The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide.
ALAN KAYThe future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide.
ALAN KAYPerl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term.
ALAN KAYSome 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 KAYThe most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.
ALAN KAYBad User on Device is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically.
ALAN KAYLisp isn’t a language, it’s a building material.
ALAN KAYIf you’re not failing 90% of the time, then you’re probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems.
ALAN KAYI 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 KAYAs far as Apple goes, it was a different company every few years from the time I joined in 1984.
ALAN KAYSo 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 KAYThe idea that hardware on networks should just be caches for movable process descriptions and the processes themselves goes back quite a ways.
ALAN KAYThey don’t like the idea of having different points of view.
ALAN KAYChange is easy, except for the changed part.
ALAN KAYAny medium powerful enough to extend man’s reach is powerful enough to topple his world.
ALAN KAYPeople are willing to pay you if you’re any good at all, and you have plenty of time for screwing around.
ALAN KAYTo get the medium’s magic to work for one’s aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.
ALAN KAY