How to Invent the Future I - Stanford CS183F: Startup School

I'll repeat my answer to the previous iteration[1] of this question from a couple of weeks ago: ---- You might find something of use in some of this stuff: link link link link link link link ---- In addition, the two videos on "How to Invent the Future" by Alan Kay might be inspirational to you (or anybody else thinking about this topic): Part I - ▶ this video Part II - link Actually, this entire playlist is quite interesting, even if you're not looking to launch a startup right now - link [1]: link

Do you realize the concepts for computing tablets came out of PARC as well? Alan Kay gave a couple lectures at Stanford on "How to Invent the Future" and went over all the stuff that came out of there. ▶ this video Much of what we use today was conceptualized 50+ years ago. PARC's outputs paid off immensely for Xerox over a very long period of time since they picked a tech (laser printing) that was perfect for their wheelhouse. Companies and our culture these days don't allow for exploration like PARC was allowed. There is too much focus on monetizing everything and having an ROI.

Alan Kay's lectures on youtube are mostly about (critical) thinking and how to educate your own thinking. Each of his talks is aimed at a different audience but all address your question. For our HN audience the 1997 OOPSLA talk [1] is a place to start, or the "How to Invent the Future I - Stanford CS183F: Startup School" talks [2]. There are many recommendations of books to read to develop your thinking. [1] link [2] ▶ this video

If I was really truly stuck for an idea and could not get anything to pop into mind, here's something I might try: Apply the "take an old idea and reinvent it in light of newer discoveries, new technology, or in application to a new problem" approach. To do that, read about old ideas in some area of interest to you, that didn't catch on, or were abandoned for whatever reason. Use Google, Wikipedia, Sci-hub, old print magazines, old newspapers, whatever it takes. Look at things through a lens of "Could I resurrect this idea with a new twist that wasn't available when it was first proposed?" Do that for enough "things" there's a chance it'll spark something. Extra hint: if you're looking for a startup idea specifically, Google for one of the multiple lists of "startup ideas that never work" that are out there. Of course it should go without saying to be very cautious about jumping into a project where many other people have failed with the same idea: there's probably a good reason for their failure. But IF you can find a new angle or hook that's "just right" maybe you can succeed. Or the whole exercise may actually bring a completely different idea to mind. Try to be open minded with this stuff. Also, find the two video series[1][2] that Alan Kay did on "Inventing the Future" and watch those. He shares a lot of great ideas in those. [1]: ▶ this video [2]: link

I don't think pg intended that crazy new ideas require someone to be a domain expert, just some expertise. Slight wording difference. In the case of music, one could have domain expertise on audio files, compression and domain expertise about file sharing and domain expertise about younger people's listening habits. That's just having some insights into the domain, several as is the case with Napster. Music industry execs in those days probably had domain expertise on contract law, revenue sharing models, marketing and didn't have a clue about file sharing or audio compression. Also want to mention the examples you mention seem to have not much "newness" to them to be "crazy new" in my opinion. When I think of "crazy new" ideas, I think of things like stuff that came out of PARC in the 60's. If you go watch the Stanford 2 part series "How To Invent The Future" with Alan Kay on youtube [0] it goes into a lot of detail about them. The challenge there with Xerox was they couldn't capitalize on every single idea that came out, just not logistically possible for a company to really do that. [0] ▶ this video

How To Invent the Future, parts 1 and 2. ▶ this video Alan Kay talks about the innovations that came out of PARC. I liked it because it confirmed my belief that true industry changing innovations are rare.

Counterpoint is that they picked one thing (laser printing) out of the dozens of ideas coming out of PARC and capitalized on it to the point that they were found to be a monopoly [0] and forced to license their patents [1]. Watch Alan Kay's "How to Invent The Future" talks from Stanford about this [2] and he talks in more depth. I don't think any company could have built products around all of the ideas that came out of there and been successful, they would have been focused on too many things. [0] link [1] link [2] ▶ this video and link

I don't know that I can say I'm particularly good at this, but to the extent that I do have any original / good ideas, I think a big part of it is this: 1. Know at least a little bit, about a lot of stuff. 2. Know a lot about at least a few things. 3. Constantly trawl for new "stuff" (eg, read books, magazines, the web, watch documentaries, etc.) 4. Think about how to combine different bits of the "stuff" you have in your head. Take notes, write down lots of ideas, even if they're dumb at a first glance. Keep chewing on things, and eventually the penny drops and you see some connection between things that makes sense. 5. Related to that, and I don't do this well enough myself, is "spend a lot of time thinking about the kinds of problems people have". I've read a few books on creativity / innovation / etc., but I'm not sure I can say any of them specifically helped, although a few of the ideas may have been useful without my being consciously aware of it. I read some of the Lateral Thinking book and I vaguely recall thinking it seemed somewhat useful. YMMV. link I also recommend Alan Kay's video series on "How To Invent The Future". Part I: ▶ this video Part II: link Another thing: I think sometimes ideas come out that are "ahead of their time" and seemingly die on the vine, or just get left behind. But sometimes when the environment changes, those ideas become ripe to get re-invented. There's a book title Rethink that sorta deals with this idea. link Anyway, I think there's

Related to inventing, reinventing, and adopting-the-already-existing: Alan Kay on inventing the future: ▶ this video Jonathan Blow on "reinventing" your own game engines: link

It was a common practice in the 90s for creative engineers to use extremely expensive "supercomputer" workstations to pay for productivity gains & live on the bleeding edge (e.g. Silicon Graphics workstations, NeXT workstations, and so forth). Question: What is the equivalent way to do this today? That is, is there a way to pay a lot of money to use a computer which is 5-10 years ahead of its time? Ok so I'm pretty biased here, but I think the answer lies in VR computing. There's no doubt VR computers are more expensive than their PC/laptop counterparts, but they allow you to adopt a bleeding edge technology which is essentially 5+ years ahead of its time in terms of where it is on the "commodity computing" frontier. A good quote from Alan Kay I find pretty inspirational on this front: ▶ this video Here he basically advocates for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a computing machine, in order to compute on what will be a commodity product 10-15 years into the future. VR computers aren't this extreme on the cost curve, but I think there is something to this point of view which I find really inspirational.[1] [1] Caveat: I'm one of the founders of SimulaVR ( link ), so admittedly am very biased here. But I do think VR provides a way to convert money into "better compute" in a way that hasn't been available since the 70s-90s super workstation era.

One perspective Alan Kay had was that no company could really capitalize on so many different things that came out of PARC. Xerox picked laser printing and capitalized it to the point of being forced by the government to release patents. How to Invent the Future (2 parts), Alan Kay talking at Stanford - ▶ this video

I would say that the more generalized software is, the larger the audience, the more likely there will be Strong Boundaries between the Practical and the Theoretical. That said, Licklider was a very special person. This video from Alan Kay talked about him @ 32:42 ▶ this video