All Alan Kay Quotes
- The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution hasn't started yet. Ahead
- If you're not failing 90% of the time, then you're probably not working on sufficiently challenging problems. Challenges
- Understanding- -like civilization, happiness, music, science and a host of other great endeavors--is not a state of being, but a manner of traveling. This great… Civilization
- Every technology really needs to be shipped with a special manual - not how to use it but why, when and for what. Every Technology
- Television should be the last mass communication medium to be naively designed and put into the world without a surgeon-general's warning. Communication
- Humans are communications junkies. We just can't get enough. Communication
- To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy. Aim
- Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world. Any
- In success there's a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing. Inspirational
- People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware. Hardware
- Perspective is worth 80 IQ points. Inspirational
- Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal - a sort of 'voting' situation. But once the threshold is… Becomes
- The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited. Act
- Most software today is very much like an Egyptian pyramid with millions of bricks piled on top of each other, with no structural integrity, but… Bricks
- Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time… Anybody
- It's easier to invent the future than to predict it. Easier
- By the time I got to school, I had already read a couple hundred books. I knew in the first grade that they were lying… Already Read
- The tree of research must be fed from time to time with the blood of bean-counters, for it is its natural manure. Bean
- Science requires a society because even people who are trying to be good thinkers love their own thoughts and theories - much of the debugging… Debugging
- There is the desire of a consumer society to have no learning curves. This tends to result in very dumbed-down products that are easy to… Consumer
- Having an intelligent secretary does not get rid of the need to read, write, and draw, etc. In a well functioning world, tools and agents… Agents
- As far as Apple goes, it was a different company every few years from the time I joined in 1984. Apple
- The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Best
- Context is worth 80 IQ points. Context
- It (the computer) is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not… Act