Alan Kay at the Media Lab 30th anniversary (2015)

credit for inventing the personal

  computer the dynabook in 1972

Alan Kay  has said that his goal was to

make a  personal computer for children of all  ages

and he was a precocious child he

tells us that he learned to read  fluently at age

three reading about a  hundred and fifty books

by the time he  reached first grade after

done a book he  went to Atari he

was a leader in  object-oriented programming the  developer

of the squeak programming  language the basis for the

programming language he was on the  founders

working with Nicholas  Negroponte E on one laptop per

child  please welcome Alan

Thank

You Willie send me that video of  Seymour

a couple of days ago and

it very  much / muted this

talk because I thought  the video

could not be less  characteristic

of what seemed war was  about and

since C

moire was such an  important part not just of

our lives of  people who knew him

but also

one of the  most

important voices in thinking about

  what learning is all about what

are the  goals what does it mean to grow

up in  the 21st century I thought

I would say a  few words and I put

this picture of  Seymour and Marvin

up there together  because the two

of them for many years  were one

of the most vital forces in

  thinking about what

the future could and  should be like

one of the reasons they  were able to do this is

because they  were not bound

in any

hidebound way to  the present

they didn't think of the  present as reality it

was just one of  the possible ways it

could have been and  this allowed them the freedom to

about that the future did not have to be  just an extension

of the present and  because

we've heard from Marvin I

thought I'd say a little bit more about  Seymour we're aware of his

work with  children but

again there's always more  cast

of characters this is Cynthia  Solomon there's see more

without his  beard back when they were doing one of

  the very first explorations

of what it  would mean to use the computer as a

  medium for children not to teach them

programming so they grow up to be  programmers it

wasn't about coding it  was about using

the computer as a kind  of a vehicle for

hanging on the most  powerful ideas

  of our society and in

the brief time I  have I thought I'd show you a little  example

from one of the papers written  back

then the title of this paper was  called teaching

children to be  mathematicians versus

teaching children  math and

the difference there is that

  most subjects like math and science

are  rather in schools today are

rather like  music appreciation you

sit in a class  and you learn about some

listen to some music but you don't ever  get to do any music

now it turns out  music appreciation is

fantastic if you  happen to be a musician so

if you  develop into

a musician than learning  these things is very useful but

in fact  you hardly get to touch music otherwise

  and so see war was proposing was

that  young children could

have authentic  experiences with intellectually

honest  versions of real mathematics and

that  the computer could actually help

this and here's an example of one of the  ideas of the

thing children like to do  which

is balancing things it's easy to  balance a

broom it's hard to balance a  toothbrush and

when we do this we don't  generally

think too strongly about

what's actually going on we're occupied  with doing it

so the next idea was well  make a little thing

like a cart put a  rod on

it put a movable wait so you  could see where

the center of gravity of  that it move

it have the kid move it  back and forth and now you're actually

disconnected enough from it so you can  start getting a

sense of what you have  to do to

balance that rod and

then the  famous turtle

first one was about

this  big if you put that rod on

top of it you  could now think about

actually trying to  tell the turtle how to

balance that  stick in order to do that the

turtle has  to sense where the stick is  just

as you do with your hand and

in the  version of logo at that time

program would look something like this  and it's very easy

to read you want to  see if the angle

of that stick is more  than 10 degrees

you want to move forward  the turtle so

it's going that way we got  to move it forward

and if it's coming  back

too much this way we have to move  the turtle back and

we put in a little  delay there

and then we do it over and  over again so

that's all there is to it  it's but it's sensing

and where the  stick is at any given time

is not  repeatable it's dealing with

the way the  real world handles things

but it's  dealing with it in a form that's

relatively controllable using feedback  so this

is an example of a powerful idea

  not the idea of testing

something not  even the idea of being able

to move the  turtle forward with the idea

of feedback  and that idea

pervades both nature and  biology

pervades engineering it pervades

the internet it's one of the most  powerful ideas and what

Seymour was  about was not growing children

up to be  programmers but growing children up to  be powerful

thinkers and this has gotten  lost over

the years and it's kind of  discouraging

more almost 50 years later  now that

the schools are

yes they are  saurian to grapple with

computers but  they're grappling with

them in the same  old way that they grapple with them for

  media namely is a convenient way of  dealing

with media that we already had  like words

and pictures and movies and  videos and recordings

of music but these  other things that the computer

are  special about that Seymour wanted

pay attention to and he was one of the  most to articulate and

beautiful spokes  person for this now

this other little  thing I put up there is that

this  program is not

perfect just as no

description of nature can be perfect and  so there's

this opportunity to debug the  things

that have been left out in the  program to refine the program and

this  iterative process is

dealing between  nature and our

symbol symbolic ways

of  representing things is the very essence

  of what science is about

so we want to  think about what that

means it doesn't  mean a job in the future

but that's irrelevant  but

what it mine me it is a powerful  citizen

think you're in the future a  powerful parent

so here's another way of  expressing something

you've heard a few  times already and that

is this complex  intertwined

set of systems we live in  the

natural systems the social systems  that

middle fear their technological  systems

that is a self-portrait of the  internet and

then all of the systems we  are not

just physical but also mental  systems and

in order to try and deal  with this

we have our same old brain and  it's

full of this pink stuff the  technical term for the

pink stuff they  are label beliefs the technical

term is  bullshit  basically

we have about three pounds of  porridge

like bullshit between our ears  that

we think is reality has really

been a few hundred years ago that  science was invented

to help negotiate  between our tendency

to make stories and  narratives out of

things and so we can  say what a

restatement of what Seymour  was out after is

this thinking is not  remembering

thinking is not doing logic

  thinking is a negotiation

between what's  going on

which we can't get to directly  and our

poor abilities are noisy  abilities to

represent what's going on  so this is a very

very big deal it's one  of the biggest deals

it was one of the  foundations both Nicholas's

lives life  in my life and the life

of hundreds of  others were changed by being

around  marvin and see more

okay this is my  music room

the but the music isn't

in  the pipe organ there's one right up  there

I guarantee you there's no music  in it

somebody gets up there who can't  play it where

somebody gets up there who  plays it mechanically still

not going to  get music but what you have

is something  that actually provided

a vehicle a  motivation

a reason for composing some  of the greatest music

that has ever been  composed and the parallel

idea here is  the computer is an instrument whose

  music is ideas so

you can't just put  children next to a musical instrument

and have music happened it happens in a  musical

culture

the trappings of a  bicycle

this is a real bike has training

  wheels on it gigas it's like putting

  frets on a violin it's exactly the wrong  way

to learn these are real

that's not a joke  who in their

adult lives have do races  and stuff with training wheel

bikes that  they learned real

way to learn to ride a  bike is on a get a little bike

has no  pedals on it it's so low that the

kid  can just put their feet down and so

they learn to do is to glide and turn  into the turn in balance

all the things  that have to do with real bike riding  and

so very young children can really  learn to ride a bike

this is a metaphor  for the

fact that user friendly is not  always

friendly

so

then we have this  problem that Einstein

is right love is a  better teacher than duty

what does that  mean

means that boy if you like it  you're

going to work at it great

idea  what the problem is what

if the child  doesn't like reading what

if the child  doesn't like science

things that the  society needs

them to like

so a  Montessori had a

way out of that because

  children learn the

culture around them  she said look don't try and teach them

  these big epistemological ideas

difficult to learn just embed them in  the culture and they'll

learn them  because they're set up by nature to  learn the

culture and this was an idea  that Seymour was very

deeply part of and  it's really part of the whole media

lab  way of looking at things ok

construction

  these are the tinker toys Marvin once  made one

of the world's highest  structures ever made in a

Tinkertoy when  he was a kid Legos

construction

and the  reason these are important

is we make  things not just to have them not

wit just to play with them but to  understand them

you can think of this as  being a little bit like learning to

play  music and then Mitchell

Resnick and  others had the idea of what if a child

  could actually make a turtle

  now the technology is much less  mysterious

and that turtle can be  programmed that

led to the idea of Lego  Mindstorms and

today

I'm going to bring  on

the CEO of Lego

your

canoed store and

  I'm going to bring on

aya

should have  asked her how to pronounce your last  name

but I'll just guess it's bad ear  who did

a lot of work here in the media  lab about learning

what you learn when  you take her around and

with that I'll  conclude Mike a

little talk here and  bring on Jurgen