Alan Kay:

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Alan Kay

• LCC 2700 Intro to Computational Media
• Spring 2005

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Alan Kay (1970s)

• Dynabook concept
• Xerox PARC Alto GUI PC
• Small Talk object oriented programming language
• Still innovating SQUEAK, WIKIs

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Sketchpad (Ivan Sutherland, 1963)
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Alan Kays narration of Ivan Sutherlands video
of Sketchpad

• Sketchpad 1963 first drawing program
• First use of multiple windows
• Kay emphasizes the non-procedural programming,
  e.g. knowledge of objects dynamic generation and
  modification of graphics
• In our terms he is emphasizing the procedural
  power of the system, its ability to embody rules

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SpaceWar! (1962)
SpaceWar (1962) practically drove smalltalk
into existence Alan Kay
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Prototype of Dynabook (1968)
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Dynabook dreamed up in 1968

• Back in 1968 when I made this cardboard model I
  thought of it as the machine of the future and
  started thinking about what would it be like for
  millions of people to have one of these machines.
  . Could people actually use it? And the answer
  in 1968 and the early 1970s was no. . And I
  remembered a wonderful phrase of Marshall
  McLuhan. He said, I don't know who discovered
  water, but it wasn't a fish. The idea is if you
  are immersed in a context you can't even see it.
  So we decided to follow Seymour Papert's lead and
  try and see what this Dynabook of the future
  would be like for children
• http//www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/archives/Kay/01_Dyn
  abook.html

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Alan Kay Adele Goldberg (PARC)Personal
Dynamic Media 1977
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Alan Kay Adele Goldberg (PARC)The Dynabook
Learning Research Group had the single creative
child as its model end-user, as against
Engelbarts model of the collaborative
writer-researcher Target activities
included programming, problem-solving making
and sharing tools art, music,
animation interactive memory for data
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The Dynabook

• A personal dynamic medium the size of a
  notebookwhich could be owned by everyone and
  could have the power to handle virtually all of
  its owners information-related needs.
• We are exploring the use of smalltalk and
  interim Dynabooks as a programming and problem
  solving tool as an interactive memory for the
  storage and manipulation of data as a text
  editor and as a medium for expression through
  drawing, painting, animating pictures and
  composing and generating music.
• See time code 530 of NMR Reader Alan Kay video
  for one of worlds first paint programs

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Xerox Alto 1973 (ten years before first
commercial PCs)

• The Alto personal computer becomes operational.
  As it evolves, the Alto will feature the world's
  first What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG)
  editor, a commercial mouse for input, a graphical
  user interface (GUI), and bit-mapped display, and
  will offer menus and icons, link to a local area
  network and store files simultaneously.
• http//www.parc.xerox.com/about/history/default.ht
  ml

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Xerox Alto 1973 Alan Kays Smalltalk

• Smalltalk is the first object-oriented
  programming language with an integrated user
  interface, overlapping windows, integrated
  documents, and cut paste editor.
• The concept that objects are described and
  addressed individually, and can be linked
  together with other objects without having to
  rewrite an entire program, will revolutionize the
  software industry. Smalltalk will later heavily
  influence C and Java programming systems.
• http//www.parc.xerox.com/about/history/default.ht
  ml

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Dynabook computer as metamedium

• Explosion of creative applications piled into a
  single essay examples from art, music, writing,
  hospital simulation, animation
• Although digital computers were originally
  designed to do arithmetic computation, the
  ability to simulate the details of any
  descriptive model means that the computer, viewed
  as a medium itself, can be all other media if the
  embedding and viewing methods are sufficiently
  well provided. Moreover, this new metamedium is
  active.