“The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet!”
Alan Kay, Ph.D.
Pioneer in computing
Present at the Creation: Part V
Remarks by Jeffrey H. Lynford
Fourth Annual Lynford Lecture
October 9, 2001
President Chang, Trustees, Dr. Kay, Professors Chudnovsky, Faculty, Honored Guests and
Fellow Students:
This is the fourth in a series of annual lectures where a leading scientist/engineer/researcher/
practitioner speaks to us at IMAS. Previously we have had Professor Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study talk about String Theory; Dr. J. Craig Venter, President of Celera Genomics Group, present a status report on his work decoding the human genome; and Mr. Bill Joy, Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems, conjecture about the promises and challenges of technology in the 21st century.
Today we welcome Dr. Alan C. Kay, a pioneer in the development of the personal computer and the architect of the modem GUI or "Graphical User Interface"; he is one of the inventors of the Smalltalk programming language and one of the fathers ofthe idea of Object Oriented Programming. Also, we are pleased to note that he has local roots by virtue of his attending Brooklyn Technical High School in the early 1950's.
Dr. Kay's ability to think "outside the box" has helped him conceive and execute many programming
innovations, and to garner financial support from leading corporations including Xerox, Apple, and Disney. He is known for his aphorisms, and two of my favorites are, "All understanding begins with our not accepting the world as it appears," and "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
Dr. Kay's career has been profiled in two books, Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists, and more recently, The Dream Machine, by Mitchell Waldrop. The authors of Out of Their Minds, Dennis Shasha and Cathy Lazere, have described Dr. Kay as a man with "a clear romantic vision." I commend these books to those of you who would like to know more about the leading thinkers and developers of computer programmmg.
Throughout his career Dr. Kay has had a deep interest in education and children, and he has focused much of his considerable intellect at the point where computer technology and learning intersect.
Long before most of the world understood the importance of computer literacy being initiated in the public grade school classroom, Dr. Kay was working on software essential to accomplish this objective. As a result, Dr. Kay has spent much of his career defining and enhancing the relationship between children and the computer.
Where did he begin? In the 1950s and 60s, the Swiss developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, rewrote educational theory by watching children learn in the classroom. What appeared to adults as "play," was actually the way children acquire knowledge. Piaget's work implied to Kay and his mentors that the computer and its software could be an important "transitional object" for children.
What is a child's transitional object? Traditionally for many a child it has been a stuffed animal, such as a teddy bear, or a small blanket. The most significant characteristic of transitional phenomena is not the object itself, but the nature of the relationship to the object. A successful relationship with a transitional object permits a child with fantasies to emerge as a well-adjusted adult.
It was Dr. Kay's insight to link a child's natural desire to fantasize, and learn from experimentation,
with a computer's power to simulate potentially anything. Unfortunately the software necessary to accomplish such simulations did not exist in the 1960s when Dr. Kay and his colleagues came to this insight. But you may remember that in 1965 Dr. Gordon Moore predicted that the capacity of computer chips would double every 18 months from the base year of 1959. By making the leap of faith, that Moore's Law eventually would give them thecapability they would need, Dr. Kay and his compatriots fearlessly planned for an uncertain future.
The results of Dr. Kay's 30-plus years of vision and planning can be found on the desktops of many of us here today. And this afternoon Dr. Kay will discuss why "The computer revolution hasn't happened yet."
I would now like to ask David Chudnovsky and Tom Morgan to come to the podium and ask all of you to join us in a round of welcoming applause for our guest lecturer, Dr. Alan Kay.