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

>He thinks that you can just design something nice from whole cloth and people will use it. Because that's exactly what they did in Xerox Park, many times over. >That's why his designs aren't deployed. No comment. >But he's basically confusing research and engineering, as if engineering wasn'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: ▶ 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 constantly references in his talks and writings. He worked and continues to work with some of the most forward-thinking people in the field of computing. In late eighties he foresaw most of the current computing trends - which is verifiable via YouTube. Even without any context his talks display a considerable depth of thought. In short: unlike some people, he actually knows what he is talking about. >The point is that it couldn't have been any different. It wasn't designed; it was evolved. And that is why so

Alan Kay spoke about it length in many of his talks. For example: ▶ 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.

I'd like to argue something contrarian in this thread: you could be on the right path. Some facts to keep in mind: - There are on the order of 20,000 new startups each year; most of the other people in this thread are from this pool. - Only 2-5 of those 20,000 startups will end up mattering (i.e., will reach a high enough valuation/impact on the world to move a needle). - Of these 2-5 startups that matter per year, almost none of them were pivots (Twitter is LoudCloud are the only examples I can think of). - The conventional wisdom is to take an incremental idea and run with it; "ideas don't matter and execution is everything"; run sprints and use the Lean Startup methodology to pull the market out of an idea (or pivot), and reach a local maxima. - This will only get you the result that 20,000 startups a year typically get: incrementalism, small victories, and/or failure. - There's also lottery ticket mentality to this conventional style of thinking: you're no different than anyone else, so stop ideating and start doing, and maybe you'll get lucky. If you'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": ▶ this video - Peter Thiel's book Zero to One . Among other things, this book discusse

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: ▶ this video

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: ▶ this video

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 ▶ this video

How about this quote instead, then? >"Big data" is a way that a lot of people are trying to make money today, and it's a favorite of marketing people because it's in the wind. ... But in fact, the interesting future is not about data at all, but about meaning, and Stephen[ Wolfram]'s demos showed you a thought which most people in the computing world haven't had, which is "What if my programming language actually knew something". And, in fact, what if my user interface actually knew something? Not like Siri, which "knows" things, but what if it actually knew about me, and what if it actually knew about the contexts in which I'm trying to do things? 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": ▶ 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.

No, it's not about personal preference. It is about what is (im)possible when the only context to be considered is the status quo. The technologies you list are innovative but in the end just iterations of inventions of the 1970s. The 70s were so special because stuff happened there was the result of increased spending into science and research of the 60s after the Sputnik crisis [1]. Today's R&D is not focused on what could be possible in 10, 20, or 30 years but in 1, 2, or 3 quarters since companies funding the research need to be focused on their bottom line. The Eve project was special insofar in that it received funding not 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 ▶ this video

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: ▶ this video

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 and message is strongly shared, there is yet a huge amount of energy being poured into the wrong end of the low-pass filter, or, as you call it, “the world.” I know that we are not averse to learning curves, but maybe there is too much sunk cost to question what's already “working”? What should we do? One answer is to use bad systems to simulate better ones. But—when this is even feasible—it's always done at the cost of performance, and VPRI's publications make no secret of that. A proof-of-concept does not equal a product. And at any rate, most of us are not researchers. Because of this apparent dilemma, the exhiliration that I always feel when I hear you speak or read your writing is always tainted with a sense of despair. Is there any enlightened way to use today's systems (for example, a

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: ▶ 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 given the keys to the tech kingdom, it happened over the last decade when tech companies started using youth culture to drive consumption and "innovation". Why do we need companies full of 20 year olds? 1) Because 20 year olds develop products for other 20 year olds. Most of them don't have the experience, wisdom or maturity to do anything else and they are fundamentally still trying to please each other and define themselves as a generation. 2) 20 year olds have a ton of energy, health and are willing to work ridiculous hours on bad code for lower pay. 3) Making millionaires out of a few 20 somethings every year helps feed the fire.

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: ▶ 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).