Pioneers: Alan Kay

Summary

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

00:00

🎙️ 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。

05:02

🌐 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。

10:04

📚 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。

15:06

🖋️ 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。

20:06

📈 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。

25:08

🌟 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。

30:10

🛠️ 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。

35:10

🎨 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。

40:11

🤖 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。

Keywords

💡オブジェクト指向プログラミング

オブジェクト指向プログラミングは、ソフトウェア開発においてオブジェクトを中心としたプログラミング方法です。この方法では、データと手続きを結びつけたオブジェクトを作成し、それらの相互作用を通じてソフトウェアを構築します。ビデオでは、アラン・K・ベストがオブジェクト指向プログラミングの先駆的な仕事について語っています。

💡グラフィカルユーザーインターフェース

グラフィカルユーザーインターフェース（GUI）は、コンピュータやデジタルデバイスを操作するためのグラフィカル表現のインターフェースです。ユーザーは、アイコンやボタンなどの視覚的に認識できる要素を操作して、コマンドを入力します。GUIは、文字ベースのコマンドラインインターフェースと比べて、直感的で使いやすいとされています。

💡ダイナブック

ダイナブックは、アラン・K・ベストが提唱したコンピュータベースの教育システムの概念です。このシステムは、学習者にとって適切なペースで教材を提供し、インタラクティブな学習体験を促進することを目的としています。

💡メディア

メディアは、情報やコンテンツを伝達するための手段やプラットフォームを指します。テレビ、ラジオ、新聞、インターネットなどがメディアに該当します。ビデオでは、各種メディアが民主主義にどのように影響を与えているかについて議論されています。

💡民主主義

民主主義は、国政が国民によって直接または間接的に決定される政治システムです。民主主義の核心的な価値は、平等な権利、選択の自由、そして国民による政府の統治です。ビデオでは、メディアの進化が民主主義にどのように影響を与えているかが分析されています。

💡科学

科学は、自然現象や社会現象を理解するために、観察、実験、理論の構築を用いた知の追求の活動です。科学は客観的で論理的な手法を用いて、普遍的な法則性を探求します。ビデオでは、科学が民主主義と同様に17世紀に始まり、物語形式を放棄することで進歩を遂げてきたと述べています。

💡文明

文明は、人類が社会、文化、技術を通じて進化させた状態を指します。文明の発展は、知識の蓄積、社会制度の確立、そして人間の生活水準の向上に反映されます。ビデオでは、文明が人間の脳の誤解や不足を補完する仕組みを発明し、改善しようとする試みとして描かれています。

💡協力

協力は、個体が互いに助け合い、共同の目標を達成するために働く行為です。文明の発展において、協力は社会的な生き物としての人類の進化と、競争から協力的な関係へのシフトに関連しています。

💡書物

書物は、知識や情報を記述した媒体のことで、書籍、雑誌、新聞、文献などがあります。書物は、情報を保存し、後世に伝える重要な手段であり、教育や知識の普及に不可欠です。ビデオでは、書物が民主主義や科学の発展にどのように寄与したかが議論されています。

💡新闻

新闻は、最新の情報や出来事を報道するメディアのことで、新聞、テレビ、オンラインニュースなどがあります。新闻は、社会に重要な情報を提供し、大衆の注意を引く役割を果たします。ただし、ビデオでは新闻が既存の知識や理解に基づく情報のみを提供し、新しい知識や理解を深めることには不足していると指摘されています。

💡教育

教育は、知識やスキルを習得し、個人の能力や理解を向上させるプロセスです。教育は、公共教育システムやプライベート教育、自己学習など、様々な形態で行われます。ビデオでは、教育が民主主義や科学の進歩にどのように関与し、どのようにその価値を高めるかが議論されています。

💡文化

文化は、一つの社会や集団が共有する信仰、価値観、習慣、芸術、言語などを指します。文化は、人間の行動や思考に深く影響を与え、進歩や発展を促進する役割を持っています。ビデオでは、文化が人類の進化や進歩にどのように関与しているかが議論されています。

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