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Founder School Session: The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental

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  • Recommended by 7 people: 5 on Hacker News, 1 on Lobsters and 1 curated list.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2014 to 2017.
  • Presented by Alan Kay, computer scientist
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

46K views12 years ago7 recommendations

History and cultureSoftware designHistory of computingPeople who shaped computingSoftware architecture

Alan Kay argues that true progress in computing requires long-term, problem-oriented invention rather than the incremental commercial innovation dominant today.

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Why it's here

7 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as a thought-provoking critique of modern software development and a call to pursue fundamental, non-incremental technological leaps.

BruceMon Lobsters • Recommends

Alan Kay talks at DEMO2014
13View on Lobsters

romanivon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The AI Misinformation Epidemic”

Alan Kay spoke about it length in many of his talks. For example: link to this video Excellent video. I highly recommend everyone working in or with IT to see it. I think he is right. PCs and smartphone are mostly recreating thing from the past, and not the best things either. However, this isn't because we invented everything there is to invent. It has more to do with how research in computing is currently funded and how companies approach invention and innovation.
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gambleron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Tim Berners-Lee wins Turing Award”

…'t even a thing, and you can just come up with stuff and have people use it because it's good. Kay has many talks about the difference between invention and innovation (which are much better terms than ones you're using). In fact, his analysis of this difference is probably the most insightful and though-provoking technology talk I have ever seen: link to this video Of course, this subject makes a lot of developers highly uncomfortable, hence a lot of shallow, ignorant, knee-jerk dismissals. "Everything is incremental." "Everything is the only way it could be." "This is fine." And so on. Thing is, Kay worked at Xerox and Apple. He read a myriad of books and research papers on computing, which he consta…
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programming-talkscurated list on GitHubRecommends

Under “Software Development”

The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental 00:43:50 by **Alan Kay** (2014)
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nrao123on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Read Slowly to Benefit Your Brain and Cut Stress”

This slow reading idea also jives with Alan Kay's observation of "Slow Deep Thinking" which allowed us to have massive & non-incremental leaps into the future. link Video by Kay which goes into more depth: link to this video
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rtenson Hacker News • Recommends

On “What's wrong with Software nowadays and how we can fix it”

Wow that's exactly how I feel. I couldn't even formulate it that well. But I'm very happy to know that other people feel this itch as well. Your sentiment of "aiming for the future we want" instead of "piling up more stuff on our existing stack" reminded me very much of this talk: link to this video
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georgewsingeron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea”

…ou've been at it for a year and haven't found anything good enough to give your life to, it could mean you are different than the average HNer. It could mean you have a calling to think bigger than most people do. Here is some material you may be interested in which bolsters this viewpoint: - Alan Kay's "The Future Doesn't Have to be Incremental": link to this video - Peter Thiel's book Zero to One . Among other things, this book discusse…
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leocon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Alan Kay at Demo: The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental”

It's amusing that the same optical illusion has been discussed by Michael Abrash link and Alan Kay link to this video in talks on very different topics recently. > Thomas Paine said in Common Sense , instead of having the king be the law, why, we can have the law be the king. That was one of the biggest shifts, large scale shifts in history because he realised "hey, we can design a better society than tradition has and we can put it into law; so, we're just going to invert thousands of years of beliefs". Pfft, tell that to the 13th-century Venetians: link . Constitutionalism isn't that new an idea.
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goblin89on Hacker News • Mentions

On “Why I'm sending back Google Glass”

My takeaway is the opposite—you buy Glass to buy Glass. A wearable computer with 1 hour battery life isn't practical, any your expectations won't be met, but you can be closer to the future so that you invent appropriately. Think problem-oriented vs. idea/tool-oriented mindset, illustrated by Alan Kay in his talk The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental: link to this video . As you surround yourself with tools of the future, you can think of problems and solutions no one else sees (problem-finding as opposed to -solving).
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ecocentrikon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Survey shows surprise decline in US startups run by young people”

Why did I get down-voted? I answered the question and added a little humor. "Innovation" is not analogous to "invention". (Here's Alan Kay on the subject: link to this video ) TLDW: Technological adoption follows patterns of consumption like fashion. When we talk about "innovation" we're really talking about technologies that succeed in the marketplace and were successfully adopted by society. Over the last decade we've seen major tech growth in two areas: mobile computing (computers as fashion accessories) and social networks. Both happen to be areas where youth culture has historically served a role as early adopters. If you're looking for historical perspective to figure out when 20 somethings were…
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gavinpcon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Hacker News Highlights, the Alan Kay Edition”

Dr. Kay, if you're still following... then with singular respect and gratitude for your life-changing work and ideas, I would like to ask you one question. Is there a good way to use bad systems? Such as the web, which you describe as a “broken wheel,” lacking even a fraction of (e.g.) Englebart's vision. Or Linux, which you call “a budget of bad ideas.” (And no small budget, at that.) Or the iPad (and all common tablets, I assume), whose interface you call “brain dead.”0 What should we do with these things? Are they dead ends? Are they good for anything? Can they not be salvaged incrementally? Here in the Hacker News community, where I am happy to see that my enthusiasm about your work an…
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corysamaon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ask HN: Are we overcomplicating software development?”

Seems like the resources he had to work with in the VPRI project were pretty limited. It will be interesting to see what his team comes up with now that they are working with SAP and YC. So far, I know about this: link Hopefully, they're shooting for something like this: link to this video
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robertkrahn01on Hacker News • Mentions

On “The Eve programming language project is winding down”

…t tied to short-term goals – but only to an amount that in the end wasn't enough. Similar things happened elsewhere and this bars the way to more meaningful inventions 2. 1 The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal. Mitchell Waldrop. 2 Founder School Session: The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental link to this video…
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Phiwise_on Hacker News • Mentions

On “What If Data Is a Bad Idea?”

…That's an example of a leap. That set of ideas is actually old, and it was funded back when a lot of leap ideas were funded, and when the funding went away many of those ideas that weren't realized by about 1980 just haven't been worked on since, and that's something that'd be interesting to talk about. "The Future Doesn't Have To Be Incremental": link to this video Not that I necessarily agree with the article's concludions, but if the thesis is supposed to be that Kay disagrees with how we use big data today as a jumping-off point for reexamination, then this and the reference to Likleider's communicating with aliens problem work just fine for me.…
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morphleon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Apple Silicon and Virtual Machines: Beating the 2 VM Limit”

Apple had real Unix a decade before the Linux crap was made, a bad unix copy. Nextstep was much better than Linux crap. "A budget of bad ideas" is what Alan Kay said about Linux 1, he invented the personal computer. My 1987-1997 ISP was based on several different Unix running on Apple, probably long before you where born. Apple built several supercomputers. 1 link 2 Founder School Session: The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental link to this video
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