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We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it.

Alan Kay

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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
Predict
Invent
Future
Cannot

More quotes by Alan Kay

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Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight.
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Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.
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It's easier to invent the future than to predict it.
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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.
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The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
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Humans are communications junkies. We just can't get enough.
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A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Point of view is worth 80 IQ points
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Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal - a sort of 'voting' situation. But once the threshold is reached, then everyone demands to do whatever it is.
Alan Kay
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If you're not failing 90% of the time, then you're probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems.
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The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution hasn't started yet.
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Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories.
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To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.
Alan Kay
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Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.
Alan Kay
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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
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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
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Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.
Alan Kay
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Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but just done by brute force and thousands of slaves.
Alan Kay
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The flip side of the coin was that even good programmers and language designers tended to do terrible extensions when they were in the heat of programming, because design is something that is best done slowly and carefully.
Alan Kay
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Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.
Alan Kay
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A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.
Alan Kay