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#alankay#smalltalk#human-computerinteraction

Alan Kay: Doing with Images Makes Symbols (Full Version)

Kenneth Friedman

771 subscribers • 3 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 9 people: 8 on Hacker News and 1 in engineering communities.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2016 to 2023.
  • Presented by Alan Kay

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

44K views11 years ago9 recommendations

History and cultureSoftware designHistory of computingPeople who shaped computing

Alan Kay demonstrates early Smalltalk systems and discusses visual, kinesthetic, and symbolic reasoning in human-computer interaction.

Video recorded in 1987. There is no full version of this video on Youtube, so I decided to upload it. I do not own this video nor claim copyright to it's use. It is currently available in two parts on the Internet Archives, here: archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987 and here: archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987_2 I have uploaded this to Youtube purely for educational use.

Why it's here

9 people recommend this

What people say. Widely recommended as a legendary talk on user interface design, education, and the history of computing.

Moments people linked to

cconroyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”

Doing with Images Makes Symbols, Alan Kay. link to this video The title says it all. It's really a summary of several software systems with good ideas abound. I believe all the software is 80s or prior. Edit: I also forgot to mention some psychology and math.
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agumonkeyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Concrete-free washing machines are lighter to transport, just as good in a spin”

I'm already trying hard not to fall into full alankayism 1 and this only reinforces my view. Jobs said that many people in companies are clueless... 1 for people that never watched his talk where he demonstrates how pretty old and forgotten software can be, enjoy this fully link to this video
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scrooton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Media for Thinking the Unthinkable (2013)”

> Visualizations are great for shared intuition, but it should only be used at the end of a long personal struggle which should involve hours upon hours of undistracted effort, preferably involving something tactile like a pen and pencil. There is a classic Alan Kay talk that touches on this very issue, called "Doing With Images Makes Symbols." It discusses what the true power of HCI really is: that complex ideas (or even "unthinkable" ones) can be expressed via HCI using some combination of visual, kinesthetic, and symbolic reasoning. The whole talk is well worth watching, but here is the part I feel is most relevant for Victor's point: link to this video
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theodpHNon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Alan Kay: Doing with Images Makes Symbols [video]”

Dang, Alan Kay's old talks are so amazing. Check out this Smalltalk program written in 1975 by a 12-year-old girl. link to this video
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u/Bitsoflogicin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Recommends

…programming languages or interfaces to code (notations?) that might take advantage of this as an enhancement/alternative to our current keyboard-only approach? *Edit: Since this isn't being well received, I thought I might give a little extra context. My initial inspiration around this was inspired awhile back by Alan Kay in a video like this:* *[video *Here he shows some of the first iconic programming languages, like Grail, which was created for the RAND tablet. Our tech for tablets and interfacing with computers has grown drastically since then, so it seems like a great idea to revisit it.* *To be clear, I don't care if the language was designed with the Wacom in mind, but rather tha…
4View on Reddit

skadamaton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Communicating Advanced Mathematics to Kids”

So many things I could say about this, but I"ll let Alan Kay speak for me - link to this video Alan talks about how ideas in Calculus could be manifested from an early age and a richness in understanding built up as they aged up: - at very young ages, kids really respond well through "doing" / the enactive channel. When asked to draw a circle, kids in Papert's group would first emulate what a LOGO turtle would do by rotating their body in a circle (making tiny increments in x and y). - as they got a bit older, the visual / iconic channel was more developed and they could understand the abstraction of a circle on pencil/paper and how the concepts carried over there - closer to early teens, symbols were…
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jdale27on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What is your favourite tech talk?”

I was going to mention Growing a Language, but since it's already been posted, here is Alan Kay's "Doing with Images Makes Symbols": link to this video .
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e12eon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Show HN: TechYaks – Best of 50k tech talks ranked by confidence intervals”

…d - and found - were Sandi Mets and Rob Pike. If it's practical, I'm surprised not to see the js "wat" lightning talk (which I now can't seem to find...). If it's more general "best of", I'd expect something like Guy Steele "growing a language" : link Douglas Engelbart "the mother of all demos": link Alan Kay "doing with images makes symbols": link to this video Or, if that's too long, the much more condensed ted talk: "a powerful idea about teaching ideas": link (Maybe that's not a "tech talk"?) Rich Hickey "simple made easy" : link To name a few of the top of my head.…
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artem247on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Programs are a prison: Rethinking the building blocks of computing interfaces”

> (see also Alan Kay's vision of software inspired by biological cells and systems – lots of talk, no non-trivial proofs of concept). I just wanted to say that actually Kay's vision was implemented in something very non-trivial, both on the hardware side - Alto, and the Smalltalk operating system. They were used by real people and exhibited lots of traits that this article talks about. And some of their ideas were hugely influential in mainstream computing. I love the demo of one of the Smalltalk programs in this talk by Alan Kay 0, starts at around 40:30 0 - link to this video
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DonHopkinson Hacker News • Mentions

On “Alan Kay at UCLA (2016) [video]”

That was probably around 1982-1984, when Alan Kay was Chief Scientist at Atari, and set up Atari Cambridge Research Lab. Atari Cambridge Research- part 1 - Cynthia Solomon: link >This is a demonstration of some of the works in progress from July 1982 to April, 1984. From learning Logo, a look at our work at introducing people to computers, to music with some of our futuristic instruments. We'll take you on a tour of our lab. Director or Research, Cynthia Solomon. >I'm Cynthia Solomon. You're about to see some of the research that has been going on at the Atari Cambridge Research Laboratory. I've been its director since we started in 1982. The staff consisted of 22 full time research and su…
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darrickwon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Alan Kay shows the Rand tablet [video]”

You can find a higher quality version of this beginning around the 24:20 mark of the video at the link below. link to this video
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u/cxzukin r/ProgrammingLanguages • Mentions

On “You know of any programming languages designed for the HCI of the Wacom screens?”

I apologise! While Engelbarts work was great. I was meant to link you to Ivan Sutherlands 1962 Scatchpad >I often visualize it as myself or another person. With the idea being I'm responsible for doing this and will coordinate with you doing that. I feel like this idea for children and this idea for adults are linked to the same innate ability. If this is a direction you're interested in, Alan Kays 1987 Doing with Images makes Symbols might be something you'll enjoy. I'm hugely influenced by Alan, but his ideas are sometimes so far from todays computing that he can be difficult to understand. The entire video is well worth a watch too ✌
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