

between  competition and cooperation and there's

  a lot of cheating and

the study cheating  has been studied very

very closely  because it's the

most interesting thing  why do we

do it even when it's against  our better long-term

interests we cheat  ourselves we cheat other

people in  various ways just

something to think  about and we're tribal

and the tribes  radiate out

from us we're tribal

they  say in the Middle East

me against my  brother my brother and I against

family our family against the neighbors  our

neighborhood against the city and

  spheres going out

and it's very easy to  convert

people who've never met each  other before into

a tribe done

all the  time touch football

something that  everybody kind of knows how to

do put  one group against another and amazing

  things happen

so here's some esas here

social stories  status and subterfuge

are characterized  us

as a as a species and in fact  anthropologists

have been studying this  for about a hundred years

and here's a  partial list

because they're about 300

  these are traits

that when looking

at  3,000 different societies these

are  traits that are never absent

okay this  is why

they're called universals most

of  these traits are

thought to be in born

  these are things

that so we aren't born  with a particular

language but we're  born with the

propensity to pick up the  local language

why do they think that's  special

well we're not born with

propensity to learn how to read and  write

so

they've never found a society that  didn't have a language but

societies they looked at didn't have a  writing system

in spite of the fact that  a writing system

is really the simplest  distance if

you think of it in one  sphere from

I'm it's just writing down  the very things

that you're saying what

could be a simpler idea than that but in  fact it's not occurred

to most human  societies on the planet it's

actually an  invention and a relatively recent one

  and it takes a

while to learn a lot of  these so it takes years

before you're  allowed for instance

to take communion  in the Catholic Church in

spite of the  fact that we're made for religion

so  it's interesting to

look at all of these  things

that characterize human beings  and

you female

mitochondrial DNA says

  we've been on the

planet for about under  ninety three thousand

years and hunting  and gathering

has been a

mode that has  lasted that entire time and

agriculture  came in as an invention

most likely by  women one

of the most important  inventions of all time about

11,000  years ago so

there's a lot of the same  and then

a major invention that started  transforming

things this is on a scale

  of 1 pixel every 200 years

  okay it's hard these long

time I hate  showing log scale

things because most  people cannot interpret

the powers of 10  change its

right so it's nice to

say  pixels 200 years that's

sort of within  our range well

let's take something like  saving

for the future which is certainly

part of any kind of sustainable theory  in fact

it's one

of the big deals in  agriculture

don't eat

your seed corn and  yet

interesting enough in the United  States the

on the average we

are eating  our seed corn

we are actually removing  the

margins that we need in order to  change our

mind or to deal with  unexpected events so

that is a really  interesting thing and it really

from the  time that they've been looking at this  the first

time it actually went negative

  was just a few years ago

so this is I  think quite significant

and the reason  I'm putting it up here

is to ask you to  think about what is the psychological  shift

that could have happened that

  would cause people to actually go back

and do what is essentially a hunting and  gathering mode what

kind of assumption  because I'm getting honey hunters

and  gatherers don't

worry about that

because  what happens when they

out gather and  out hunt the place they are

they just  move on because if you're

only a tribe  of a couple of 100 and there's less

a few hundred thousand of you on the  entire planet no

problem you just keep  on moving there's

just nothing in our  genetic makeup

that makes us want

so

once the anthropologists looked at  universals they

got very interested in  well what are some of the things

that we  can find in different

societies that are  not in all societies that are actually  important

so the first one of course is  writing

some societies have formed

all  societies do something with arithmetic  but

only a few have done something with

  deductive mathematics science

is only a  few hundred years old most

societies you  die in

the same society you were born  into

some societies have the idea of new  in progress

but what's built into us is  coping

we are great copers this by the  way

this is one of the reasons why  computing is in such difficulties

today  how many people here are programmers

  okay here's

my experience when I started  50 years ago actually on

one of the  machines downstairs they

got it working  again too that's pretty funny

the 1401  but basically

it was somebody else's  machine somebody else's programming

language somebody else's problem  somebody else's

theory of how to write  the program and

it was in order to

  survive in that environment you had to  deal with an

enormous amount of stuff a  lot of it was crap even

then 50 years  ago nothing like the pile of

crap today  that you have to deal with but if you're

  not basically a koper

you're not going  to stay a programmer for long you're

going to go into something to go into  management push

other people around

  so thought

has changed from remembering

  to

actually understanding things one

of  the toughest inventions that we know of

  in the human panoply is equal

rights  it's one of the hardest to learn we're

  struggling with it still and

so on

so  learning curves on these guys

and they're all so principled they

are  not generally picked up on the job there

  are things that actually require quite

a  bit of prep and they're

more or less at  odds with the general

human way of  learning by doing

traditional societies  don't have schools because

the kids  watch what the adults are doing they

  hunt squirrels the adults are hunting

  antelope and so it's just a continuity

  what you do as a child is where as Maria  Montessori pointed

out that well that  doesn't obtained

at all in the

20 20th  century because a young girl

dressed in  a nurse's uniform playing

with a  stethoscope is only imitating

of what an adult does but not the  content in fact

most adult activities in  the 21st century are

actually formal

  rather than content 'full as they are in

  traditional societies so that is a  pretty

important big deal so

go

back to  the timeline here

so writing is about  5,500 years ago

we thought printing

  press 500 science

US Constitution I put  it up there not

as a governance thing  but as one of the first times

human  beings in history that we know

of  actually thought in systems terms that

  is actually a design

of an operating  system for a machine

full of millions of  somewhat uncooperative and

noisy parts  namely us and so

it's a very interesting  to read about how they thought about  what

it was that they're trying to do  because they were trying to put in error

  correction mechanisms into this thing  that they wanted

to be as freewheeling  as possible that was one of the

newest  ideas in human history germ

theory of  disease modern medicine if you look

at  these in terms of modern human lifetimes

  of about 80 years can see that

printing press is only  seven modern human lifetimes

ago

and our  world is not like the world

the Middle  Ages that the printing press was born

  into our world started happening in the  17th

century so it's really only

a few  hundred years old as far as what we

take  for granted here

and not everybody takes  it for granted because

most of the world  doesn't actually have that

as a  framework for thinking about what normal

  could be I'm not saying ours is better  i'm just

saying what happened in

Europe  a few hundred years ago was

  cataclysmically different from standard

  human development

so sustainability Carl

  Sagan oh boy do we miss him

we treat

his planet as though we had someplace  to go after agreement well yeah

what the way hunters and gatherers deal  with anything

they do have some place to  go after

they ruin it the natural  tendency

of humans to strip-mine  Einstein

had a good one we can't solve  our problems with the same level

thinking that created them that's scary  if you aren't scared

by that one you  you're missing something and

tony hoare  a great

computer scientist who's in the  Hall

of fellows outside the door here

he  pointed out debugging is harder than  programming

so don't use your maximum  cleverness when programming this

is one  of them this is one of the biggest bugs

  in computing is people unleash

every  ounce of cleverness they have on making

  the buggy thing and they they they

have the perspective to deal with all of  the interactions that

their cleverness  wasn't so this is so

these two I think  are quite complementary don't

you they  actually fit together very

very nicely  two different ways of showing

it this is  a maximal human thinking bug

here so  here this is what we are here

we are  basically cave people with briefcases

we

like to think we're something better  but

in fact this is what we're what  we're dealing

with and the big problem

is that briefcase can hold nuclear  weapons

the old days it only held

rocks  and

we still get

the same old pachinko  machine up there

and so this is a  scaling problem

we weren't that  dangerous even

when we wanted to be a  hundred thousand years ago

because we  just didn't yeah

we could whack somebody  with a stick and but

you could actually  rush somebody who's

gone nuts and  whacking people with a stick

somebody's got an assault weapon or a  nuclear weapon

you can own Russia

so  this puts a qualitative

disaster on  every horizon you

combine the two you  get a yikes and

there's some really  great cartoons here I'll read the  captions

for you the one at the top is  mr. Oompa

has simply worked here for  ages

so I'm hoping now your minds are

  thinking about whom business that is a  lot

like hunting and gathering isn't it  it's

not at all like the United States  Constitution which

is all about  cooperating it's actually all

about  competition is all about wiping things

  out it's

about short-term goals rather  than long-term planning

but one on the  bottom is even

better the guys saying  AHA for

precisely how long were you a  hunter and gather it

I'm

trying to make this entertaining but  I'm hoping

you seeing that this is dead  serious stuff

and so Carl

again he says we live in a  society exquisitely dependent

on science  and technology in which

knows anything about science and  technology

and so

here's some RS words

and in spite  of the fact that we

do a little science  as far as the general population is

concerned on the entire planet including  the u.s. we

really haven't gotten  science into normal thinking

we haven't  gotten scaling into normal thinking we  haven't

gotten systems into normal  thinking and we haven't gotten  sustainability

and normal thinking these  things are not actually

on anybody's top  10 list or

top 100 list most

people have  not built up the background

for even  thinking about these things and so

another way of looking at this is here

  are four exquisite

systems that are all  part

of one system that we actually deal  with so

we have basically the system of  the natural world

science we have behind the figure

there  we have a crowd our

culture social  systems this

is a picture of self  portrait of the internet

representing  technology all the technology

the  logical systems we're doing and then we

have hundreds of systems that make us  ourselves

up we are a system of systems

  all of these systems are nonlinear

all of them are actually interacting  with each other and

so if we don't  actually get some systems consciousness

  we aren't going to be able to

talk about sustainability is why I  haven't said anything about  technological

solutions to  sustainability because

for

most people  technology is a

perverse form of inverse  vandalism

any but everybody

what i mean by in what does van  vandalism is destroying

something  because you can saying

i'm here to  inverse vandalism is what

we engineers  do we make things

because we can just  because we can

this museum i went

  through the exhibit hadn't been back

  here for a while and i was struck by how

  much crap there was

it's actually very  confusing because it

is actually like a  flea market where

there are a hundred  thousand different items each one of  which

one or two people thought

important that they went to the probably  difficulty of actually

manufacturing  these and yet

most of them are just  complete crap

because I ideas are cheap

  good ideas are hard the

regular ideas  are a dime a dozen most of

them are  mediocre down to bed and so

in order

things including what's wrong with our  technology

we

can't we have to heat  Einstein and tony hoare

is anybody here  see the movie spy

game one of my  favorites

and there's a line in here  went

Robert Redford access his secretary

she's wondering why is he doing this now  and he said when

did Noah build the ark  before the flood Gladys before

the flood  and so if you think about

what that  means well our biggest problem

sustainability and all of these things  is

we can't imagine nearly as well as we

  can experience that

makes sense to

f the most amazing things and I've  documented this and

I'm not going to  burden you with them but it's

collected  cases of

people who have

like dived into

  a raging flood river to save a child

  they've never seen before

some of these  people were

asked whether they had

  supported building higher

dams most of  them hadn't

so one of the most  interesting

things about it is how  heroic we can be and on

each other's  behalf when there's a disaster but

how  blank we are when it comes to thinking

about the disaster that hasn't happened  yet this

is why this new kind of  imagination

is needed

another way  looking at is because

we're talking  everybody loves change how

many people  here work for a business

o over I don't know 45 years or so

I've  done most of my research at businesses  and

every six

months or so there are  meetings about

hey we have to  re-engineer the system they there's

some  phrase about and

everybody's  enthusiastic about it because yes of  course

we do you know we're fucking up  all over the place of

course we have to  fix it the school American

school system  desperately needs to be fixed

no kidding  so everybody

loves it except

he change part oh

no

so we can deal  with something intellectually just

we can talk about sustainability but  when it comes to actually

do it these  other parts of the pachinko machine

kick  in because almost all

changes are  impugning our own reality

this is why  especially religious

wars are so  terrible because

once you've identified  with a religion you

can't have a real  discussion about it with somebody else

  because at some point either you or they

  are actually attacking your own identity

  because you've tied us so closely to

  this so this is why things rarely happen

  it's sort of the low-pass filter

that  takes every idea down to a dial tone

and  we wind up coping

and way we cope is by

  making things quote-unquote better

so  here's a we

can put anything over here  I've got 75

years there put anything  could be learning

could be change  anything anything

we need to get better  at

and here's what we do in America we  make this

graph every time that guy goes  up

there's an article in the paper and  people cheer

and every time it goes down  there's an article

in the paper and  people moan let's

say it's reading these  are reading scores

that look familiar is  it may be there

too going up reading is  probably trending

yeah turns out it's  completely irrelevant

because if you  don't read that well you

aren't reading  and the real

problem in America is  almost no children are fluent in reading

  enough to read for purpose

this whole  system has been

game down to the point  where these

things are deemed to be  significant

where we're produced the  nation that cannot do

anymore  and the

conflict is usually between

this  idea of better

well at least we're  improving

least we're getting better  then

there the other con the other  extreme is but it's

not perfect never  been

in a meeting between the betters  and the perfect just

drives you crazy  because they're both

completely wrong  the

better guys are dealing in the news  range they're

never going to get there  if something new is needed the

guys are dealing in a place where the  probability of getting

it at that level  is zero

they're just too idealistic and

  so what's what you need is a

sense of  this above

threshold region which starts

the category called what is actually  needed they

don't care whether it's  better and we aren't going to get  perfect

so we have to aim for what is  needed

and

so this is what we did at  Xerox

PARC so Nicholas gave you a little  history

I'm not going to do that but

  basically Xerox PARC hit the ball out of

  the park maybe

15 times in a period of  about five years

so included not just  the

alto that the GUI object-oriented

  programming the ethernet the whole laser

printer a whole bunch of other things  each one of these things

were trillion  dollar industries and the net

return  from Xerox PARC today has been around

31  or 32 trillion dollars that

was done  over a period of about five years by  about two

dozen of us and if we

of those things it would have been  actually we had luck

we were very lucky  in

our manager you let us do what needed

  to be done but when

you do it 15 times  there's some process involved

there and  part of the process is you have to

  pick that little sweet spot there we  actually

call it the McCready speed  sweet spot McCready

is the guy who did  man-powered flight so he is

one of the  most amazing problem finders

and problem  solvers to the point that he was in

the  20th century the

mechanical engineers of  the world awarded him the

honor of being  considered

to be the mechanical engineer  of the 20th century

if you think about  what things were

done in mechanical  engineering of the 20th century this is  an

almost unimaginable honor but this

  guy deserved it and we

got a lot out of  here's a great guy to to

talk to and  work with and the

neat thing is once you  hit that little

sweet spot you actually  widen

up this area because you've  learned something that

is like the  things that you need to do and in

that  range is usually where almost all of

good stuff is going to happen you're  still not going to get up to perfection

but it doesn't matter because now you've  got this incredibly

new fertile area and

a new way of dealing with this with this  area

okay last slide

so it's not that adults are hopeless

by  incredible

effort for

most of us we can  learn a language starting at

age 40 we  can

learn to play classical music  starting at age 40

most of us don't have  the

time I learned from silent in the  classical

pipe organ starting at age 40  I had been a musician

before on other  instruments

and I had one of those 40's  crises

and I just

hated myself for not  following this

felt need for

learning to  play this music I love myself and

so  finally when I was 40 my thought

well in five years i'm going to be 45  and i can either be an

organist or not  and so I just grounded

out got up two  and a half

hours earlier every day for

  six years and

started getting to

be able  to play these big pieces in a nice nice

  way so it can be done but

it's really  unreasonable for instance

to ask most  teachers to learn

something in the midst  of the incredible busy

same with parents parents are already  busy so

I believe that the sweet spot  for the

problems we've been talking  about is not just education but

it's  actually taking early childhood

education seriously because this is  where you

can introduce new  epistemological frameworks that are

not  like the ones that we're born with you

can't get rid of the ones that we're  born with like you don't want to get rid  of stories

those are neat but you have  to help the kids take

on a framework for  thinking about things that's not story

like that has the character of  scientific

explanations and so forth and  so I'll

just leave you with that thought  that the if we've

discovered the enemy  and he is us from

Pogo then we also  discovered

the solution and that's  teaching

children in a much different  way than we do now

very much should

I go over no you're  perfect on time you had 32

seconds left  Oh Sarek and that's time for one  question

okay how about a good one

or  comment if

you're in Italy you never get  a question you always get whatever

  they're feeling about that day

so if ya  if our mush

is not good enough we built  the web and we can collaborate

but  collaboration doesn't work so how

do we  think together and make it so well yeah

  so the web to be so

there's some history  and if you go down stairs you'll

there's a guy by the name of Douglas  Engelbart you may

have heard of he's  mostly famous for inventing the mouse  which is

the least of his contributions  but

his 1962 proposal

to ARPA who was  his funder

was a basically

said most of  the

important things in the world are  done by adults cooperating

together and  if computers are good for anything

they  should be able to help coordinate

  large-scale things in

the in the human  in human good and so

the big problem  with the web is its what

some of us  old-timers call reinventing

the flat  tire and if

you want to see that you can  just look at the hour

and a half demo  that angle Bart did in 1968

in San  Francisco showing

his system working  back then

and for that for us that was  the embodiment of

one important part of  personal

computing and you'll see things  in there that are not

even done on the  web today so

it's not a question that  the that this is a

quaint old thing from  the past and

  the mistake that

Darwinian processes  optimize they don't

Darwinian  processings find fits to

the environment  that they're in and

the fifth to the  environment is a fit to a pop culture

  which basically developed the web the

internet on the other hand is one of the  greatest pieces of technology

ever  design it was designed by experts and

  there

could not be a larger contrast  between the internet and this

web system  that runs on top

of it so

so the  question of

cooperation is

when once  once you have trouble with a word

it's  always good to ditch it right

so so real  question is

not about can we cooperate  when we're inclined

to do so but is  there any way on the

internet to build  up trust because

trust is the actual  basis of

cooperation it's the basis

of  so when I put groups together

going to i have my current group is  spread out all

over the world but we

  spend a lot of time together early on in

  order to use all the different

kinds of  communication including things that are  quasi

face-to-face like skype

but even  if you have a high res

cisco system you  don't get

eye contact so as well so

way is that negroponte action is one of  the one of the pioneers

of this so he  did a big program that actually

got a  golden police award from

Proxmire but it  was a great program which is called

  transmission of presence so the question

  was what do you have to do to

be able to  talk about this

talk about this argue  about this argue about this would argue

  about this but can you have a marital

  argument over this technology

  and get to the place where at

some point  the key to the thing is whether they

  feel you're sincere just from

the  presents part of it and hardly

anybody  has done this so this is an example what  I think the

modern era to me is working  on easy

problems and mostly doing  inverse vandalism so

if you think of the  real problems it really does have

to do  with not just communicating about things  we're

already more or less an agreement  that's news but communicating

and  collaborating about things where we have  to establish

common ground hardly  anything has been

done and so once again

you know looking into the anthropology  books is the Axelrod book

about the  evolution of collaboration which

is a  very important one there's a recent

one  by graber that is a fantastic i

fantastic graber he's written a number  of books but

when I'm thinking of is  called 5,000 years

of debt because the  idea

of debt goes back as far as we've

  been able to track any kind of society  and

if you think about it that is one of  the greatest ideas of all

time if you  don't game it right

because debt allows  you to

borrow from the future in a  sensible way and

to make various kinds  of contracts about

larger plans and you  could ever do when

you're trying to do  the balance sheets

every day and so the  real question is

how can you take this  incredible slightly invention of money

it's one of the great inventions of all  time if you

don't game it because it's  actually part of the meta system

gaming  meta systems gets people in trouble so

  the gray book if

you're interested GRA  EV er is an american

anthropologist  really

a very thoughtful book there's  conman's

book some of you might have  seen called

fast thinking and slow  thinking Kahneman

by the way was the guy  who first used

measure measurements of  pupil dilation to

indicate in interest  and I would have thought that

have been mentioned this morning because  that's one of the things you'd

gauge is suppose you're trying to do  online learning

we want not just eye

tracking but you need to be able to pick  up psychological

signals that indicate  with the student

is interested still and

maybe change things if the student you  can sense the student

he kinds of things as a teacher would  do face

reading a student so one

ways of looking at it this is great  because hardly

anything has been done in  the last 30 years except

exploiting  Moore's law most of the ideas

we have  today are roughly the ones that the 80  started

with like we're using the same  user interface

we did it Park we're  using the same blah blah blah

blah blah  right using the ethernet the internet

  all of those things so very little of of

import has happened there but it's been  spread widely because

the costs and the

  reliabilities have changed so  drastically

so I think we're

place where it's time to go back to some  of these fundamental

issues in large

  part because of that nuclear weapon in  in the

Cape guys briefcase thank

you  thanks Alan