Alan Kay Decries the State of Computing

gnaremooz writes "Computer pioneer Alan Kay (DARPA in the '60s, PARC in the '70s, now HP Labs) declares 'The sad truth is that 20 years or so of commercialization have almost completely missed the point of what personal computing is about.' He believes that PCs should be tools for creativity and learning, and they are falling short."

Comments

Creativity

[muttoj]

I do not agree with the writer. I takes me a lot of creativity to find different ways to frag my friends in Battlefield 1942. Also playing battlefield teach me some nice skills for the real life. (press 9 for parachute whenever I fall out of a airplane and such)

Re:Creativity

[paulkoan]

This has saved me countless times since I started taking my keyboard on flights.

Now the TSA have started confiscating them, what am I supported to do?

Learning, they are used for learning

[skarps]

Without the PC, there are many geeks that wouldn't know the first thing about the female body. I feel that we are learning a lot!!

This could take a while

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

1,000,000,000 windows computers on the earth, 1,000,000,000 windows computers. Take one down, replace the OS. 999,999,999 windows computers on the earth. 999,999,999 windows computers on the earth. 999,999,999 windows computers.Take one down, replace the OS. 999,999,998 windows computers on the earth. 999,999,998 windows computers on the earth. Take one down replace the OS. 999,999,997 windows computers on the earth. and so on.

Maybe we should use something other than gentoo.

wait....

[eegad]

you mean it's not about patches and updates?

Re:It's true

[mst76]

Take for example, the commodire 64. This had a user interface that came up in about a second, and was immediately useable. Nobody ever looked at my C64 in a confused way wondering what it does. They knew. It was obvious.

READY.
HELP

?SYNTAX ERROR
READY.
HI

?SYNTAX ERROR
READY.
HELLO?

?SYNTAX ERROR
READY.
EAT FLAMING DEATH

?SYNTAX ERROR
READY.

Re:werd

[Speare]

While I understand and empathize with your argument, and having used emacs for sixteen years, I must say, a recommendation that reads, "like emacs, only moreso!" will not sway your average personal computer user (or even your devotee) to try it out.

Screw you Kay

[JavaLord]

The chances that in the last week or year or month you've used the computer to simulate some interesting idea is zero--but that's what it's for.

Dude, I use it every night to simulate a girlfriend, and that is pretty damn interesting.

Kay should take a break from all of this research BS and check out some of the great porn on the internet. He wouldn't be so down on the state of the industry then.

Re:Arrgh..

[Fred_A]

Well yeah, but the cheque cleared, that's the whole point.

Re:Arrgh..

[Fred_A]

Oh yeak, well *my PC* can :

0 fred@discworld ~ > lunch with mariah
bash: lunch: command not found
0 fred@discworld ~ > su -
Password:
0 root@discworld ~ > urpmi lunch
no package named lunch
0 root@discworld ~ >

damn

Re:It's true

[Anonymous Coward]

> Nobody ever looked at my C64 in a confused way wondering what it does. They knew. It was obvious.

From the provided example, it was indeed obvious what a C64 does: it answers "?SYNTAX ERROR, READY." to anything you type.