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To get the medium’s magic to work for one’s aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.

Alan Kay

As far as Apple goes, it was a different company every few years from the time I joined in 1984.
ALAN KAY

Apple As Company Different Every Few Go Join
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?
ALAN KAY

Growth Learn Letter Makem Live Personal Societal Spent Springboard Value
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

Best Careful Coin Designer Even Extension Flip Good Heat Language Programme Side Tend Terrible
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.
ALAN KAY

Around Basic Decide Done Franchise Happen Spread Timeshare
I had the fortune or misfortune to learn how to read fluently starting at the age of three.
ALAN KAY

Age Fluent Fortune Learn Misfortune Read Start Three
To get the medium’s magic to work for one’s aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.
ALAN KAY

Against Aim Attain Literacy Magic Medium Rather Work
Art also has this element. Our job is to remind us that there are more contexts than the one that we’re in – the one that we think is reality.
ALAN KAY

Context Element Job More One Really Remind Think
They don’t like the idea of having different points of view, so it was a battle.
ALAN KAY

Battle Different Idea Point View
I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed to other points of view.
ALAN KAY

Already Behaviour Expose First Grade Point Try View
Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing since MS-DOS.
ALAN KAY

Compute Distress Dos Hit Java Microsoft Most Since Thing
Understanding- -like civilization, happiness, music, science and a host of other great endeavors–is not a state of being, but a manner of traveling.
ALAN KAY

Civilization Endeavour Host Manner Science Stae Traveling Understanding
Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones.
ALAN KAY

Idea Java Make New Old One Think
The greatest single programming language ever designed
ALAN KAY

Design Great Language Program Singer
The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas.
ALAN KAY

Computer Idea Instrument Music Simply
Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general’s warning.
ALAN KAY

Amass Communication General Last Medium Naive Surgeon Television Warning World
In our society we have hard nerds and soft nerds.
ALAN KAY

Hard Nerd Society Soft

To get the medium’s magic to work for one’s aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.

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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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Popular Authors

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