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

Dang, Alan Kay's old talks are so amazing. Check out this Smalltalk program written in 1975 by a 12-year-old girl. ▶ this video

> 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: ▶ this video

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 ▶ this video

Doing with Images Makes Symbols, Alan Kay. ▶ 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.

> (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] - ▶ this video

Maybe these are mostly too new, or you have different (more practical, hands on?) definition of tech-talk - but from a quick look the only speakers I expected - 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": ▶ 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.

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": ▶ this video .

So many things I could say about this, but I"ll let Alan Kay speak for me - ▶ 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 much easier to grasp and relate to, etc. With this context in mind, there have been some cool efforts to mix the second and third channels I just mentioned to communicate advanced math concepts. Vi Hart and Grant Sanderson's youtube channels come to mind. Here are my favorite videos by Grant: - "What does it feel like to invent math": link - On the visual intuition behind a hard problem on the Putnam exam - "The hardest problem on the hardest test": link - From vectors to matrices to vector spaces to higher-level ideas like the link between linear algebra and calculus: "Essence of linear algebra" series: link What I especially like about Grant's videos, is that he often walks through what a mathematician would do, the questions she would ask, etc.

You can find a higher quality version of this beginning around the 24:20 mark of the video at the link below. ▶ this 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 support people, as well as 10 consultants. >Our research has been motivated by our past experiences in the Logo Group at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where we worked with Seymour Papert and Marvin Minsky. >We wanted to get Logo out of the laboratory and into the world. We wanted to share it, and share its potential as a powerful too for thinking. And so before we joined Atari, many of us were part of the development team at Logo Computer Systems, where we designed, implemented, and documented Apple Logo. >When we finished Apple Logo, I left Logo Computer Systems. I wanted to get back to doing research. I contacted Alan Kay, who was Chief Scientist at Atari, and it turned out he was interested in setting up a research laboratory in Cambridge, near MIT. >He was familiar with our