Lessons from Alan Kay

Alan Kay helped define the personal computer through his early work on graphical interfaces and object-oriented programming at Xerox PARC. His original concept for the Dynabook anticipated laptops and tablets decades before the hardware caught up. This collection gathers his thinking on system architecture, human learning, and his argument that the real computing revolution hasn't actually happened yet.

Part 1: The Future and Vision

1. On Inventing the Future: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." — Wikiquote
2. On Technology's Definition: "Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born." — Wikiquote
3. On the Status of the Revolution: "The computer revolution hasn't happened yet." — OOPSLA 1997 Keynote
4. On Preventing the Future: "The easiest way to predict the future is to prevent it." — Wikiquote
5. On Hardware and Software: "People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." — Creative Think Seminar
6. On Bold Visions: ARPA was successful because it funded "Visions: Cosmic and Romantic" rather than specific, narrow goals. — WorryDream Transcript
7. On High Aspirations: "If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough." — Wikiquote
8. On Licklider's Scope: Licklider asked for an "Intergalactic Network" because he knew engineers tend to lowball, so asking for the galaxy might at least yield a network for this planet. — Policy Exchange
9. On the True Goal of Research: "Research people want to make trillions... because we're creating new paradigms here, we're creating new industries." — WorryDream Transcript
10. On Information Architecture: "Xerox should be the 'architects of information'—that was one of the ringing phrases of the late 1960s." — WorryDream Transcript

Part 2: Object-Oriented Programming and Messaging

1. On Coining the Term: "I invented the term 'Object-Oriented', and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind." — OOPSLA 1997 Keynote
2. On the Real Big Idea: "I'm sorry that I long ago coined the term 'objects' for this topic because it gets many people to focus on the lesser idea. The big idea is 'messaging'." — Email to Stefan Ram
3. On Extreme Late-Binding: The essence of OOP includes "extreme late-binding of all things," allowing systems to decide meaning dynamically at runtime. — Email to Stefan Ram
4. On Encapsulation: "OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process." — Email to Stefan Ram
5. On the Actor Model: Carl Hewitt's Actor Model retained more of the "good features" of the original object idea than most mainstream OOP languages. — Dev.to Analysis
6. On Eliminating Data: "I wanted to get rid of data... I realized that the cell/whole-computer metaphor would get rid of data." — The Early History of Smalltalk
7. On Java: "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." — Wikiquote
8. On Lisp: "Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material." — Wikiquote
9. On Corporate Adoption: "Object-oriented [programming] never made it outside of Xerox PARC; only the term did." — Wikiquote

Part 3: Complexity, Architecture, and Code Scale

1. On Complexity: "Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible." — Wikiquote
2. On the Pyramid Metaphor: "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." — Dr. Dobb's Interview
3. On Program Size: "When you think programming is small, that's why your programs are so big!" — STEPS Project Insights
4. On Architecture vs. Materials: "As size and complexity increases, architectural design dominates materials." — STEPS NSF Proposal
5. On the Layer Cake: Kay criticizes the "layer cake" approach to OS architecture because it creates hidden chambers that nobody can fully understand. — Dr. Dobb's Interview
6. On Lines of Code as a Metric: "Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight." — STEPS NSF Proposal
7. On Reliability: "The price of reliability is the pursuit of the utmost simplicity." — Dr. Dobb's Interview
8. On the 20,000 LOC Goal: The STEPS project aimed to recreate a full operating system and application suite in 20,000 lines of code to prove the "accidental complexity" of modern systems. — Dr. Dobb's Interview
9. On Runable Math: A major failing of modern software is the lack of "runnable math," or domain-specific languages that allow expressive, concise logic. — STEPS NSF Proposal
10. On the First Language: "The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language." — Wikiquote

Part 4: Biological Metaphors in Computing

1. On Software as Biology: "Computing is not about clocks, it's about biology." — OOPSLA 1997 Keynote
2. On the Cell Metaphor: "I thought of objects being like biological cells and/or individual computers on a network, only able to communicate with messages." — The Early History of Smalltalk
3. On Infinite Scaling: "Take things like cells, they not only scale by a factor of a hundred, but by factors of a trillion... how do they do it, and how might we adopt this idea for building complex systems?" — The Early History of Smalltalk
4. On the Liver and the Heart: A liver cell cannot reach into a heart cell to change its state; they interact only through well-defined signaling protocols. — OOPSLA 1997 Keynote
5. On Chemical Signals: In biological software design, the "message" is the equivalent of a chemical signal, an asynchronous request interpreted solely by the receiver. — OOPSLA 1997 Keynote
6. On Dog Houses vs. Organisms: Traditional software is built like a dog house, which works at a small scale, but cannot be scaled up to a skyscraper, whereas biological organisms scale natively. — OOPSLA 1997 Keynote
7. On Centralization: Biological systems achieve massive complexity without a central "master" controller, relying instead on autonomous, communicating units. — The Early History of Smalltalk
8. On the Ecology of the Internet: "If you think about analogies for the scaling that's going on here, it begins to look like a biological ecology." — Dr. Dobb's Interview
9. On the Power of Networks: Independent biological entities networking together is the only proven model for building universally scalable, unkillable architectures. — The Early History of Smalltalk

Part 5: Children, Learning, and the Dynabook

1. On Children as Verbs: "We feel that a child is a 'verb' rather than a 'noun', an actor rather than an object." — A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
2. On Constructing the World: Quoting Cesare Pavese, Kay noted: "To know the world one must construct it." — A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
3. On Motivation: "I don't have an enormous desire to help children, but I have an enormous desire to create better adults." — Wikiquote
4. On Reflexive Communication: A large fraction of a personal computer's use should involve "reflexive communication of the owner with himself" through the medium. — A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
5. On the Kid vs. The Computer: "Should the computer program the kid, or should the kid program the computer?" — A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
6. On Ad-Blockers in 1972: "One can imagine one of the first programs an owner will write is a filter to eliminate advertising!" — A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
7. On Physics and Play: In his vision, children wouldn't just play games like Spacewar, they would open the code and rewrite the physics engine to learn how gravity works. — A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
8. On Universal Access: "It is now within the reach of current technology to give all the Beths and their dads a 'Dynabook' to use anytime, anywhere as they may wish." — A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
9. On True Interactivity: A book only allows you to read the author's thoughts; the Dynabook was meant to allow you to interactively argue with the author's models. — A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
10. On New Literacy: The Dynabook was not a teaching machine, but a vessel for "new literacy," where programming is the native alphabet. — A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages

Part 6: Perspective, Knowledge, and the Mind

1. On the Value of Perspective: "A change in perspective is worth 80 IQ points." — Creative Think Seminar
2. On Outlook: "Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight." — Wikiquote
3. On Arrogance: "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." — Wikiquote
4. On the Boardroom: "Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories." — Wikiquote
5. On Unlearning: The hardest part of learning a new, powerful paradigm isn't the new ideas, but escaping the gravity of the old ones. — OOPSLA 1997 Keynote
6. On Context: Facts are largely meaningless without the framework and context required to generate and understand them. — A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
7. On Normalcy: Most people mistake the environment they grew up in as "normal" or "human nature," rather than seeing it as an invented system. — Dr. Dobb's Interview
8. On Scientific Thinking: Human brains are not naturally wired for scientific thinking; it is a difficult, unnatural process that requires rigorous tools and discipline to maintain. — OOPSLA 1997 Keynote
9. On Understanding Systems: You cannot understand a complex system merely by staring at its output; you must possess the vocabulary to describe its internal mechanics. — STEPS Project Insights

Part 7: The Culture of Research and Xerox PARC

1. On the ARPA Funding Model: "Fund people, not projects." — Alan Kay on ARPA/PARC
2. On Baseball vs. Golf: "It’s 'baseball' not 'golf'... Not getting a hit is not failure but the overhead for getting hits." — Alan Kay on ARPA/PARC
3. On Corporate Risk Aversion: "Xerox was worried about all the things that weren't going well. They had confused making money with making money safely." — WorryDream Transcript
4. On Independence: Xerox PARC succeeded because management forced Xerox to sign an agreement keeping their hands completely off the research for the first five years. — WorryDream Transcript
5. On Mathematical Cultures: The ARPA/PARC culture was distinct because it was fundamentally a mathematical and scientific culture entirely focused on the problem of scaling. — WorryDream Transcript
6. On Communities of Practice: PARC wasn't just a building with smart people; it was a "community of practice" that operated on intense, high-trust peer review. — WorryDream Transcript
7. On Managing Geniuses: You cannot tell top-tier researchers what to do, but you can build an environment where their natural inclinations push toward a shared, cosmic vision. — WorryDream Transcript
8. On the Tragedy of Commercialization: The tragedy of PARC was not that Xerox failed to commercialize the PC, but that the industry commercialized a drastically watered-down version of the ideas. — OOPSLA 1997 Keynote
9. On Long-Term Thinking: Real breakthroughs require funding horizons of a decade or more, a timeline practically extinct in modern corporate environments. — Dr. Dobb's Interview

Part 8: The Media Revolution and Printing Press

1. On the Web: "The Web, in comparison, is a joke. The Web was done by amateurs." — Wikiquote
2. On the "Incunabula": We are currently in the "incunabula" phase of computing—the equivalent of the first 50 years of the printing press when it was only used to mimic hand-copied Bibles. — Alan Kay on the Computer Revolution
3. On Automating Old Media: Today, we mostly use computers to automate old media formats (paper, film, mail) rather than exploiting its native properties. — Alan Kay on the Computer Revolution
4. On the Real Message of Print: "The real message of printing was not to imitate hand-written Bibles, but 150 years later to argue in new ways about science and political governance." — Alan Kay on the Computer Revolution
5. On the Computer as a Metamedium: The computer is the first "metamedium," a medium that can simulate all other existing media while adding its own dynamic properties. — The Early History of Smalltalk
6. On Simulation: The native "literacy" of the computer age is not reading or writing, but the ability to build and run simulations. — Alan Kay on the Computer Revolution
7. On Authority vs. Argument: Just as the printing press moved society from dictation by authority to rational argument, computing must move us from static facts to executable models. — Alan Kay on the Computer Revolution
8. On the Danger of Algorithms: If society fails to achieve computer literacy, we risk falling into a dark age where opaque algorithms shape reality for a population that cannot critique them. — Alan Kay on the Computer Revolution
9. On Print vs. Interactive Media: A print culture teaches you to accept the author's world; an interactive culture should teach you to constantly question and rebuild it. — Alan Kay on the Computer Revolution