Quote

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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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
Mediums
Aim
Magic
Rather
Work
Aims
Literacy
Attain
Medium

More quotes by Alan Kay

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I fear - as far as I can tell - that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training. I've heard complaints from even mighty Stanford University with its illustrious faculty that basically the undergraduate computer science program is little more than Java certification.
Alan Kay
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There is the desire of a consumer society to have no learning curves. This tends to result in very dumbed-down products that are easy to get started on, but are generally worthless and/or debilitating.
Alan Kay
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The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.
Alan Kay
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The only way you can predict the future is to build it.
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.
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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Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.
Alan Kay
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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.
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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I fear - as far as I can tell - that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.
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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Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Alan Kay
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The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution hasn't started yet.
Alan Kay
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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
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We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it.
Alan Kay
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The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.
Alan Kay
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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
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The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.
Alan Kay
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An important technology first creates a problem and then solves it.
Alan Kay
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As far as Apple goes, it was a different company every few years from the time I joined in 1984.
Alan Kay