Most creativity is a transition from one context into another where things are more surprising.
ALAN KAYThat language was Joss, which predated Basic and was beautiful.
More Alan Kay Quotes
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When was the last time a technology with a scale like that was so error-free?
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As far as Apple goes, it was a different company every few years from the time I joined in 1984.
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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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The only way you can predict the future is to build it.
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There’s an element of surprise, and especially in science, there is often laughter that goes along with the “Aha.”
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Bad User on Device is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically.
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The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide.
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Any medium powerful enough to extend man’s reach is powerful enough to topple his world.
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Knowledge is silver. Outlook is gold. IQ is a lead weight.
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This tends to result in very dumbed-down products that are easy to get started on, but are generally worthless and/or debilitating.
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I realized that my usual approach is usually critical. That is, a lot of the things that I do, that most people do, are because they hate something somebody else has done, or they hate that something hasn’t been done.
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Computer literacy is a contact with the activity of computing deep enough to make the computational equivalent of reading and writing fluent and enjoyable.
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Humans are communications junkies. We just can’t get enough.
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Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.
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Simple things should be simple and complex things should be possible.
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I hired finishers because I’m a good starter and a poor finisher.
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Possibly the only real object-oriented system in working order. (About Internet)
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People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.
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If we value the lifelong learning of arts and letters as a springboard for personal and societal growth, should any less effort be spent to make computing a part of our lives?
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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”.
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Every technology really needs to be shipped with a special manual – not how to use it but why, when, and for what.
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As in all the arts, a romance with the material must be well under way.
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But Basic happened to be on a GE timesharing system that was done by Dartmouth, and when GE decided to franchise that, it started spreading Basic around just because it was there, not because it had any intrinsic merits whatsoever.
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The greatest single programming language ever designed
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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.
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Of course I would pipe up with my five-year-old voice.
ALAN KAY