Quote

Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.

Alan Kay

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alan Kay
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: May 17
Computer Scientist
Jazz Guitarist
Jazz Musician
Programmer
University Teacher
Springfield
Massachusetts
Alan Curtis Kay
Alan C. Kay
Favourite
Large
Research
Listen
Company
Enough
Labs

More quotes by Alan Kay

Image
An important technology first creates a problem and then solves it.
Alan Kay
Image
The Internet was done so well that most people think of it as a natural resource like the Pacific Ocean, rather than something that was man-made. When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free? The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs.
Alan Kay
Image
When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world.
Alan Kay
Image
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Alan Kay
Image
Artificial intelligence is what we don't know how to do yet
Alan Kay
Image
It's easier to invent the future than to predict it.
Alan Kay
Image
Sun Microsystems had the right people to make Java into a first-class language, and I believe it was the Sun marketing people who rushed the thing out before it should have gotten out.
Alan Kay
Image
Understanding- -like civilization, happiness, music, science and a host of other great endeavors--is not a state of being, but a manner of traveling. This great road has no final destination. The journey itself is the reward.
Alan Kay
Image
If the pros at Sun had had a chance to fix Java, the world would be a much more pleasant place. This is not secret knowledge. It's just secret to this pop culture.
Alan Kay
Image
Science requires a society because even people who are trying to be good thinkers love their own thoughts and theories - much of the debugging has to be done by others.
Alan Kay
Image
In our society we have hard nerds and soft nerds. The hard nerds are the ones who used to have the slide rules at their belt now they have calculators. The soft nerds are the ones who get violently ill whenever anybody mentions an integral sign.
Alan Kay
Image
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.
Alan Kay
Image
I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.
Alan Kay
Image
Having an intelligent secretary does not get rid of the need to read, write, and draw, etc. In a well functioning world, tools and agents are complementary.
Alan Kay
Image
The only way you can predict the future is to build it.
Alan Kay
Image
I think the trick with knowledge is to “acquire it, and forget all except the perfume” - because it is noisy and sometimes drowns out one's own “brain voices”. The perfume part is important because it will help find the knowledge again to help get to the destinations the inner urges pick.
Alan Kay
Image
Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world.
Alan Kay
Image
The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.
Alan Kay
Image
Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.
Alan Kay
Image
Possibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet)
Alan Kay