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.

Comments

True for any tool

[Gilgaron]

A pen nominally allows more uninterrupted creativity than a quill and inkwell would, but mostly they get used for jotting down the grocery list.

Misdirected rage

[argStyopa]

Sounds like he's complaining more about human nature than anything to do with mobile computing or google.

Just like every other technology

[Shotgun]

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.