Pioneers: Alan Kay
Summary
TLDRこのエピソードでは、オブジェクト指向プログラミングやグラフィカルユーザーインターフェースの先駆者であるアラン・K・ベストが登場し、コンピューティングの進化に貢献したエキスパートたちとの対話を紡ぎます。アランはApple、Atari、Disney、Xerox、PARC、NYU、Hewlett-Packardなどで働いた経験豊富なエキスパートで、民主主義、科学、そして文明に対する独特の視点を提供しています。彼の洞察に沿って、メディアの進化とその影響、教育の重要性、そして未来の技術の発展について語り合い、聴聽に有益な知識を提供します。
Takeaways
- 🌐 メディアの進化と民主主義の関係:異なるメディアが民主主義の形態を変える。
- 📺 テレビと民主主義:テレビは感情やストーリーに重きを置くため、民主主義の真の価値とは無関係。
- 📖 書物と科学の進歩:17世紀に始まる科学と民主主義の進歩は、物語形式を捨てることで進展した。
- 🏛️ 古代アテネと法の公開:ソロンが法律を公開し、市民が法を直接参照できるようにした。
- 🤔 人間の思考と進歩:人類の進歩は、文化を通じて進化した結果而非遺伝子によるもの。
- 🌐 書記と文明の関連性:書記が文明の発展に影響を与えた。書記はアイデアを組織的に整理し、独立して考えることができる。
- 📚 教育と哲学的重要さ:アメリカの公共教育システムは、共和国の投票公民を支えるための哲学と科学の教育が含まれている。
- 📈 印刷と言語の進化:印刷が言語のスタイルを変え、より広範に伝えられるようになった。
- 🔄 反復と教育のプロセス:教育は、人間が持つ自然な傾向に対抗するプロセスである。
- 🌟 共和国制の課題:共和国制を維持するためには、権力よりも知恵が重要であることが保証されている必要がある。
- 💡 科学の進歩と教育:科学の進歩は、教育システムがどのように進化させるかにかかわっている。
Q & A
アラン・ケイはどのような分野で先駆的な仕事をしているか説明してください。
-アラン・ケイはオブジェクト指向プログラミング、グラフィカルユーザーインターフェース(GUI)の開発、およびDynabookの研究で知られています。彼はApple、Atari、Disney、Xerox、Park、NYU、Hewlett-Packardなどの企業や大学で研究を行っており、コンピューティングの今日を形作しているエンジニアや発明家との対話の中でその貢献が語られています。
アラン・ケイはデモクラシーが異なるメディアによってどのように変わると考えていますか?
-アラン・ケイは、マーシャル・マクルハンが言ったように、デモクラシーは異なるメディアによって大きく変わることがあり、例えばパンフレットやテレビ、Twitterなど異なるメディアはデモクラシーに異なる影響を与えます。テレビはデモクラシーにとって最悪な発明であり、テレビは学びを要求せず、パーソナリティや感情、幸福感、物語に重点を置いていますが、デモクラシーや科学にはこれらの要素は関係がありません。
アラン・ケイは科学とデモクラシーがどのように進化してきたかを説明していますか?
-アラン・ケイは、現代のデモクラシーと科学は17世紀に始まり、物語形式を放棄することで発明されたと説明しています。物語は感情的共鸣を感じる時に適切であり、人々は聖書や彩色玻璃の窓のように、感情に応える物語を見つけることができます。しかし、これらのものは理性化や改善のための手段として使用されています。
アラン・ケイは文明がどのように進化してきたかについてどう言っていますか?
-アラン・ケイは、文明は私たちの脳の問題を介入、偏向、転換、変更するため、多くの進歩が遺伝子とは関係なく、文化を通じて進化したと考えています。私たちは遺伝子から進化したのではなく、文化を通じて進化し、協力的な本能と競争的な本能のバランスを取りながら進化しています。
アラン・ケイは教育において何が最も重要なだと考えていますか?
-アラン・ケイは、教育において最も重要なことは、等しい権利の概念を教えることであり、これは非常に難しいことで、多くの人々がこれを真剣に信じていないという点に気づいている。彼は私たちが文化と共に進化し、コoperative driveを発揮することで進歩を遂げてきたと述べています。
アラン・ケイは新闻がどのように機能するかについてどう言っていますか?
-アラン・ケイは、新闻は新しいことについて報道されるとされていますが、実際には既に理解されているカテゴリーの中で新しい事例を見つけることに重点を置いていると指摘しています。新聞は新しいカテゴリーを導入することができず、例えば微積分学のような新しい分野について報道することができないと述べています。
アラン・ケイはSolonの物語についてどのように言っていますか?
-アラン・ケイは、ソロンが古代アテネ人の法律制定を求められた物語について言及しています。ソロンは非常に賢い男性であり、彼は法律を建築物の壁に書き記して公開することで、市民が周りを歩きながら法律を確認し、矛盾を気づかせるアプローチを取ったと述べています。
アラン・ケイはなぜ書物に対する感情的な衝撃が必要なのか説明していますか?
-アラン・ケイは、世界が見たようにではないという認識を深く理解するために、感情的な衝撃が必要です。彼はフランク・オッペンハイマーがサンフランシスコ探検所を設立し、実際に科学がどのように機能するのかを学ぶ機会を提供したことを言及しています。
アラン・ケイはページ番号がどのような役割を果たしたかについてどう言っていますか?
-アラン・ケイは、ページ番号が西洋文化では版画の注釈によって発明されたと述べ、ページ番号は本の議論をより強力にするために発明されたと説明しています。彼は、ページ番号が注釈と相互参照の「ハイパーリンク」のような役割を果たし、書物での議論はオーラル文化よりも強力であると指摘しています。
アラン・ケイはコンピュータの将来についてどう予測していますか?
-アラン・ケイは、コンピュータの将来は人類の知的増幅器として機能し、世界範囲でネットワーク化されると予測しています。彼は、コンピュータが人間の集団のIQを増幅し、集団が最も愚か者よりも賢い意味を持つことを意味すると考えています。
アラン・ケイは教育において何を重視しているか説明してください。
-アラン・ケイは、教育において子供たちが「常识世界」に完全にとらわれられる前に、彼らがそれを見ることができるようにすることが重要であると述べています。彼は、子供たちが7歳で言語装置を決定させることと関連していると指摘し、中世では7歳以上の子供は成人として扱われ、盗みを働いた場合、成人として処刑されたと述べています。
アラン・ケイは科学博物館における展品のどの側面を批判的に見ていますか?
-アラン・ケイは、科学博物館が技術を展示し、科学の過程や科学がどのように機能するのかを説明する展示を提供していないことを批判しています。彼は、博物館がジェットエンジンなどの技術を展示する代わりに、科学がエンジニアリングにどのように影響を与えたかを示すことが一般的であると述べています。
Outlines
🎙️ 対話の開始と艾伦・K・ベスト氏の紹介
この段落では、ポッドキャストのホストであるデビンが艾伦・K・ベスト氏との対話を紹介しています。艾伦はオブジェクト指向プログラミング、グラフィカルユーザーインターフェース(GUI)、およびDynabookの先駆的な仕事で知られています。彼はApple、Atari、Disney、Xerox、Park NYU、Hewlett-Packardなどの企業で働いた経験があります。対話は、民主主義がパンフレット、TV、Twitterなどの異なるメディアでどのように異なって表現されるかに焦点を当てています。
🌐 メディアの進化と民主主義、科学の関係
この段落では、艾伦はマーシャル・マクルハンのメディア理論を引用し、テレビが民主主義の最悪な発明であると述べています。テレビは学びを要求せず、パーソナリティと感情に重点を置きます。対照的に、民主主義と科学は、物語形式を放棄することで発明されました。艾伦は、ソロンが古代アテネの法律を建築物の壁に書くことで、市民が法律を参照し始めたという伝説を引用しています。
📚 書物と知識の獲得
この段落では、艾伦は書物が知識を獲得するための重要なメディアであると述べています。書物は、一つの物語やアイデアを体系的に整理し、読者により独立して消費できる形式で情報を提供します。艾伦はまた、新聞が既存のカテゴリーに基づいて報道されることと、新しい知識を扱うことが困難であることを指摘しています。
🖋️ 書写の重要性和教育の進歩
この段落では、書写の発明が文明と教育にどのように影響を与えたかについて、艾伦が語っています。書写は、アイデアを組織的に整理し、読者が独立して消費できるようにすることで、知識の獲得を促進しました。また、艾伦は、教育システムがどのようにして共和国の投票公民を支えるために設立されたか、そして科学と哲学の教育が人間が自然な思考を超える方法を学ぶのに役立ったかについても話しています。
📈 進歩と文化的適応
この段落では、艾伦は進歩が遺伝子ではなく、文化を通じて達成されたと述べています。私たちは遺伝子から独立したく、文化と共に進化する生物です。艾伦は、競争と協力の両方の駆動力がどのように私たちの遺伝子から来ているか、そして経済システムがどのように協力を促進することが困難であるかについても話しています。
🌟 科学の進化と未来の教育
この段落では、艾伦は科学の進化と教育の将来について語っています。彼は、科学が私たちの思考を革新的なものに変えるために、教育がどのように役立ったかを強調しています。また、新しい技術が教育にどのように影響を与えるか、そして未来の教育がどのようになっていくかについても議論しています。
🛠️ コンピュータ技術の発展と人間の知性
この段落では、コンピュータ技術の発展が人間の知性とどのように関連しているかについて、艾伦が説明しています。彼は、コンピュータが人間の知性を拡張するためのツールとして使用され、個人的な知性を集約し、グループのIQを向上させるために重要な役割を果たしていると強調しています。
🎨 ビジュアル化と知性の発展
この段落では、ビジュアル化が知性の発展にどのように寄与しているかについて、艾伦が語っています。彼は、視覚が私たちの知性に与える影響と、書写や印刷が言語処理を減らしてリードABLEさを向上させる方法を説明しています。また、艾伦は、ビジュアル化が教育や科学の発展にどのように役立ったかについても議論しています。
🤖 未来の技術と人間の進化
この段落では、艾伦は未来の技術が人間の進化にどのように影響を与える可能性があるかについて語っています。彼は、技術が私たちの遺伝子を改善することができるが、その進化は自然な進化とは異なる道をたどることになる可能性があると述べています。艾伦は、技術と進化のバランスが重要であると強調しています。
Mindmap
Keywords
💡オブジェクト指向プログラミング
💡グラフィカルユーザーインターフェース
💡ダイナブック
💡メディア
💡民主主義
💡科学
💡文明
💡協力
💡書物
💡新闻
💡教育
💡文化
Highlights
Devin's conversation with Allen K, a pioneer in object-oriented programming, GUIs, and Dynabook, who has worked at Apple, Atari, Disney, Xerox, PARC, NYU, Hewlett-Packard, and beyond.
Discussion on how different media affects democracy, with television being compared to stained glass windows as it doesn't require learning and focuses on personality and feelings, rather than democratic principles.
The importance of storytelling in human culture and its limitations in the context of democracy and science, which both originated in the 17th century and required a shift from story forms.
The historical example of Solon and the Athenians using written laws as a browsable version of their principles, leading to the realization of contradictions and the need for a more rational approach to governance.
The idea that civilization is a set of processes trying to mediate, deflect, and modify the flaws in human brain's genetic tendencies, with democracy being one such process that is difficult for people to grasp.
The concept of rationalizing animals versus rational animals, emphasizing the role of culture in human progress and the need to think of ourselves as intertwined with our cultures.
The impact of writing and reading on the way ideas are thought about and organized differently, allowing for independent reception of ideas and fostering a slower, more reflective mode of thinking.
The role of news media in reinforcing existing knowledge and categories, rather than introducing new concepts or categories that challenge the audience's understanding.
The historical significance of the printing press in changing the style of writing and its contribution to the establishment of a voting citizenry capable of supporting a republic.
The importance of education in teaching philosophy and science to enable citizens to think in ways that are not natural to humans, and the challenge of ensuring that wisdom exceeds power.
The story of the U.S. Constitution's drafting process, highlighting the importance of agreement on the process rather than on every detail and the role of the annotated draft in facilitating this.
The concept of the San Francisco Exploratorium and its mission to teach science through hands-on exhibits that challenge conventional perceptions and encourage a deeper understanding of the world.
The discussion on the limitations of traditional science museums and the need for exhibits that showcase the process of science rather than just its technological applications.
The historical development of page numbers and their role in facilitating stronger arguments within written works, contributing to the decline of oral storytelling.
The influence of the printing press as a catalyst for change, accelerating the Renaissance and the shift in human understanding of the world.
The importance of teaching children critical thinking skills before they become fully entrenched in the common sense world, with a focus on elementary education.
The discussion on the potential dangers of genetic modification, emphasizing the need for cultural and educational development alongside technological advancements.
The vision of the ARPA community for computers to become interactive intellectual amplifiers for all humanity, and the funding strategy of supporting the most capable and innovative thinkers.
Transcripts
[Music]
hello i'm devin and you're listening to
the eighth episode of tools and craft a
series of conversations with the
designers engineers and inventors who
are shaping computing
today i'm talking to allen k best known
for his pioneering work on object
oriented programming graphical user
interfaces also known as gui's and
dynabook
he's worked at apple atari disney xerox
park nyu hewlett-packard and beyond alan
thank you so much for taking the time to
chat i've been really looking forward to
this conversation glad to be here how is
democracy different when the medium is
pamphlets versus tv versus twitter
versus some other medium well mcluhan
had a good line about it he said he said
look you can argue about a lot of things
with stained glass windows but democracy
is not one of them what does that mean
the the stained glass windows the worst
thing you could ever invent
for democracy is television
television is the stained glass windows
of
the 20th century and it is that because
it doesn't require any learning and
because it has this glow to it
that is all about personality
and it's about feelings and it's about
happiness it's about story
and democracy has nothing to do with any
of those things nor does science
our modern versions of democracy and
science were both
started their invention in the 17th
century
and part of
what catalyzed those inventions was
people gradually being able to give up
on story forms
we like stories when they're apt when we
feel resonance to them this is why
people
are not at all disturbed by the
contradictions in the bible
or in fact in stained glass windows
because
if you're feeling one way like justice
must be served you find the stained
glass window that shows somebody getting
punished for sinning or you dip into the
bible for that line
but if you're feeling another way about
forgiveness you can go to another
stained glass window and there it is
telling you that your feelings there
we have you know proverbial
societies
which most traditional societies are
if you list out the proverbs they all
cancel each other out
so
absence makes the heart grow fonder
but out of sight out of mind
you can't tell a book by its cover but
where there's smoke there's fire
and one of the legends about
solon
who was called on by the
early athenians
to make laws for them
because they were tired of having
tyrants
this is like 6th century bc and solon
was a very wise man
so he approached this carefully but
according to the legend the first thing
he did is said well let's write down
everything we think
is a principle of our society on the
walls of our buildings and they actually
put up billboards using this new
technology they had which is writing
with an alphabet
and
so now the athenians had
a browsable
version of their laws
and you could walk around town
and see oh yeah here's this one and
here's that one and pretty soon they
started noticing that they canceled each
other out
because what people use these things for
was as rationalizations
and for ways of feeling better and
people still do that today that is the
predominant form of
human thinking
it hasn't changed in a hundred thousand
years and almost all progress that the
humanity has made in my opinion
has come from opposing
most of our genetic tendencies
and
i i think of civilization as being a set
of processes trying to invent things
that mediate
deflect
turn away and modify most of the things
that are wrong with our brain
and the problem is is that we can't
change our brain we can only change
some of the processes in it through
training
and so democracy is one of these things
it has
an idea lurking in it that is
still one of the hardest ideas for
people to learn which is the idea of
equal rights this is very hard to teach
and most people don't believe it for a
second a lot of people paid lip service
to the idea for sure people say that
they believe it what's the difference
between uh their actions and their
statements
lip service is just rationalization
but the science fiction writer robert
heinemann once said we're not rational
animals we're rationalizing animals
we are the animal that made its progress
through culture our progress our
progress has not been through genetics
but
being able to
do something faster than genetics can do
and because of that
we have to think of ourselves as
intertwined with our cultures we've got
a cooperative drive
that makes us a social creature and we
have this competitive thing that like
likely comes from being a subsistence
animal for most of our
genetic heritage and there's hardly
anything that
competition really helps and this is one
of the biggest problems with
many economic systems that can only work
through competition
they just can't do cooperation because
cooperation makes it much easier to gain
the cooperative system
one of the theories is that the reason
that writing is correlated with
civilization writing allows ideas to be
thought about
and organized differently and most
importantly it allows the reading of the
ideas the receipt of the ideas to be
done independently of response the
biggest problem with oral and see i've
what i'm doing here is i'm not
conversing and i i really can't converse
very well at my age because i've lost my
patients
and so i what i do is to pontificate
which is the same as giving you
something like it's written in normal
conversation
there's this tit-for-tat kind of thing
but even worse if somebody says
something interesting and you just sit
there for five minutes thinking about it
they start getting upset
but in fact i do that all the time when
i'm reading because it's i'm sure you
know about daniel kahneman and thinking
fast and slow and
so the whole point here is what are all
the modes
that allow us to think slow
rather than to think reactively
and a lot of these are correlated with
these inventions
like writing and reading and
some of the new media that
that have been invented news is
supposedly about new things right but if
you look at the news
the all the categories are ones that are
completely understood by the audience
they couldn't do 22 minutes of
television news
if they introduced a new category like
calculus here we're going to tell you
something about calculus tonight on the
evening news
and i can i'll i'll give you a 30
seconds before the commercial break on
it
no that's new new is something that you
have to train your mind
to actually be able to deal with in a
fluent way
news is finding another instance
of something you already know about it's
another murder another corrupt action by
a politician another
this another that you already know
everything about it except the tiny
detail
one of the big deals when printing came
along
was it changed the style of writing
because when you're doing oral
traditions and writing them down in oral
stories writing them down
the stories are never told the same way
twice
because nobody can remember them exactly
and so what you
what you're doing there is painting with
a broad brush
the reason why we have a public
education system in the u.s
is partly because of people like
jefferson
but basically a lot of the founders
of the country
realized that in order for a
to have a voting citizenry
that could support a republic what you
do that and a lot of it is learning
philosophy and what we would call
science today
learning how to think
in ways that are not natural to human
beings and at age 55 or so they become
you know a guardian and they're supposed
to have achieved enough wisdom to be
able to deal with this power that's the
problem how to make sure that the wisdom
exceeds the power rather than the other
way around so you know romans tried it
and one of the jokes
of one of the roman poets a few hundred
years later was who will guard the
guardians right so if you set up a
republic maybe only the rich rich
families will join in and maybe they'll
use this to their advantage and so so
the big problem when the when it finally
you know
1500 years later so when the
the us was trying to put together the
constitution
this is one of the things that
the thinkers wrestled with you know
should we have a republican should we do
a monarchy no
there's a good argument about that in
thomas paine's
common sense pamphlet
and common sense was a joke
because the common sense was that you
should have a monarchy but what payne
wanted to do in this little 40-page
pamphlet was
to say no forget about what we think of
as common sense and to paraphrase what
he said he said instead of having the
king be the law we can have the law be
the king
meaning we can design a whole new
society that pamphlet had a distribution
of somewhere between six hundred
thousand and nine hundred thousand
copies
in the six months right before the
declaration of independence
so there are 1.5 million colonists
in the 13 colonies at this time that a
600 000 to 900 000
pamphlets
of this argument went out think about
how would you get that coverage today if
you type into
google something like proofs of the
constitution the rofs of the
constitution
and go to images it
looks like a book with very wide margins
yeah so it's printed on the right hand
side right and then there's all the
celebrations think about here are these
uh there are these 55 guys
that
have six months to do all the baiting
and all the organizing all the designing
and then writing the damn thing so this
is pretty quick they did a pretty good
job
they didn't agree at the end but one of
the most important things about the
process is it didn't require everybody
to be in agreement what they agreed on
was that they were going to get the
constitution done and so any curious
person i would think would
at some point would say well wait a
minute 55 people how could they draft
this thing right there you see it right
there the answer is that every night the
annotated stuff
was typeset remember it was in
philadelphia which is the city of
printers those types said overnight it
was printed before breakfast
and when they came into their meeting
everybody had a fresh copy that looked
like
the thing there but without any
handwriting on it and they debated from
that they each had their own copy they
wrote their own notes
and then towards the end of the day they
would assemble what was going to happen
on the next draft isn't that great
you may know of a place called the san
francisco exploratorium crazy
yeah done by a friend of mine frank
oppenheimer started trying to get
children but also college students to
learn something real about science
because
when you're in an educational
institution
the tendency the easy way out
is to try and teach
what the field already knows rather than
how the field came to know it and think
that especially the undergraduate
professors they might not be so really
scientific as you might hope
so
frank started putting together a bunch
of exhibits
at the university of colorado
to teach one thing and one thing only
which is the world is not as it seems
this is one of them some years later
when he went to california
they gave him a lot of money for
what they thought was going to be a
science museum
which again
almost never has any science in it
if you go into a science museum you'll
find jet planes and every other kind of
thing but basically you find technology
you never see an exhibit about newton's
principia about the process of science
what it is
you never see anything what you see is
how science might have affected
engineering i've served on some museum
advisory boards and
one of the key phrases museums have is
called release time release time is the
maximum time anybody can be allowed
to look at a particular exhibit right
because you've got all these other
people so it's usually about two minutes
how much are you going to learn about
something you don't know about in two
minutes because a museum can't be
anything else but a commercial and real
question is what is a commercial for so
number one thing before you even get
into what science is is you have to make
the epistemological step of
getting a hit
a deep emotional hit that you'll never
forget that the world is not as it seems
and so frank's idea was well we can
handle 2 000 kids at a time because they
had this huge thing that used to be a
world's fair pavilion
in san francisco
and
panel two two thousand kids at a time
and we can put set up 500 exhibits
there and by the way we'll we'll
have the shop and the thing that
manufacturing of these of the exhibits
is one of the exhibits
so the people so the new people are
working on the new exhibits this is part
of the museum so the kids can see
that but the basic idea is randomly
bouncing kids around on this stuff
everything hands on
what's the chance that a one of these
two thousand kids will find the exhibit
that hits them between the eyes in a way
they'll never forget
funders of this complained bitterly when
they found out what he did we wanted we
thought this was going to be a sign you
know they thought of it as something
like a rock and roll
mosh pit bunch kids running around
screaming where's this where's the
you know where the jet engines
frank said well you can't explain a jet
engine
somebody who thinks the world is the way
it seems you can think about this the
next time you fly on a plane and look
out the window at the engine there but
in several critical parts of that engine
the temperatures are higher than the
melting points of any of the metals
any of the materials
higher
right and those things will go for about
9 000 hours of before you need
maintenance
so they're like almost perfect
but you can't really explain that to
people
you know you have to you have to get
people out of this simple-minded fast
way of dealing with the world and give
them this other mode or the other thing
i was going to mention is that you know
the jews invented page numbers before
the occidentals did so one of the first
places for page numbers
occurred in the annotated talmud
in the
but in
western culture page numbers seem to be
invented about 60 or 70 years after the
printing press the way the books were
assembled was that at the bottom of each
page would be the a word or two on this
was going to be on the next page
so no page numbers and the reason was is
that each edition in europe of the same
work was typeset differently
in a different town right so when page
numbers were invented and they look like
they're invented by eldest menus and
erasmus
they were apparently invented to allow
stronger argument in the same book which
is what the jews actually used for doing
hyperlinking in the talmud because
writing leads to stronger argument than
you can ever have
in oral culture nobody can remember
people start arguing about what they
said
right
right
but you said no no you know you
know let's write it all down we can go
check it let's not argue about what was
said we've got this thing called writing
and once we do that
that means we can make an argument out
of a much larger body
of evidence
than you can ever do in an oral society
it starts killing off story because
stories don't refer back a key book for
people who are wary of mcluhan to
understand this is one or one of the key
books is is by elizabeth eisenstein
it's a very respected it's a mighty tome
it's a two volume tome called the
printing press as an agent of change
and this is kind of the way to think
about it as a kind of catalyst
because it happened the printing press
did not
make the renaissance happen the
renaissance was already starting to
happen but it was a huge accelerant for
what had already started started
happening and what uh kenneth clark
called big thaw
you had mentioned that the framers of
the constitution sort of got tough and
started thinking in a more scientific
way science is the thing that if you get
tough all of a sudden you realize almost
nothing that you think is going on is
going on so my question is how do you
how do you get tough what are the things
that you can do in your mind that help
make you better a better thinker
the easiest thing is to help children
see it before they are completely
fastened on the common sense world
that's why almost all the main work i
did in education was done in elementary
school there's a commitment that
children make to
what you might call normalcy that is
correlated with
their settling down much of their
language apparatus around age seven age
seven was the age of majority in the
middle ages so if you were a child who
was age seven or older and you were
caught pickpocketing you were hung
as an adult there wasn't a concept of
something between infancy and adulthood
neil postman wrote a book on that he
said one of the things that created the
concept of childhood was the printing
press
suddenly there was something to do
before you could become an adult
which is learn how to read start
learning more than what you're picking
up in a village society one way to look
at all of this stuff is a lot of
what we think of as being progressive
is
being able to co-op our language
apparatus
to build other things on top of it with
because we don't get to change our
genetics
yet
and i'll be long gone and it's possible
to do it right now probably some people
are illegally fooling around with it
because of the crispr if you give a cave
person a spear that has a factor of a
million power
over the spear
and you don't
fix something in their brain by training
by acculturation or something like that
you've
created something that is much worse
than a million bad cave people
with spears right
so so that's where we are we've
and
one of the simplest things that isn't
taught to children
is scaling our brains can hardly handle
it so if i if i show you one picture
then another picture in the other
picture a half second apart
you'll see the pictures individually but
if i just go up
right so that's two a second if i just
go up by a factor of ten all of a sudden
you can't see the individual pictures
your brain fuses them into a movie
that's just a factor of 10. so the the
thing that that is what the arpa
community in the 60s and then park
joined it
park was part of the arpa community was
just funded by xerox
but it was
populated with people who got their phds
in the arpa community
so the the vision of the arpa community
articulated by the guy who set it up in
1962 was the destiny of computers
are to become interactive intellectual
amplifiers for all humanity pervasively
networked worldwide and
so whenever anybody
asked him what he was funding he would
just say that and when they said well
how are you going to do that he says
well i don't know but
i'm funding
the most capable smartest widest
thinking people i know
and if 30 of them come through
i'll be happy and
they said well but what about the 70
failure he said well
he said we're
we're not playing golf we're playing
baseball baseball if you hit 300 you're
doing well
and the 70 you don't get a hit it's not
called failure it's called overhead
because you're trying to do something
very very difficult
failure is the failure to catch a fly
ball
you're supposed to do that 98 or 99
percent of the time that's just
technique
but technique doesn't allow you to you
know even ted williams who developed
modern
batting technique only hit over 400 once
in his career
but look like i said it doesn't matter
because if you look at if you look at
the scope of what we're funding if we
get 30 40 success we're going to change
the world that is exactly what happened
because one of the things he called for
the very next year in 1963 was an
intergalactic network
and they said why intergalactic and he
said well engineers always give you the
minimum
i want to cover the entire earth so i'm
asking for an intergalactic one and
that's going to force them not to try
and do it the way ma bell did
at
that it was switching whatever and he
was a psychologist he wasn't a big
technologist but he understood he was
what i call an educated man
he understood what it was that they were
actually working on
and they didn't worry about what you
could do with a computer or not
back then that's the biggest difference
what they worried about was what are the
issues
what are the fundamental issues and
we'll just invent every piece of
technology we need that's like at xerox
park we built every
uh bit of every
piece of hardware and every software we
we didn't buy anything from vendors
we built it
we built the computers we we had a
we had a little production shop
we built two or three
of these first personal computers that
were like macintoshes but better
a week we built 2 000 of them
by hand when it was hard to do because
you have to have a bunch of them we
invented the ethernet
to connect the stuff together we
invented the uh the
internet in order to connect the
ethernets together the artboard
community was about hey we're we're in
deep trouble and we're getting in deeper
trouble we need to get more enlightened
and we need to do what engelbart
doug engelbart called
we need to not just augment human beings
human intellect but we have to augment
the collective iq of groups
because most important things are done
by groups of people and so we have to
think about what does it mean
to have a group that's smarter than any
member rather than a group that is less
than the stupidest member
if you were starting your career today
how would you actually tackle that
problem what would you do i'd probably
stay in biology no you have to realize
that one of the one of the reasons we
were successful
was
you know we didn't know what we were
doing but we know what we wanted to do
and that was one
just one step better than the rest of
the computing industry which didn't just
didn't know what it was doing
it was just eeling its way along trying
to figure out what to sell to people who
were doing data processing with punch
cards
and ibm became the an enorm it already
was an enormous company it took over
that
entire world and dominated but the thing
is it wasn't
uh
nobody thought personal computers were a
good idea
ibm never did a good network and for
partly for the same reason that
uh
you know i could make a ham radio when i
was 12
just out of
junk
i got in surplus stores in new york city
because everything was discrete
components and
it was you know it was annoying
because you had high voltages and you
know building a computer back then was
really annoying
because
they were had to be physically large
they had k they had no every
so the the first guys first people who
built
computers in the late 40s and early 50s
man
they were horses
absolute horses
but they wanted it the other thing we
benefited from tremendously was the cold
war
like the radar effort and
the sage air defense effort and
the arpa and park efforts
and all of these were funded just
because the general public was afraid of
the russians
in fact the the thing that killed
that research was a combination of the
successful moonshot the public was not
at all interested in the idea of
interplanetary travel
they were not even interested in the
second moonshot
nobody watched apollo 13 until they had
the problem
was off the news
this is just a couple of years later
because from the public standpoint they
didn't give a
about
romance or destiny or any of that stuff
they were worried about the russians and
we showed we could do better missiles
than the russians and another one that
brenner identified is
a visual way of dealing with things
the fact that for example they showed
something like 10 000 slides
at a second or two a piece
to poor students at a university and six
months later
and and some of them with parts of them
occluded six months later those students
could identify with ninety percent
accuracy whether they'd ever seen
one of those slides before if you put
a hundred words up on the wall and one
of them is the word elephant and you put
the pictures of what those hundred words
represent up on the wall in the same
location
any human being can find the elephant
four times faster
so one of the strengths of writing is
that it doesn't look like images and one
of the strengths of printed writing
is that
it helps decouple
verbal
processing
from reading
a lot of people never learn to read
rapidly because they sub-vocalize
and you can you can tell
you
like if you have a kid
and they're learning to read you put
your finger on your throat you can so
somewhere in the maybe the eighth or
seventh century bc but starting in
the script called linear b which goes
back earlier they started writing down
words as they sounded that was the first
time anybody was even aware that they
were making speech sounds
because just like when we read something
when we know how to read we don't see
the letters the word hops into our mind
we're aware that there are letters there
but we
we're not looking at the letters
and when people speak fluently they're
not aware that they're saying phonemes
they're saying words words of the unit
of units of meaning
so it took a long time for people to
even see something that should be
obvious
to anybody that isn't a human being
what we know from history is incredibly
important because we don't have very
many experiments
on whole cultures
starting from scratch
what we're trying to do is to make
something that was
a decent graphical user interface for
human beings and that required
invention at every level the user
interface
user interface is primarily an active
theatrical design so a book to look at
it was written in 1945
by one of the top mathematicians in the
world has a long title
called the psychology of invention in
the mathematical field by jack adamard
he wrote his friends the top 100
mathematicians in the entire world and
got each one of them
to fill out a questionnaire
and write a little thing
about how they did their thing maybe
five percent maybe seven percent used
mathematical symbols you know like the
cliched drawing on the board think
mathematical symbols in the process of
creation all the rest used primarily
visual means
sketches really see the thing is about
vision
same with the ear you can only see a few
at a time in detail but you can be aware
of 100 things at once
so one of the things we're really bad
about is our because of our eyes we
can't get the visual point of view we
want our eyes have a visual point of
view of like 160 degrees
but what i've got here is about 25
and on a cell phone it's pathetic
so this is completely wrong 100 wrong
wrong in a really big way if you look at
the first description that englebart
ever wrote of what he wanted
it was a display that was three feet on
a side
built into a desk
because what is it that you design on if
anybody's ever looked at a drafting
table which they may not have
for a long time you need room to design
because there's always that you
do wrong this is why
you know
experienced programmers have big
multiple screens they're working on
something where the result is going to
be fit on one screen
but you have to have all this other
stuff it's like when you make an arch
it's not just piling up the bricks you
have to put this whole scaffolding up
you have to hold everything together
until you get the keystone in place and
virtually all of the productivity tools
that i've seen i'll just say all because
i haven't seen all of them but the ones
i have seen they just completely don't
understand this at all they're all about
this idea which most programmers have
that's wrong is that you're going to
write the program the right way nothing
going to be wrong
the whole idea is to make a mess
and if you look at the way disney
artists
do things the whole thing is messing
this is something anybody in the arts
knows completely about and hardly
anybody in computing knows anything
about but in fact it's a key factor in
building a good
interactive development environment when
i write an essay i always have sort of
like a scratch pad on the bottom where
i'm constantly sort of massaging the
sentences and sometimes they're not even
sentences and then sometimes they
suddenly flower into a paragraph i'm
like oh i guess i guess this is actually
part of the final product and then you
bring it up or like in programming as
you're using a rebel the ideation
for these
world-class mathematicians uh was mostly
visual and for 20 of them
including einstein
einstein said
i have sensations
of a tactile and muscular kind by the
way feynman feynman was too young
for this he missed out but he he
literally wrestled with problems
he would occasionally be found under his
desk rolling around
holding on to himself
einstein would have sensations along his
forearms and his
stomach muscles
when he was thinking it's a little known
fact that the very year the first mouse
was invented
by engelbart in english in 64
the first great tablet was invented
a tablet
that you would not feel bad about using
today
not not with a screen
but something was
down here and had a stylus and they had
the best
gesture recognizer that's ever been done
by around 66
and then they made a system that in
every way is an interesting parallel to
engelbart system because it also had
hyperlinking but this system was
completely graphical
it was called grail graphic graphical
interaction
language
and
these guys did not have the
scope of use in mind that engelbart had
they were trying to improve programming
but they really went uh the rand people
this is a rand corporation and
they had a level of aesthetics that
nobody else in
in the arpa community did they just
kicked the out of stuff
and
so i had already used the engelbart
system
and really liked it got
had many many important features and i
went down to rand in 68 you tried grail
out the first
seconds of it
was i re i had one of these hits
that
oh this is not even remotely like using
a mouse
and it's
not like using a stylus to use a
mouse-oriented interface
because the whole thing was this the
thing did not have it even have a
keyboard
that is how good the
gesture recognition was but it also
recognized symbols and other things that
you
so you built systems on it as fast as
you could
draw and you could pop on a box and it
would take you down to another hyper
level i felt
intimate on this system
there was no glass
and i instantly realized
that using the mouse on engelbart's
system felt like i was doing an
experiment in radioactive chemistry if
you've ever seen you know those waldos
where you have distance between you and
the actual experiment running you have a
manipulator that you're holding on to
and there's a wall maybe a television
set on the other side yeah there's a
little dangerous stuff and you're
looking at the television set and you're
doing this
i realize oh that's what engelbart
system feels like but
the grail system felt like oh i'm just
embracing i'm right on it so i spent
quite a bit of time trying to understand
why
what was the feeling of intimacy from
and it turned out it was dragging it was
not pointing and clicking but dragging
and so we used that at park and
it's dragging has had a
rocky road in the commercial systems
they tended to leave it out because you
have to do some serious programming to
do dragging on 80s
computer but in fact at apple i even
have a patent somewhere
we did a mouse
that was intimate and the way we made it
intimate is that like when we were
dragging a file folder the inertia on
that file folder was proportional to how
many files are in the folder we could
feel the way we did that by putting
differential
we made a mouse that had differential
breaks in it you know so you could run
the thing over a line and you feel a
little bump
so it introduced tactility into the
thing we made a mouse actually they had
motors in it
with a lot of these things you're
getting you're recreating things you get
for free in the real world like if i
pick up this microphone it has a it has
a weight to it that's corresponding to
its mass yeah sometimes that's the the
big deal about computing
is when do you need to go when do you
need to stay with human genetics
and when do you try to move beyond in
education the number one question for
any educator is
when should it be easy and when should
it be hard
and there's a lot of collaboration the
grad students were the messengers
and they also realized the
most big idea is you just can't do
everything the first shot
so one of the schemes for that was lick
lighter funded i guess 17 places in
total
and just let you know whoever whatever
they
most
felt instinctive about
he didn't care
and there's a lot of collaboration the
grad students were the messengers
all the grad students had huge travel
budgets also we were out in the
boondocks in salt lake city
and dave wanted us
he said don't wait until anybody writes
a paper
just keep trying keep traveling so the
first shot was well let's just
let's just make a network to basically
tie the arpa projects together
to solve that problem and we'll solve it
using packing uh packet switching which
was
independently invented in in an arpa
project
in a dod project at rand and in in
england and there was some math
that indicated how you might
avoid some of the problems with packet
switching i was in on most of those
meetings and
they went from
not having a good way to do it to having
a good way to do it in a few months
and then building the hardware to do
that which
that hardware is are called routers
today
so routers had to be invented to do this
and that tied together the arpanet
probably tied together eventually about
100 places
and overlap with this was the idea as
well we have to have internet working
even though
theoretically you could have run it from
a central
place
as a star network
there weren't that many machines
the decision right from the beginning is
screw it no no central control this
thing has to
have no
privilege to computers
it's just a bunch of computers and
the software on these computers
particularly the standard software that
we'll put on
these things that has to be enough
to make sure that packets get to where
we want them to go eventually
you don't have to make it the first time
we want to get them there eventually and
we want the thing not to clog up
so it can't crash and
so a lot of things were learned on
the arpanet and of course to anybody
who's had biological training
the
fun thing about biology is
the trade-offs on how control is done
and there are trade-offs so some things
have something like central control
but even that is tends to be distributed
if you think about it in computer terms
even how you get
from dna to messenger rna to the
ribosomes and making prot you know it's
it's distributed if one of them doesn't
work it doesn't matter because it's all
redundant
thousands of different ways and there's
error correction everywhere
what's interesting in biology is not the
components
so it's very much like computing you can
make a computer out of anything what's
interesting is is the organization and
you know i was 13 when the dna structure
was discovered from 81 now
that
started turning up more and more
interesting things
that could be explained completely in
chemical terms these molecules were
critical
because in theory biology shouldn't work
very well
because you don't have
a lot of energy reason most chemistry is
done over a bunsen burner is
heating things up
really helps
molecular motion and that helps the
molecules find each other
and at blood temperature
things are not moving nearly as fast
and so one of the one of the problems in
the 100 years ago was everything's
running too slowly
to explain what we're seeing
but then people discovered catalysts
but not for not for organic reactions
but for inorganic reactions like
platinum is a catalyst pretty much
anything in engineering
to try and do a really big scalable
artifact
is the opposite of trivial
so this is one of these things where
the
the idea that you could make an internet
is a hundred percent just from biology
being so much more complex
and working so well
you know for decades
and why is the decentralization of
biological systems and of the internet
so important for scalability first the
thing is if you don't decentralize
you have one part
whose knowledge has to
not just say what to do
that's not hard
right top down is easy
if the dictator's always right
but if the dictator doesn't get any
feedback
and the
thing to try and figure out is
how much feedback can a dictator take
every day you can probably listen to 20
yes men a day
and uh suppose he's got a country that
has uh you know 50 million people in it
what do you think of something um like
video games or a simulation or
potentially virtual reality as a way to
help us understand these systems even
better and see the interactions
so when sim city got done
i went up to maxis there
and complained to them i said look you
i know you guys are getting these
educational awards but you're getting
educational awards from uneducated
people
just ignore those
and think about
what it is that you've got here
and i said this thing is really
impressive
but it is anti-educational the way
you've got it right now for example
the
rules that drive it
are opaque 100 opaque
the kids can't see what the rules are
and they can't uh change the rules or
put in rules of their own
so what you've what you've done here is
a a thing that's a consumable
and it can't teach
enough
it's pro like symbolism and sort of
saying like
this
you know we create police we
forces to solve crime therefore they
must solve crime right
well or no the way to think about it is
it's basically just reversion
from something that's really complicated
into a too simple story
and these were being justified by
stories and they were being opposed with
stories
rather than dealing with any systemic
aspects
which nobody wanted to touch
and you take the the capabilities and
you reframe the entire problem do you
think that they could be reshaped into
helping people understand or are they
fundamentally pushing us towards
entertainment
you know well we took no i i think
having children make games where they
have to understand something fundamental
to make the games and not just copy the
code to do it
and i'll close with one one last more
specific question so you worked with
with bob taylor who's one of my heroes
what what are some of the tactics
specific tactics that you learned from
him about formulating an inspiring
research agenda
so
taylor was a
a character and a half
the sly fox have you ever seen a picture
of him with his pipe wreath and pipe yes
yeah he looks like like the cover of
rolling stones he's a son of a preacher
man in texas got a master's in
psychology also in experimental
psychology
and but he wound up
he was the original funder of engelbart
when bob was at nasa in the early 60s
and bob greatly admired licklider who
was a fellow psychologist and one of the
famous meetings that he ran there
towards the end of it uh he looked at
his watch and
said and there's a four-star general
talking and he looked at us watching
said general you have three minutes to
make your point if you have one
wow
that's amazing so it's not just brains
but also personality
so lick lighter
just
snatched him
out of the pentagon to be his successor
because look either had his ideas nobody
should
be inside the beltway for more than two
years because you go anybody reasonable
go crazy
you can't have an idea there
so you set up this scheme that
you you spend two years
helping our ipto prosper
your last year you you train your
replacement and you just go back to the
community and your replacement runs for
two years and trains as a replacement so
ivan became head of the whole thing at
age 26 running everybody he was the
reason
then engelbart gave his demo he put up
about 900 000 of today's money to pay
for that demo
just the demo told engelbart he said
look don't leave out anything
don't stand on a thing just make sure it
were you know an hour and a half
solid most computers couldn't stay up
for an hour and a half
and just he said spend what you need but
just make sure that do it and they did
everything the only video projectors you
could get back in those days were the
size of volkswagen buses you could crawl
inside of them they were like
cathode ray tubes but you could open the
panel on them and crawl inside and clean
them the gunk that they had so they're
much brighter than any of the video
projectors you've seen today they cost
like 500 000 bucks a piece and bill
english got not one from nasa but he got
one to have a spare
so he had a million dollars of projector
up in the balcony of this huge
auditorium was like three thousand
people and engelbart when he came up
none of the recreations of engelbart's
demo have been even close to what the
real thing i was there for the real one
and engelbart's face was like 60 feet
wide this thing was like a cinemascope
projector of live high resolution video
it was just fantastic
the management of perimeter somebody
asked taylor well what is your job here
you're not even a scientist
not a computer guy
he says i've got
25 of the absolute best people in the
world here
most of them are lone wolves and my job
is when it's a good idea for them to
cooperate they will my job is to set
things up so that when they realize they
have to cooperate in order to get this
big thing they're doing
they can't just do it by themselves
we were a floor culture at park
so we not only had the bean bags instead
of chairs
bag why bean bags well you can't leap to
your feet to denounce somebody from a
bean bag
he sort of um socially engineered it so
that people can't be unreasonable
or a certain type of unreasonable i
should say some of
another thing he invented was what he
called the type 1 and the type 2
argument when a type 1 argument was
verging towards the personal
and towards this not making progress
thing he would say type two argument and
everybody would groan and a type two
argument is
each of the arguers has to make the
other person's argument right through
the steel man instead of straw man
until
yeah until they agree
that they're making their argument right
yes that is the argument i'm making and
then the other person and this takes you
ever
yeah
but but it means that you actually
understand where the other person's
coming from well why are you trying to
tear it down
one way to think about it is actually it
took all the human drama out of it
because in the end
almost everything that we did at park
in the end we didn't vote
in the end uh we would
usually de-pick somebody to make the
decision
how would you pick who should make the
decision often if we pick somebody like
butler depending on if it was a system
thing
you know butler understood the process
of the thing because he wasn't perfect
he was just
arpa was designed so nobody was the
smartest person in the room but we kind
of thought he was and he was brilliant
for a lot of these things we would ask
him what his opinion was after all of
the dusted clear and very often would go
along with it if you have a group you're
not going to get what you want period
but you can go farther as a group than
you can alone you can get something
well wonderful there are so many more
rabbit holes that i would have liked to
go down but i think we're at our time
now so thank you so much alan for coming
on the show this was really fun
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)