Alan Kay Interview by Dave Marvit (2013)

are there important

problems for  technology to solve you

within the scope of technology the ambit  of technological solution and if

so what  well

I think the you

know if you take  the route of technology technique

it  really means things that humans

make so  it's a much

larger word than the way we  use it today and

the Latin root was ours  from which arts you

know the word the  arts

didn't mean the Fine Arts back

then  but they meant the art of building

this  and that and the art of cooking and also

the art of dancing and the art of music  and stuff but basically

the term the  arts have gotten kind of co-opted

by the  Fine Arts in our era

so if you take a  look at the the

synergies between human  beings and their creations

you know  they're

more I think would be very  difficult to define

a human being  without looking at either

physical or  ideational

artifacts

because we actually  create language

out of a propensity  towards

language as we're growing up and  that language has a lot

of commitments  and meanings

to what the meaning of the  culture is so

so one way to

you could  you could imagine a

degree in technology  that was different than a degree in  engineering

that just included  engineering is one

part of it  that

could actually deal much more with  the

whole system so you

know I argued  with the young kid there

the  eye-tracking kid because he had started

  off with this idea which i think is a

  corporate mantra that

you know the  future

is going to be humans

fitting - I  mean machines fitting to humans

rather  than humans fitting to machines and it I

  don't think that that split actually

can  exist there's no question

but that the  machines we use change us

well they  don't change us we

change us machines  are just doing things and

it's it's our

interpretations of the things that  change that

change jeans are just  catalyst

they're that's because you know

  we have these cause and effect things

  it's like you insulted

me and

you know  unless unless you actually poke

your  fingers in my eye all you're doing is  creating

vibrations in the air and every

other every part of the insult is  something that I have

to interpret  myself

and react to right

so if people  were actually dealing with

actually going on you couldn't be  insulted

unless you chose to be so

so  what I asked you was it

was only  response was reasonable and you broaden  the

definition of technology has  typically used to encompass

an enormous  scope you're just which is cool and

we can sort of put that into question  and say okay given the enormous scope  and

then we're given the smaller scope  but I

corporate hat a little bit here and  trying

to think of okay we have

this  muscle this techno developmental

muscle  at a large corporation and it

would be  good to put it to use to good

use if  that's even possible so

the frame us a framework in which I was  asking the question

  I think the well let

me be elliptical  again but if you go

back to this

  interesting phenomenon that

if you look  at

the daily use of

people with say  computers of whatever

whatever kind

it's  hard to find any actual new

any  technology in there that is newer

than  thirty years old as

far as the  foundational ideas

so the whole idea of

  graphical user interfaces is came

from  the 60s and the one we happen to use

  today was invented at Parc but it wasn't  invented

in isolation of previous ones  the mouth

both the mouse and the tablet  were invented in

1964 most people don't  realize that the

ARPANET started working  in 1969

and it just morphed into

the  Internet the ethernet was

invented at  Xerox PARC around 1973

object-oriented

programming yeah so if you if you go  down the line then

as I pointed out that  if you take a

look at what people are  doing on the

on the web what I see is  mainly better-looking

graphics than we  could do 50 years

ago but what

I don't  see is angle Bart's ideas

so Engelbart  routinely

shared screens

in real time  for the entire work

and so  you know it

was an in an integral part  of the system

it wasn't an app that you  use it was actually

and if you're gonna work with somebody  and often

you could see the other person  if they're

more than two people  collaborating their

initials would show  up on the cursor so you

they're pointing at and this is all in  the 60s and

there's nothing about it is  hidden so

what I see is something much  more like a pop

culture today where  people

are completely indifferent to

the  past and it's

not that everything in the  past was good but it's real

ose the stuff that was better than the  idea

like Engelbart was smarter than  most people today and

so they can have  all the pleasures

they want inventing  something and having

that egocentric  satisfaction

that I did this but  basically it's

just a form of pollution  because

talking about something that's just for  a single person's

pleasure we're talking  about something that which everything is  done

is Rama file to two billion

people  now and that you just can't allow

people  who you

know whether willfully or

unconsciously

are you know just  polluting

the system because they don't  know any better  yeah

on the other hand we've

got this paradox  that

a lot of the

solutions in the past  that were better than the solutions  today

are not the solutions that we need

  because the problems are different  well

no it's even for the same problems  so

if you talk to the angle bard Ian's  back

then they knew they were just doing  a version of

the thing it happened their  version is

was a better set of thoughts  than the web thoughts

which were really  crude and almost

nothing of vision in  them but

the angle bargains would say  well you know you know don't

build a  religion about our stuff because we

have  to do some more qualitative iterations

  because there's

so much user interface  burden in

doing this stuff so when we  were doing

the you

know the small talk  stuff with

the GUI and

children and  desktop publishing and all that stuff

  it's your ex part the

technologic  technological stuff was

relatively easy  partly because we had

some geniuses so  he had this guy Chuck back

you know  they're all in the wall over there so  Chuck

Thacker Butler Lampson Metcalf did

  the ethernet I don't know whether stark  Starkweather

should be in there did the  laser printer so these guys

are really  incredible

and we we

had people besides  me who

were very well-versed in

user  interfaces but in fact user

interface  design is this

because

it is a design and something  that

fits it's really hundreds of  experiments and

almost every experiment  fails

in one way or another and so the  people who do this

successfully are have

  tools that allow them to to try ten

  different kinds of things a day and of

  course because the users learn you have

  to get a new batch of users rather

often  to in order

to see how users react to  something like this the first time

out  that's true in the generative side and  also the

you do put out in the world change as a  result of what

game theoretic moving target  yeah and so

one of the ironies of the

park GUI which has been you know it's  two billion

people and probably a

  million applications now have been

done  successfully in it it's

actually a  bicycle with training wheels

nobody knows the training wheels are on  it and

the reason is is that I designed  that user interface for children

and

one  of the things that was not a training  wheel

on it was never accepted by

Apple  and because it wasn't accepted by Apple

  Microsoft never appropriated it and

  because of that gnome didn't you

look at the way these things trickle  through and

so that particular idea

  which was

recognition of some of the  overlap

between children and adults  never is

not on any system today except

  except small talk which it always was on

  so what is that idea well the idea was  just that

it's not really a desktop that

  was Apple's misinterpretation

  even after we explained to them

not a  desktop it's or

if you want to think of  it as a desktop there are

an unlimited  number of them and they really didn't  get

that in that those a couple of demos

  we showed them and so if you think if  have

you know what could I do with an  unlimited number of desktops

answer is I can organize  but I

don't want to be application  centric because an application

is a  stovepipe what I really want is  something

where I can get every object  of every

kind that I need for this  project out

where I can do things with  them and I

want that desktop to remember

  their state over time because

most  people including children have

three or  four projects they're working on each  day

and instead what Mac

Windows did is to give you a situation  where you're kind of

and tearing things down and staying  inside of

applications and not being  able to integrate you

know in other  words what Apple and and

Microsoft did  was

was something that essentially

prevented what today would be called a  mashup

but you actually want it so if  you think in

object-oriented terms you  don't have to have applications

didn't have them at Parc you don't have  files

what you have is an unlimited  number of areas

which today you could  think of as web pages

and but you can do  all developmental

things on and that's  what I was giving my talk in

first so I  can

run so the important thing is it's  dynamic I get something

that's 10 times  as powerful as PowerPoint for

free and  there's a sorter so I can

show which  ones are those things that I want and  cool

and so forth so that was a one

of  the strongest ideas that we evolved

at  Parc probably around

76 or 77

  onwards never made it still

would be  useful so that so when I look at the

  interfaces today what I see because

I  know what it was and what

it could be I  see first a

bicycle with training wheels  on

but people can't see the training  wheels because they don't know

it's  supposed to be a bike and then the  second

thing I see after 20 30 years of  it is a

bicycle with training wheels on  it completely

encrusted with jewels and  rhinestones

because it's been decorated

  in a thousand different ways features

have been put on it but it's still got  the fucking training wheels on

it and so  this is actually the way things

go  because if people are not willing to  actually

like Apple did not want to hear

what the theory of that user interface  was even

after I was there for 12 years  because

they had expropriated it it was  now their thing

wasn't the

you know the  history of it was completely irrelevant  so

that was when I realized oh this is a  pop culture this

is the way it doesn't  matter how how good any

musician was of  the past or anything else the point of a

  pop culture is getting identity through  your own

actions a feeling of  participation it's not

the same as  where's Park was anything but a pop

culture Park was all about banding  together in

a pretty anonymous group of  experts

to make something grand

so the  part of the implication of this is

that  the the intellectual

ownership which  often brings with it resistance to

  change is is

it fundamental to corporate  models and if if

not then how do you  shake it well I

mean everybody has an  ego so

the real question any especially  any research

manager  ass is not does

this person have an ego  or not that's it's like

that guy saying  we're gonna have the

Machine fit to the  person

so the real real question your  ass you

always ask is what is the

  general expression of ego that this  person

exhibits and that the way they

  express is what allows them

to be

team  members and stars at the same

because you want to have stars dark  sparkles

full of stars but the key to  the

key to park and the arpa community  it came from

was how it cooperative was  how it was

able to cooperate was not was

  competitive up to

a point that was just  good enough to be

fun was mildly  competitive

but the truth was is

that  the 15 or 16 are per projects

cooperated  they swapped graduate students

they're  all working in on the same

vision but  they had different goals and

this gave a  lot of opportunity for

argument and this  was a was a community

that had learned  how to argue that's what I learned

when  I went to graduate school was for the  first time

in my life how to actually  argue because

when I was a kid I

  mistakenly thought that the

purpose of  an argument was to win it

  and but they you

know but argument in

the ARPA community was not that's sort  of what you do with debate

you know it's  sophistry learn

how to win a debate and  they

were not interested in that at all  and of course there were a couple of  exceptions

but I'm talking about  hundreds of people here

and the purpose  of these arguments was

to illuminate to  get out

different perspectives on  something and

park was a an argument if  you talk

to anybody who was there we  argued

incessantly with each other and  it frightened

Xerox actually because  they misinterpreted

it yeah taya well

I'm as strife  whereas

Taylor who was kind of the  genius

who had been one of the

funders and then was the guy who set up  Xerox

PARC he was a psychologist like

  the guy who initiated ARPA funding  Licklider

and Taylor never made

a  technical decision he trusted his  scientists

and his job as he saw

it was  to protect us from Xerox and

to set up a  climate

where these lone-wolf he he got

  most of the people at park a lot of

people were what you would call lone  wolves

he liked that because he didn't  you

know he wanted people who were  basically not amenable to being

managed  we needed management he

have a management structure and he  didn't

but then there's the question of  can

he set up something so that these  lone wolves will cooperate

when that's a  good idea and to

give you an example of  that there's no reason to cooperate on

a

programming language  pretty much everybody

at park could  invent and build

a programming language  or an operating system

so the idea is  anything goes there

but if you're gonna  do an alto

where and

the the mantra  there was that

everything that we do had  to be engineered for 100 users

so we  built a fake pdp-10 that

had to run a  hundred users as a time sharing system

and when we did the Alto we knew we were  gonna have to build

a hundred of it and  building a hundred machines

that in  today's terms would cost about eighty  thousand

bucks apiece  you need to have cooperation

and he got  it and

he didn't have to organize the  cooperation the

cooperation happened  maybe

even in a better way than he ever  dreamed although he had picked

us and  and it happened

because

this that and  the other well so one of the things

was  Taylor set up was

every single person

  who was at Park has to be totally

enthusiastic about the next person to  come in

it was a single black ball

and the reason that this

took forever  because

you know some people would know  this person  some

people would only know the  reputation person

would have to come in  and talk to everybody that would take

  days and it was

incredibly unwieldy so

  we grumbled however it worked perfectly  because

there were never any rivalries

  such as you would get when you just

plonk a new person who's really good  that

was the only kind they wanted there  so

there's no getting out to swords and  testing

out any of this stuff everybody  who's completely committed

to the new  member of the marriage

before it ever  happened and so so

by going through the  this enormous overhead

in the beginning  of the thing it

paid off many many times  over the decade

that Park was most  productive Taylor

had a lot of things  like that so let me

too much your time you should interview  him if I

would love to actually maybe  the nice thing is that you

Licklider I think was a little bit more  intuitive

but Taylor was a big fan of  lick

lighters and so he went

to town on  how Licklider did his thing and

applied  this when he was the

ARPA funder and  here's

a guy who funded the ARPANET

and  when Taylor

came to park and was in

the  position of setting up this lab of his  own

he was determined to try

every single one of these things that he  thought was a gem of a

principle to work  and he was willing to talk

was trying to do it wasn't anything  covert I

will make a point of that um so  just sort

of a wrap now maybe you and I  can continue some time down in LA

if you  were going

to if I was going to edit  this and tell the guys at Fujitsu

what  we should do as an institution to  innovate

more better different effect  well I think first

the there in Silicon  Valley now

  they should use the Silicon Valley  meanings

of the word innovate and invent  which

are I think made up by Regis  McKenna years

ago but so so innovation

  is taking an idea into the marketplace

  in Silicon Valley terms an

invention is  what we did at Xerox PARC which

is  dabbling getting

much closer to the word  new than news and both

of them are real

  art forms with real process

but they  have to get that clear because you  really

want to know whether you're a lot  of problems and companies is

the  confusion between those two things or  and

then they have to decide what

is the  cost of doing business for each of those

  I'll leave out in an innovation

here  just focus on invention so

so years ago

so Lickliter

had this idea that you  couldn't think of a good goal

while  you're behind the beltway in Washington

  anybody had the vision and he could say

  it in a sentence it was interactive

  computers as intellectual amplifiers

everybody on the planet pervasively  network worldwide

that was it and when  everybody

asked him what he was doing he  was just say that sentence and they'd

say well what about goes well we can't  think about goals here

you gonna operate he says well I'm gonna  I'm gonna fund people

rather than  projects and

so find really smart people

  who were interested in this vision and

  so so the Warriors

said well

you

know  this isn't that going to produce a lot

  of failures  I

think etc

etcetera he says well we're  playing we're not playing

golf we're  playing baseball some

ty Cobbs lifetime  batting average is 367

so like lawyers  say if we can bat if you look at what

  we're funding if we can bat 350

on the  whole portfolio

we will change the  entire

world so that's what happened and

so the weary er said well what about the  650

what about the 65 percent of failure

he says why it's the cost of doing  business and research

this is the number  one thing that companies

today do not  understand

they have to put in their  turns because

the way they think about  things generally they're not

romantics  the bottom line people

they're willing  to put a lot of money

into advertising  which is rather ephemeral

as far as ROI  but they think they

understand it and  part of their problems they do not

  understand research and invention and

so  they want to tighter rein on

it but in  fact what the old-time funders

did was  not to confuse responsibility

in control  Lickliter said

I'm responsible but I  can't be in control and

you know we have  to run this

stochastic lis  like like

baseball and

you know if we  get the best players and

we bet  reasonably over 300

we're just gonna  nail it and this

reasonable thing because if you look at  the return it's

astronomical like a good  return

on investment is like what 15%  17% I

mean the return on investment from  Xerox

from the

laser printer alone at  Xerox PARC was 20,000

percent was  zillions of

you know sharks didn't  understand anything except the laser

  printer and it paid for park hundreds of  times

over and yet Xerox

is worried  about all the things that weren't going

  well they're forgetting because

they  have confused making money

with making  money safely

and so they

always say well we're in business to  make money and

I would say no you're not  you just want to make millions

you know  research people want to make trillions

  because we're creating new paradigms

  here we're creating new industries

so  that industry we create created only

  took about 20 years to pass

the Ottoman  worldwide automobile bid industry

and it  didn't come from incrementalism

so there

  so a lot of it is just not these

guys  not being able to call a spade a spade  they

have a nice view of themselves and  they

think of themselves as you know  hard-nosed business people but

in fact  they're playing it safe and

because of  their lack of try

anything that they don't think they  understand

and because they don't really  understand Science and Technology they

  have no idea what the process actually

is and so they tend to want to be the  third or fourth person on their

block to  do something they're hoping somebody

  else will do something and they have  zillions

of words  I'm not saying Fujitsu does this but I'm

  saying it's typical of companies - it's

like the thing I said about change  everybody talks

gonna change this we're gonna have a  better process and all

the stuff but in  the end when

it comes down to am I gonna  change

am I am

I gonna go against  something I'm a my going to risk my  identity

my house mortgage

and so what  we call

middle managers disease at Xerox  PARC was people

who had gotten to the  stage where they're wearing more about  their house mortgage

than what their  actual job was and

I was leaking into  their job so

I mean Taylor had a million  ways of getting around this

and part of  it

was the got himself fired

even after  our greatest successes and

couple years later he got the National  Medal of Technology

  so Xerox was just

  and the irony was of course that Xerox

was that kind of company itself in the  50s

but by the time we got to the early

  70s the original fireplugs

had died

Joe  Wilson had died these

guys were just  like us if you go back to look at

these  guys when IBM wouldn't

accept the  prototype of the 914

these guys were so  and

there's a whole bunch of interesting  funny stuff

with consulting companies in  IBM not wanting to

dip in and delay of a  year and a half

and something like this  and these guys are just so pissed off  that

they use their life insurance in

  their house their own house mortgages to

  get the loans to build the first

  factories for the 914 of

course they  became incredibly rich

because you

know  they had a there were no really no VCS

  that but these guys have risked every

damn thing they have because they knew  they had and they invented

geography  twice the

first first time around they  invented offset printing that

was done  in the early 50s so

these guys were just  fantastic guys

but you know a decade  later Xerox is the fastest

growing  company in the US and etc etc all of

sudden things were very different there  was a more of a caretaker

management in  there and they had a lot of words

but  one of the secrets to Xerox

PARC were  was a certain agreement

a hard agreement

  that Taylor had made with Xerox

before  agreeing to set up this lab that

prevented

Xerox from actually permuting  any

of the research there for the first  five years and

that is when we got most  of our stuff done and they

signed that  agreement thinking Taylor would never

  use it he had to use it several times in  that first

five you sit permuting you  mean messing

with basically in any way

  zero and

that was part of Taylor's sales  pitch too because

none of us wanted to  work for a company yeah we're all by

the  way I was the oldest person there

as an  actual researcher I was 30

  Taylor the older people

who were our  mentors Taylor hired as advisors there's

  an advisory board Butler Lampson was

27  Chuck

was probably 26 Peter deutsches 25  or 24

I'm gonna suck it out cuz you're  making me feel

bad well but I mean this  is Taylor's theory

right Taylor I paid  for all of our PhDs and

and he knew the  ones

who had really drunk the kool-aid  you

know that that group of people just

  burned and

we know we didn't get paid  that much but we

burned to do this and  the problems the ARPA funding

was going  away and so Taylor convinced

us that  Xerox was the place

we could finish up  the grand dream

there and he had

this  insulation and

you know as an

he was lucky hugely lucky  that there

was a downturn in business  and the

berkeley computer company  corporation that butler

and chuck  another two guys on the wall

there had

  set up to do a system that failed  because

of the financial thing and  taylor got the entire company which

is  about nine incredible people that's

when  I decided to stay cuz I was consulting  for

the Taylor at that time and I

going to go to Carnegie to try and do a  personal computer

with Gordon Bell and  man when those guys came in

I realized  oh now we can do anything these

guys can  do anything and so

I just called up  Carnegie and you know got out

of my  agreement there and thankfully

they  forgave me after a while

but I knew it  was just going to be

super special even  when we had

we only had about 12 people  here starting off but we

had 12 really  really good people