Alan Kay: How to Invent the Future
May 13, 2017 6:43 AM Subscribe
Step 1: Make double-sure there even will be a future.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:57 AM on May 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 7:57 AM on May 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
There is a huge buy in to the destruction by fire of our planet, by some angry entity that has rights to do this, and then reward sycophants with survival, and a future of limited duration. Huge buy in so that whatever destructive acts go on, are a part of the master plan.
There was some brilliant examination of basic perceptual faculties of humans vs consensus reality back in the sixties, fueled, no doubt by experiments in psychedelics. As an artist I looked at a number of these as a part of my education. One of these had to do with perspective as the western eye perceives it, vs how aboriginal peoples who have never lived in or around linear structures, perceive. They did an experiment in which students wore glasses that made the world upside down for a week. When they came off, the world was still upside down. We see upside down, our round lenses cast an upside down image on our retinas that we right in our minds. We see with round lenses which cannot process straight lines, or skyscrapers, or anything we think we see in any given moment. All of that process to perceive straight lines, walking down Fifth Avenue; that is the work of our cerebral cortex. This might be why nature is so relaxing, it takes a lot less work to see it, genetically we are predisposed to it because of our history. We have a long relationship with reality, considerably warped by the necessities of the world we have modified.
We need to invent the future in which we survive, and every other living thing in our world does also.
posted by Oyéah at 11:36 AM on May 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
There was some brilliant examination of basic perceptual faculties of humans vs consensus reality back in the sixties, fueled, no doubt by experiments in psychedelics. As an artist I looked at a number of these as a part of my education. One of these had to do with perspective as the western eye perceives it, vs how aboriginal peoples who have never lived in or around linear structures, perceive. They did an experiment in which students wore glasses that made the world upside down for a week. When they came off, the world was still upside down. We see upside down, our round lenses cast an upside down image on our retinas that we right in our minds. We see with round lenses which cannot process straight lines, or skyscrapers, or anything we think we see in any given moment. All of that process to perceive straight lines, walking down Fifth Avenue; that is the work of our cerebral cortex. This might be why nature is so relaxing, it takes a lot less work to see it, genetically we are predisposed to it because of our history. We have a long relationship with reality, considerably warped by the necessities of the world we have modified.
We need to invent the future in which we survive, and every other living thing in our world does also.
posted by Oyéah at 11:36 AM on May 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
Brilliant! My blind-spot almost had me skipping past this, because I don't really care about futurist BS at all. This is as much about how to define "future" as how to make it--of course that's a sort of necessary first step, isn't it.. Hmm.. words are failing, it is all rather meta.
I want to ask him what he thinks about Micro-Kernel vs. Monolithic Kernel :)
posted by Chuckles at 3:38 PM on May 13, 2017
I want to ask him what he thinks about Micro-Kernel vs. Monolithic Kernel :)
posted by Chuckles at 3:38 PM on May 13, 2017
Of course I could just Google it, I suppose, but I'm going for some primitive thrills on my bicycle instead! Meanwhile, Google is looking at Micro Kernels ;)
posted by Chuckles at 3:42 PM on May 13, 2017
posted by Chuckles at 3:42 PM on May 13, 2017
Alan Kay AMA. The Micro-Kernel thing comes up, but he steers clear of the controversy ;) I guess he'd argue we need an even deeper paradigm shift.
posted by Chuckles at 7:11 PM on May 13, 2017
posted by Chuckles at 7:11 PM on May 13, 2017
Back in the day he predicted the DynaBook. I thought it was an amazing idea. A small machine that each person could program and modify and use to do amazing creative things. The software came and faded away. The hardware is here but no DynaBook. All people wanted were TVs... The idea that people want amazing and powerful tools to do creative things is hollow.
posted by njohnson23 at 7:32 PM on May 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 7:32 PM on May 13, 2017 [4 favorites]
I object to their being computer people named Alan Kay and Andrew Kay.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:24 PM on May 13, 2017
posted by Chrysostom at 9:24 PM on May 13, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIR6Rmhm3To#t=42m47s
the last bit of the 2nd lecture is where he gets dark, and was something new for me.
He posits that all the goodies of enlightened society — science, progress, knowledge, rights, law, democracy — are “needs” not “wants” and are not universal among societies . . . they are not in the basic toolbox that societies share at some deep/subconscious level [of their human actors].
So I guess Hitler, Franco, Bush, Trump — reactionary conservatism in general — what they bring to the world isn’t an aberration, it’s just a reversion to the mean, which is crappy compared to what humanity is really capable of. The Enlightenment was the aberration, introducing a new orthogonality into our shared social reality.
Dr Kay's got 27 years on me, man I hope I can keep my brain and body [modulo the belly] as in-shape as he is!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:59 PM on May 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
the last bit of the 2nd lecture is where he gets dark, and was something new for me.
He posits that all the goodies of enlightened society — science, progress, knowledge, rights, law, democracy — are “needs” not “wants” and are not universal among societies . . . they are not in the basic toolbox that societies share at some deep/subconscious level [of their human actors].
So I guess Hitler, Franco, Bush, Trump — reactionary conservatism in general — what they bring to the world isn’t an aberration, it’s just a reversion to the mean, which is crappy compared to what humanity is really capable of. The Enlightenment was the aberration, introducing a new orthogonality into our shared social reality.
Dr Kay's got 27 years on me, man I hope I can keep my brain and body [modulo the belly] as in-shape as he is!
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 9:59 PM on May 13, 2017 [3 favorites]
I'm not the only child of the 70s who wishes computers now were as approachable as the old Apple IIe was for me in 1983.
I've been bashing on getting Mono/Xamarin's stuff to work with OS X's AppKit for more than a decade now and just wish there was less legacy CRAP to deal with at all levels.
Bret Victor's stuff is of course the actual worked-out product of applied effort towards realizing a similar dream.
A couple of days after getting my iPad Pro it hit me that the screen form factor matches exactly the $700 13" Trinitron monitor that Apple sold with the Mac II system. I should be doing more with this surface than watching ASMR vids/reading PDFs in bed! This tablet is 60X faster and paints 14X more pixels per square inch!
In watching the first lecture I was just wondering if PARC was lucky enough to be first to grab all the low-hanging fruit that was waiting for the pioneers of the late 20th century.
Clearly the next leg up into the blockbuster breakthrough is AI good enough to e.g. non-lossily translate these lines into any other human language, or perhaps some language-neutral representation, LOL.
This gets into TBL's semantic web research direction I guess.
Google's got the talent and drive to get us there maybe, stay tuned.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:29 PM on May 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
I've been bashing on getting Mono/Xamarin's stuff to work with OS X's AppKit for more than a decade now and just wish there was less legacy CRAP to deal with at all levels.
Bret Victor's stuff is of course the actual worked-out product of applied effort towards realizing a similar dream.
A couple of days after getting my iPad Pro it hit me that the screen form factor matches exactly the $700 13" Trinitron monitor that Apple sold with the Mac II system. I should be doing more with this surface than watching ASMR vids/reading PDFs in bed! This tablet is 60X faster and paints 14X more pixels per square inch!
In watching the first lecture I was just wondering if PARC was lucky enough to be first to grab all the low-hanging fruit that was waiting for the pioneers of the late 20th century.
Clearly the next leg up into the blockbuster breakthrough is AI good enough to e.g. non-lossily translate these lines into any other human language, or perhaps some language-neutral representation, LOL.
This gets into TBL's semantic web research direction I guess.
Google's got the talent and drive to get us there maybe, stay tuned.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:29 PM on May 13, 2017 [2 favorites]
Unfortunately, I think google used to have that vision ("access to the world's information"), but has now lost it ("make shitty clones of iphones and microsoft word along with alternatives to public transportation for the rich").
posted by smidgen at 3:01 PM on May 14, 2017
posted by smidgen at 3:01 PM on May 14, 2017
Very few people would be qualified to give a talk on this subject. But Alan Kay led the group that invented object-oriented programming, the windows-icons-mouse-pointer interface, ethernet, and laser printing. Also the dynabook, which prefigured the iPad by 3 decades.
So given that he already invented this future, I recommend listening to him talk about how to invent the next one.
Also, he cares about education because "adults are dangerous", which is the best reason I can imagine.
posted by pmb at 6:12 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]
So given that he already invented this future, I recommend listening to him talk about how to invent the next one.
Also, he cares about education because "adults are dangerous", which is the best reason I can imagine.
posted by pmb at 6:12 PM on May 14, 2017 [1 favorite]
Unfortunately, the videos seem to be gone now. I was planning to watch Part II this weekend. Part I was one of the best talks I’ve ever seen.
posted by action man bow-tie at 3:32 PM on May 25, 2017
posted by action man bow-tie at 3:32 PM on May 25, 2017
Unfortunately, the videos seem to be gone now. I was planning to watch Part II this weekend. Part I was one of the best talks I’ve ever seen.
God that's infuriating. If anybody downloaded them, please email me (and action man too, I bet :P).
posted by Chuckles at 5:20 PM on May 25, 2017
God that's infuriating. If anybody downloaded them, please email me (and action man too, I bet :P).
posted by Chuckles at 5:20 PM on May 25, 2017
Part I was reuploaded. Part II still missing, though.
posted by action man bow-tie at 12:16 PM on May 26, 2017
posted by action man bow-tie at 12:16 PM on May 26, 2017
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posted by stinkfoot at 7:28 AM on May 13, 2017