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An important technology first creates a problem and then solves 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
Important
Solves
Creates
Solve
Technology
Problem
Firsts
First

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The greatest single programming language ever designed
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A computer scientist is a machine for converting coffee into urine.
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Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight.
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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.
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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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The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure.
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In computers, every 'new explosion' was set off by a software product that allowed users to program differently.
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To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.
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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.
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Possibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet)
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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.
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Technology is anything invented after you were born, everything else is just stuff.
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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.
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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.
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Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general's warning.
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School is basically about one point of view - the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view.
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People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.
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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.
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The biggest problem we have as human beings is that we confuse our beliefs with reality.
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We cannot predict the future, but we can invent it.
Alan Kay