Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general's warning. — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
If the pros at Sun had had a chance to fix Java, the world would be a much more pleasant place. This… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
Having an intelligent secretary does not get rid of the need to read, write, and draw, etc. In a well functioning world,… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
Computer science inverts the normal. In normal science, you're given a world, and your job is to find out the rules. In… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world. — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
In the commercial world, you have this problem that the amount of research you can do in a company is based on… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
All the companies I've worked for have this deep problem of devolving to something like the hunting and gathering cultures of 100,000… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
In our society we have hard nerds and soft nerds. The hard nerds are the ones who used to have the slide rules at… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
As far as Apple goes, it was a different company every few years from the time I joined in 1984. — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
When I first prepared this particular talk... I realized that my usual approach is usually critical. That is, a lot of the things that… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal - a sort of 'voting' situation. But once the threshold… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
Every technology really needs to be shipped with a special manual - not how to use it but why, when and for what. — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
Java and C++ make you think that the new ideas are like the old ones. Java is the most distressing thing to hit computing… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
It's hard to change information in books, but if we have everything online, then a somewhat untrustworthy group of people controlling the thing -… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure. — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
I think the trick with knowledge is to “acquire it, and forget all except the perfume” - because it is noisy and sometimes drowns… — Alan Kay Copy Share Image
