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The Father of Mobile Computing Is Not Impressed (fastcompany.com)
harrymcc writes: Starting in the late 1960s, Alan Kay envisioned a powerful portable computer that would be a revolutionary learning device, then built some of the necessary tech at Xerox PARC and elsewhere. Today, his ideas are all around us -- but Kay is distinctly unimpressed with the iPhone, iPad, and other modern devices, which he says encourage passivity rather than creativity. Brian Merchant talked to the computing pioneer for a wide-ranging interview on FastCompany. An excerpt from the interview: Google has been around for a long time now. I bitched at [Google] for years: Why the fuck can't we type in a question and get a decent answer? There's all sorts of pre-processing you can do with the computing we have now to put a lot more semantics in there, and look at the shit you're retrieving. And by the way, the stuff that isn't popular -- which is probably what most people need to read, if the thing even knew what the question is -- is buried [in Google search results], and most people won't go past a couple of results or clicks.
A pen nominally allows more uninterrupted creativity than a quill and inkwell would, but mostly they get used for jotting down the grocery list.
See, the problem isn't the technology, it's the humans.
As much as visionaries come up with things they think will lead to a better world, the reality is cat videos, narcissism, and porn are what people really want. The internet is more about teenagers taking selfies these days than it is about improving the human condition.
Unfortunately, you can't force people to do what you envisioned would be their potential.
Re-posting the same comments on facebook over and over doesn't mean that you're creative. If anything takes effort then most people will throw up their hands.
He's complaining about the technology, but it is the people using it that make companies build it that way. They don't want to put any thought into the process, they just want to put in a minimal amount of info and get a reasonable answer.
Unconvinced. I don't want computers to answer my questions. I want them to help me answer my own. An answer isn't the mere transfer of data, it's the alteration of my mind into a different state. That can't happen properly if the basis for the transformation exists only in some other system.
Google has been around for a long time now. I bitched at [Google] for years: Why the fuck can't we type in a question and get a decent answer? There's all sorts of pre-processing you can do with the computing we have now to put a lot more semantics in there, and look at the shit you're retrieving.
Because Google already gets into trouble when it prefers its own services or when it editorializes. Alan Kay should note that when one asks Google for what are essentially undisputed facts one often gets Google-formatted answers. Search for famous persons and one usually get the page formatted with an excerpt from their biography, date of birth, place of birth or upbringing, some basic information on what brought the person to prominence, etc. Generally these things are not disputed, so there's no real risk in presenting them in this fashion.
Now, if Google starts answering controversial questions, even correctly, they may face some real backlash that they wish to avoid from people that can't accept the answer. It's even worse if there is some legitimate dispute in a discussion, and appearing to side with one answer or another when something isn't settled can influence the discussion in ways that are not appropriate.
If you want straight answers, look at Wolfram Alpha.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If he knows how to build a better search engine than Google, then form a company and kick Google's ass. Or, go to work for Bing. Wasn't question answering supposed to be wolframalpha's forte?
AI still lacks what we usually call "common sense" and screws up a lot of things because of that. The tech isn't there yet.
Table-ized A.I.
you sound bitter, sweet tits
Please, Google is an advertising agent, not the answer man.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
i'm sure liberal cry bullies will call for him to be lynched if they get wind of this.
I would be ready to pay a nice price if there was SmallTalk for Android (not RedLine, based on Java, that has no 'images'), a truly one where you can suspend the VM and restart where you where.
But alas, I don't have the time to compile a Skeak or Pharo VM and figure all the pitfals.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Google isn't a search engine; it's an advertising engine.
Exceptional individuals are rare by their very nature, and it seems likely they're prone to misunderstanding the minds and motivation of the regular folk.
Still, the technology is there for someone who wishes to use it to access the collected knowledge of mankind, so the misuse by the many doesn't completely negate the original intent.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Apple used to ship the best starting programming environment ever developed, Hypercard, for free on all of their machines. The same company doesn't allow programming on iOS except in very limited (in-game typically) ways. There is absolutely a sense that you should be a consumer, not a producer, on modern devices and it drives me crazy.
I read the internet for the articles.
The use of F bomb does not help your argument. It just makes me dismiss your complaint because you sound like a raving lunatic.
90% of EVERYTHING is crap. To some people, the world is amazing and other people do fascinating things with their phones. It's a matter of perspective.
Funny how it works very well when you need to buy something, be it a gadget, movies ticket or anything at all.
Of course this is not coincidence.
Very few modern technologies actually encourage creativity. People are lazy and stupid, learning creative software like Photoshop takes time and effort, they'd much rather just use instagram filters. Sorry that's just not creative, that's just applying some boilerplate bullshit that everyone else is using. Which is like 99% of software and products.
Occasionally we get rare glimpses of people actually doing something new and exciting, but for the most part creativity is mostly dead.
They dig up some graybeard who was around during this or that era, and gather some quotes that sounds like it rips into something new but maybe not. We can't trust so called journalists for reporting accurately anymore given their agendas and tech journalists are the worst of the lot.
I grant they may or may not like something, but would an earlier version of Kay or Wozniak if shown today's technology be so flippant about it? I seriously doubt they would. It probably would blow their minds because they didn't anticipate it. But tech sometimes seems boring especially when you've been around 50 or 60 years so changes seem more incremental.
I don't know - I am just sick and tired of reading this crap. I don't care that you did something decades ago. You aren't doing it now.
I imagine Edison, Marconi, and Tesla may have had loftier ambitions in mind for their technological breakthroughs.
Jesus fucking christ, Edison electrocuted an elephant as a "marketing ploy"
You are an unbelievable idiot.
You mean he'd have been a messiah?
The product is not meeting customer demand (after all, Kay is a customer, and his demands aren't being met).
The real explanation is not that customers are completely satisfied, but rather that customers are satisfied enough; and, is that really surprising? Most customers don't have the brain power that Kay has.
Yet, Google employs some of the smartest people on the planet right? Maybe even smarter than Kay! So, why don't they produce a more advanced product? Well, because most people couldn't care less whether they've achieved excellence in their work; it is enough that they're getting paid, and get a chance every now and then to go rock climbing with their mates. The developers do not care.
Haha granpa go crap in diapers haha
How many of y'all ever sit by somebody chanting/cussing at their phone and could literally boot a computer pull up %browser% TYPE the question and have a correct and complete answer before the person even got close to getting an answer??
trust me unless you speak Mideastern Broadcaster or British Received you would have to be in a quiet room for any VR system to understand you if you don't know how to ask the question.
That people use the devices they paid for in the ways they want to , instead of how he tells them to.
It's all for our own good, you know. Daddy knows what's best for everyone.
Gotta have that $1k iphone because it's an iphone though. Those $100 (or sometimes free) androids do the same shit but it doesn't fucking say iphone on it.
I say 99,999999999999999999999995% of everything it crap.
people use the devices they paid for in the ways they want to
the brainwashing is really good here, not a trace of reason or thought, pure propaganda
It's not perfect, but Google does answer your questions now. For example, if I type into Google "what is the landspeed record?" I get the following result in a caption box above the website search results:
"The official land-speed record (measured over one mile) is 1,227.985 km/h (763.035 mi/h) (Mach 1.020), set by Andy Green (UK) on 15 October 1997 in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA, in Thrust SSC."
Seems like a pretty good answer to me.
Reminds me someone (yep, a repost!) said "it is the cow theory" and explained it as a herd of cows in a corral. It only takes one cow to figure out how to open the gate, then the entire herd can leave the corral.
mfwright@batnet.com
No, Donald. Just no.
iPhone X - overpriced? Maybe so. But it has blazing fast multithread processing, some pretty damn good cameras, a miniature lidar scanner, a 5.8" oled screen, 6-axis accelerometer/gyroscope, great microphones, and three different modems to connect you to devices and the sum total of human knowledge.
Alan probably wants to use the lidar, cameras, and 6-axis motion sensor to autonomously stitch together accurate 3-d models for insertion into virtual environments or hit "print" and it duplicates a real object on a 3-d printer in minutes.
Meanwhile the feature released with this advanced device is to literally transform your face into a talking poop. The problem isn't in the capabilities, it's in what the average person wants.
The IStuff and Android are having one reason only. To lock up entertaining platform/s against clueless users. The power users will unlock/crack/use this as they desire.
But maximum openness in in a platform like Raspberry Pi, that can be transform in wifi camera, navigation/GPS tool, command for Stepper Motors, weather station and anything else.
I personally am enthusiastic about this. I didn't invent anything, I am just another type of user.
This is what separates the geeks from the animals.
In the beginning getting online was a involved thing . Now the unwashed masses have invaded .
Always ends in tragic mis-managment in the scramble for having the least common denominator chase pennies down the gutter in a psychopathic civilization bent on extracting maximum profit no matter the cost. . . I wonder if I will ever live to see otherwise. .
I can bitch and complain too. Neither of us are doing anything about it but I don't claim to be the Father.
You have to attract those eyeballs, pal. The OP's point still stands.
The article disappoints because the interviewer doesn't force Kay to explain what he thinks Engelbart got right that HTML didn't.
But it did have a few gems along the way.
I'm not impressed with the so-called "father of mobile computing", and never have been. I am, however, thanks to this interview, considerably less impressed than before.
Perhaps readers discriminate against writers who use "fuck" because of the high overall correlation between forms of that word and fallacious arguments, particularly those that use personal attacks or other appeals to emotion. Someone who reads Cracked, for example, might not have this bias because though its articles contain the occasional F-bomb, they are on the whole well reasoned.
The reason I wanted Kay to give an explicit answer about what Engelbart got right that HTML didn't is that I'm wary about these judgements in hindsight.
I was reading Rob Pike this morning.
Go at Google: Language Design in the Service of Software Engineering — 2012
Would s/Go/HTML/g be a correct map for Kay's opinion? Because HTML really was designed more for engineering at scale than anything else.
And this always draws a chorus of criticism from the conceptual purity boo birds.
Kay is a pretty smart guy, but did he ever learn his billion times tables really? I rather suspect that was never native to his cognitive style.
In particular the bad functionality of Google is utterly pathetic. You often have to comb through a lot of search results until you find something meaningful. Add to that that they basically killed the competition and Google is responsible for a massive dumbing-down. By now they are holding people back as badly as Microsoft.
So, what is it with the stupid pattern search? The lack of a built-in programming or scripting language that easily lets you configure what your phone does or does not do? The lack of UI customization that does survive updates?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Fallacy does not determine truth or falsity of an argument; to claim it does so is the fallacy fallacy. But it does help people identify which arguments to consider verifying or falsifying and which to ignore. Otherwise, if people attempted to verify or falsify all arguments, they would have little or no time to do anything else. Some fallacies make better heuristics than others.
In other words, no keyboard. You just sit and consume our content. If you have anything to say, keep it to 144 characters that you can compose with two thumbs.
Have gnu, will travel.
Sounds like he's complaining more about human nature than anything to do with mobile computing or google.
-Styopa
You can spend almost the same money on an android phone. Granting they will have extra bells and whistles like a thermal camera or a 1000fps camera.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Stuff has been dumbed down for the masses. Compare any "music streaming service app" to WinAmp from 1998 - none of them even have 1/4 of the features of WinAmp 2.8/2.9. Do any of them even let you actually rate songs? Or just the mindless Thumb.
And the father of TV thought it would be used for education and to bring symphonies to the masses.
Instead, we have exposed the dregs of the human soul.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
He spoke prematurely.
This interview happened before Apple unveiled their talking poop emoji.
Millions of people are about to get really creative.
I think he means the film director.
Ezekiel 23:20
Just goes to show that no one was ever disappointed by underestimating human capability or decency.
My daughter is addicted to Snapchat and other worthless social media like many her age.
It seems we are devolving not evolving with this new technology.
I'm sure TV made me dumber in high school but at least the TV was in one location and not always on.
Fuck "natural language", I just want them to give us back the search primitive for +"must contain this literal text". Or complex boolean queries that rigorously observe parentheses, double-quotes, and proximity.
I wrote an app a few years ago that ran a query, then automatically fetched every search result & bruteforce-searched through them via regex for the real results, but Google's server detected something amiss & started throwing captcha challenges at it.
Pens and quills can still be used to write books... however mobile computers have deliberately been dumbed down to only be ad displaying devices making some noise every couple of seconds.
I mean he has seen systems like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
That system, including software and operating system was far simpler than Android/iOS/whatever we have today, yet it's able to provide you with an intuitive and powerful user interface. I mean in the video you see someone drawing a program without a keyboard.
Alan Kay has seen people doing so much more with so much less effort. It's only understandable he is not impressed.