13 Quotes & Sayings By Alan Kay

Alan Kay is a computer scientist and designer. He is best known for his work on Smalltalk, a language for object-oriented programming that has been implemented in many languages, including modern versions of Java and JavaScript. In addition to Smalltalk, he has created HyperCard, a hypermedia tool for authoring information systems. He is the founder of KayTek Corporation, which makes Smalltalk environments for personal computers.

I don't know how many of you have ever met...
1
I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano- Dijkstras. Alan Kay
2
Normal is the greatest enemy with regard to creating the new. And the way of getting around this is you have to understand normal not as reality, but just a construct. And a way to do that, for example, is just travel to a lot of different countries and you'll find a thousand different ways of thinking the world is real, all of which are just stories inside of people's heads. That's what we are too. Normal is just a construct, and to the extent that you can see normal as a construct in yourself, you have freed yourself from the constraints of thinking this is the way the world is. Because it isn't. This is the way we are. . Alan Kay
3
Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories. Alan Kay
4
Technology is anything invented after you were born. Alan Kay
5
Perspective is worth 80 I.Q. points. Alan Kay
6
I had the fortune or misfortune to learn how to read fluently starting at the age of three. So I had read maybe 150 books by the time I hit 1st grade. And I already knew that the teachers were lying to me. Alan Kay
7
Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower. Alan Kay
8
There is the desire of a consumer society to have no learning curves. This tends to result in very dumbed-down products that are easy to get started on, but are generally worthless and/or debilitating. Alan Kay
9
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Alan Kay
10
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. Alan Kay
11
The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited. Alan Kay
12
Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Alan Kay