Alan Kay, 2015: Power of Simplicity

One of my all time favorite talks of AKay's, given in 2015.
Not my own video, though it hasn't been on KZbin before. Original location here: global.sap.com/campaign/na/usa...

[@itsallgood3210]

Like Carl Sagan and a small handful of others, the rare person that can make you feel smarter by just listening to him

[@alchemist_one]

"You get simplicity by finding a slightly more sophisticated building block to build your theories out of."

[@modestviking6441]

Thank you a lot for sharing this!!! For people being far away from people like Alan and surrounded by very different kind of people these interviews and thoughts of Alan Kay is like a fresh air and really enriching. Thank you very much. Having possibility to listen people like this really makes a difference and .I am really grateful to you for your efforts to make it available.

[@5up5up]

I love this man, what a true genius

[@paulschilling2996]

I feel smarter just by listening to Alan Kay.

[@bmurph24]

Thanks for uploading this man! Always love Alan Kay talks!

[@SebastianSastre]

Thanks for sharing! Alan Kay brings lots of great insights about innovation and invention, and its exponentially difference in value creation of wealth and social impact

[@GertCuykens]

Nice talk :) I can't explain why but I find it funny it is sponsored by sap :P

[@MartinClausen]

Well perhaps its funny because SAP is the antithesis of simplicity?

[@paulschilling2996]

Gert Cuykens exactly. SAP software is horrid, at least from a user experience perspective.

[@Grazfather]

That camera man had his work cut out for him.

[@dlwatib]

He did quite well. He followed Alan unobtrusively without giving the viewer motion sickness.

[@whitfield12]

Please tell me this was in 2015, and he pulled out a flip phone. Love him even more now.

[@AmeerFazal]

Thanks for the upload! This guy is a genius!

[@mxBug]

36:42 (context) 37:00 "Change that law; you've got every other law changed." this is why I can never hate Kay.

[@ervinllojku2914]

What a great talk!

[@PMNortje]

Great reference from Haroon Meer.. Insightful Talk from Alan.

[@SoeaOu]

what a great talk

[@CristianMagherusanStanciu]

Great talk, just that at the end it seems to be truncated, is there a full/longer version available anywhere?

[@Henripostant]

from 32'03 to 32'48 : about the famous 10 years plan of software companies

[@Henripostant]

I'm shocked! I just found out Alan Kay is not on Twitter 😱😱😱

[@Henripostant]

Shut up !

[@george78779]

Steve Jobs loved Alan.....

[@technicalmachine1671]

Alan Kay uses a flip phone in 2015.

[@ronsniskyjr5222]

It just looks like a flip phone on the pink plane.

[@Henripostant]

from 29'06 to 31'22 : about Xerox Park

[@Jim87541]

Lot of commentaries between this and Geoffrey West's work on Growth, i.e. www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_west_the_surprising_math_of_cities_and_corporations

[@elibonielloify]

INTERESSAnte

[@gnuemacs1166]

When was this published ?

[@zackmacomber]

He took about 50 minutes to basically say challenge the status quo and possibly see if there's a better way

[@Silly.Old.Sisyphus]

Yes; to have been able, in just 50 minutes, to make a convincing and justified case for questioning 5000 years of entrenched nonsense, is a remarkable accomplishment, even if it went right over entrenched Zack's head

[@zackmacomber]

Why do you have to insult me by insinuating this went "right over entrenched Zack's head"? Do you agree with my summary of what he said or not? Why is it "a remarkable accomplishment" to talk about something for 50 minutes that could have been stated in far less time?

[@itsallgood3210]

I think Kay's achievements speak for themselves, regardless if he took 50 minutes to say something. Also, you could think of that challenging the status quo as the theme, which every speech has...If they did not they would be rambling and incoherent..and he stuck to that quite well

[@mxBug]

i don't agree with your summary, Zack. this was targeted to VPs and CIOs who needed actionable plans for innovation rather than just the word "innovate", because as he said, it's impossible for people who can't see past their noses to even start thinking about how to innovate. of course, i personally think his words were wasted on capitalist minds...

[@Evan490BC]

E = m*c^2. That sounds trivial, why didn't I think of it myself...?!

[@BryonLape]

But Uncle Bob says to incrementally discover the architecture.

[@dlwatib]

Mistitled. Should be titled The Power of Rethinking from First Principles. Elon Musk preaches the same message.

[@superdoubt]

I don't want to suggest that Xerox parc didn't innovate, but the inventions conceived there at the time were the low hanging fruit, and it's easy to suggest that something is missing, but Alan does not say what it is...

[@ddubs123]

It seems obvious and low hanging fruit to us now. But I'm not sure if it was at the time. Though I wasn't around in the 70's to know for sure.

[@technicalmachine1671]

Consider that you see it as "low hanging fruit" because you have long been surrounded by the results of their inventions.

[@itsallgood3210]

If inventing the things he mentions were low hanging fruit(Not just inventing but making fully functional prototypes, which Gates and Jobs both stole to create macintosh and windows), who at the time was mining high hanging fruit, and what was the high hanging ftuit? I cannot imagine anything in tech higher hanging than GUI interfaces and the control command languages they were coming up with..would love to know who was mining "high hanging fruit" at the same time(70s), and what fruit that was

[@darrenringer9811]

14:40 flat earth confirmed

[@BryonLape]

Took a long time to say not a whole lot.

[@teckyify]

Sorry but too little substance in this talk and it's all over the place. Rich hickey's "Simplicity matters" is like a million times better and it's half the length.