Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) is an American computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design. He is the president of the Viewpoints Research Institute. Until [1] recently, he was a Senior Fellow at HP Labs, an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University, an Adjunct Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Image File history File links Size of this preview: 469 × 599 pixel Image in higher resolution (484 × 618 pixel, file size: 23 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Author - Viewpoints Research Institute Source - Bonnie Macbird URL - http://www. ... May 17 is the 137th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (138th in leap years). ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... Bold text // Headline text Link title This article is about the computer research center. ... This article is about a corporate game company. ... The University of California, Los Angeles, generally known as UCLA, is a public university whose main campus is located in the affluent Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. ... The Clocktower Kyoto University (Japanese: 京都大学, Kyōto Daigaku; abbreviated to 京大, Kyōdai) in Kyoto, Japan, is the second oldest university and one of the leading research universities in the country. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... HP Labs (or HP Laboratories) is the research arm of HP. HP Labs function is to deliver breakthrough technologies and to create business opportunities that go beyond HPs current strategies. ... The University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder, UCB officially[2]; Colorado, CU colloquially) is the flagship university of the University of Colorado system. ... The University of Utah (also The U or the U of U or the UU) is a public university in Salt Lake City, Utah. ... Dynabook prototype The Dynabook was a conceptual system proposed by Xerox PARC in the late-1960s and early-1970s. ... Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses objects to design applications and computer programs. ... For other uses, see Small Talk (disambiguation). ... “PUI” redirects here. ... An example of a graphical user interface in Windows XP, with the My Music window displayed In computing, a window is a visual area, usually rectangular in shape, containing some kind of user interface, displaying the output of and allowing input for one of a number of simultaneously running computer... May 17 is the 137th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (138th in leap years). ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Computer science (informally: CS or compsci) is, in its most general sense, the study of computation and information processing, both in hardware and in software. ... Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses objects to design applications and computer programs. ... An example of a graphical user interface in Windows XP, with the My Music window displayed In computing, a window is a visual area, usually rectangular in shape, containing some kind of user interface, displaying the output of and allowing input for one of a number of simultaneously running computer... “PUI” redirects here. ... HP Labs (or HP Laboratories) is the research arm of HP. HP Labs function is to deliver breakthrough technologies and to create business opportunities that go beyond HPs current strategies. ... The University of California, Los Angeles, generally known as UCLA, is a public university whose main campus is located in the affluent Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. ... The Clocktower Kyoto University (Japanese: 京都大学, Kyōto Daigaku; abbreviated to 京大, Kyōdai) in Kyoto, Japan, is the second oldest university and one of the leading research universities in the country. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ...

Early life and work

Originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, Kay attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, earning a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Molecular Biology. Before and during this time, he worked as a professional jazz guitarist. Nickname: City of Homes Location in Massachusetts Coordinates: Country United States State Massachusetts County Hampden County Settled 1636 Incorporated 1636 Government  - Type Mayor-council city  - Mayor Charles Ryan (D) Area  - City  33. ... The University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder, UCB officially[2]; Colorado, CU colloquially) is the flagship university of the University of Colorado system. ... A bachelors degree (Artium Baccalaureus, A.B. or B.A.) is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three, four, or in some cases and countries, five or six years. ... Jazz is a musical art form that originated in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States around the start of the 20th century. ...

In 1966, he began graduate school at the University of Utah, earning a Master's degree and Ph.D.. There, he worked with Ivan Sutherland, who had done pioneering graphics programs including Sketchpad. This greatly inspired Kay's evolving views on objects and programming. As he grew busier with ARPA research, he quit his career as a professional musician. The University of Utah (also The U or the U of U or the UU) is a public university in Salt Lake City, Utah. ... A masters degree is an academic degree usually awarded for completion of a postgraduate (or graduate) course of one to three years in duration. ... Doctor of Philosophy (Ph. ... Ivan Sutherland Ivan Sutherland, working at MIT (1963) Ivan Edward Sutherland (born 1938 in Hastings, Nebraska) is a computer programmer and Internet pioneer. ... Sketchpad was a revolutionary computer program written by Ivan Sutherland in 1963 in the course of his PhD thesis. ... The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. ...

In 1968, he met Seymour Papert and learned of the Logo programming language, a dialect of Lisp optimized for educational use. This lead him to learn of the work of Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, Lev Vygotsky, and of Constructivism. These further influenced his views. Seymour Papert Seymour Papert (born March 1, 1928 Pretoria, South Africa) is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and prominent educator. ... The Logo programming language is a functional programming language. ... Computer programming (often shortened to programming or coding) is the process of writing, testing, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. ... A dialect of a programming language is a (relatively small) variation or extension of the language that does not change its intrinsic nature. ... Lisp is a family of computer programming languages with a long history and a distinctive fully-parenthesized syntax. ... Jean Piaget [] (August 9, 1896 – September 16, 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental psychologist, well known for his work studying children and his theory of cognitive development. ... Jerome S. Bruner (b. ... Lev Vygotsky Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (Лев Семенович Выготский) (November 17 (November 5 Old Style), 1896 – June 11, 1934) was a Soviet developmental psychologist and the founder of the Cultural-historical psychology. ... Constructivism is a set of assumptions about the nature of human learning that guide constructivist learning theories and teaching methods of education. ...

In 1970, Kay joined Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center, PARC. In the 1970s he was one of the key members there to develop prototypes of networked workstations using the programming language Smalltalk. These inventions were later commercialized by Apple Computer in their Lisa and Macintosh computers. Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) is an American document management company, which manufactures and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies. ... Location of Palo Alto within Santa Clara County, California. ... PARC current logo. ... For other uses, see Small Talk (disambiguation). ... Apple Inc. ... The Apple Lisa was a revolutionary personal computer designed at Apple Computer during the early 1980s. ... The Macintosh 128K, the first Macintosh computer, introduced in 1984, upgraded to a 512K Fat Mac The Macintosh, or Mac, is a line of personal computers designed, developed, manufactured, and marketed by Apple. ...

Kay is one of the fathers of the idea of object-oriented programming (which he named), along with some colleagues at PARC and predecessors at the Norwegian Computing Center. He is the conceiver of the Dynabook concept which defined the basics of the laptop computer and the tablet computer and he is also considered by some as the architect of the modern windowing graphical user interface (GUI). Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses objects to design applications and computer programs. ... Norwegian Computing Center (NCC, in Norwegian: Norsk Regnesentral or NR for short) is a private, independent, non-profit research foundation founded in 1952. ... Dynabook prototype The Dynabook was a conceptual system proposed by Xerox PARC in the late-1960s and early-1970s. ... “PUI” redirects here. ...

After 10 years at Xerox PARC, Kay became Atari's chief scientist for three years. This article is about a corporate game company. ...

Recent work and recognition

Starting in 1984, Kay was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer until the closing of the ATG (Advanced Technology Group), one of the company's R&D divisions.^{[citation needed]} He then joined Walt Disney Imagineering as a Disney Fellow and remained there until Disney ended its Disney Fellow program. After Disney, in 2001 he founded Viewpoints Research Institute, a non-profit organization dedicated to children, learning, and advanced software development. Apple Inc. ... Walt Disney Imagineering was formed by entertainment mogul Walt Disney on December 16, 1952 as WED Enterprises (WED: Walter Elias Disney) to develop plans for a theme park and to manage Disneys personal assets. ...

Later, Kay worked with a team at Applied Minds, then became a Senior Fellow at Hewlett-Packard until HP disbanded the Advanced Software Research Team on July 20 2005. He is currently head of Viewpoints Institute. Applied Minds is a company founded by ex-Disney Imagineers Danny Hillis and Bran Ferren that provides technology and consulting services to entertainment firms (presumably including Disney), Herman Miller, and Harris Corporation. ... The Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ), commonly known as HP, is a very large, global company headquartered in Palo Alto, California, United States. ...

Squeak, Etoys, and Croquet

In December 1995, when he was still at Apple, Kay collaborated with many others to start the open source Squeak dynamic media software, and he continues to work on it. In this time, in November 1996, his team began research on what became the Etoys system. More recently he started, along with David A. Smith, David P. Reed, Andreas Raab, Rick McGeer, Julian Lombardi, and Mark McCahill, the Croquet Project, which is an open source networked 2D and 3D environment for collaborative work. The Squeak programming language is a Smalltalk implementation, derived directly from Smalltalk-80, by Smalltalks originators during their time at Apple Computer and later, at Walt Disney Imagineering, where it was intended for use in internal Disney projects such as a Mickey Mouse PDA. It is object-oriented, and... Etoys is a child-friendly computer environment based on Squeak (a dialect of Smalltalk). ... David A. Smith at work in 2005. ... David P. Reed is an American computer scientist, educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, known for a number of significant contributions to computer networking. ... Julian Lombardi in 2006. ... Mark McCahill (born February 7, 1956) has been involved in developing and popularizing a number of Internet technologies since the late 1980s. ... Real time, interactive, 3D map of this very same world. ...

Tweak

In 2001, it became clear that the Etoy architecture in Squeak had reached its limits in what the Morphic interface infrastructure could do. Hewlett-Packard researcher Andreas Raab proposed defining a "script process" and providing a default scheduling mechanism that avoids several more general problems [2]. The result was a new user interface, proposed to replace the Squeak Morphic user interface in the future. Tweak added mechanisms of islands, asynchronous messaging, players and costumes, language extensions, projects, and tile scripting [3]. Its underlying object system is class-based, but to users, during programming (scripting), it acts like it is prototype-based. Tweak objects are created and run in Tweak project windows. In object-oriented programming, a class is a programming language construct that is used to group related instance variables and methods. ... Prototype-based programming is a style of object-oriented programming in which classes are not present, and behaviour reuse (known as inheritance in class-based languages) is accomplished through a process of cloning existing objects which serve as prototypes. ...

Children's Machine

In November 2005, at the World Summit on the Information Society, the MIT research laboratories unveiled a new laptop computer, for educational use around the world. It has many names: the $100 Laptop, the One Laptop Per Child program, the Children's Machine, and the XO-1. The program was begun and is sustained by Kay's friend, Nicholas Negroponte, and is based on Kay's Dynabook ideal. Kay is a prominent co-developer of the computer, focusing on its educational software using Squeak and Etoys. The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was a series of United Nations-sponsored conferences about information and communication that took place in 2003 and 2005. ... The XO-1, previously known as the $100 Laptop or Childrens Machine, is a proposed inexpensive laptop computer intended to be distributed to children around the world, especially to those in developing countries, to provide them with access to knowledge and modern forms of education. ... Nicholas Negroponte Nicholas Negroponte (born 1943) is an architect and computer scientist best known as the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technologys Media Lab. ...

Reinventing programming

On 31 August 2006, his proposal to the United States National Science Foundation, NSF, was granted, which means Viewpoints Research Institute is funded for several years. The proposal title is: Steps Toward the Reinvention of Programming: A compact and Practical Model of Personal Computing as a Self-exploratorium [4]. A sense of what Kay is trying to do comes from this quote, from the abstract of a seminar on this given at Intel Research Labs, Berkeley: "The conglomeration of commercial and most open source software consumes in the neighborhood of several hundreds of millions of lines of code these days. We wonder: how small could be an understandable practical "Model T" design that covers this functionality? 1M lines of code? 200K LOC? 100K LOC? 20K LOC?" [5] The logo of the National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. ...

Besides Kay, there are several key persons in this effort. Dan Ingalls is a former Xerox PARC researcher who has worked with Kay for decades, and now works at Sun Microsystems. Ian Piumarta is a former INRIA researcher [6] who now works at Viewpoints. Piumarta's work is documented on his website [7], and includes the Virtual Virtual Machine, a multi-language, hardware independent execution platform [8]. Andreas Raab lead the Tweak effort while working at Impara GmbH, and now works for Qwaq Inc. Yoshiki Ohshima [9], a former student at Tokyo Institute of Technology, ported Squeak to SHARP Zaurus, maintains the iPAQ port, and made a multilingual Squeak. Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls, Jr. ... Sun Microsystems, Inc. ... The Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique (INRIA) is a French national research institution focusing on computer science, control theory and applied mathematics. ...

Awards and honors

Alan Kay has received many awards and honors. Among them:

• 2001: UdK 01-Award in Berlin, Germany for pioneering the GUI; J-D Warnier Prix D'Informatique; NEC C&C Prize.
• 2002: Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology in Telluride, Colorado.
• 2003: ACM Turing Award for work on object-oriented programming.
• 2004: Kyoto Prize; Charles Stark Draper Prize with Butler W. Lampson, Robert W. Taylor and Charles P. Thacker.
• Honorary doctorates:
  • 2005: Georgia Institute of Technology.
  • Kungl Tekniska Hoegskolan in Stockholm, Columbia College in Chicago.
• Honorary Professor, Berlin University of the Arts.
• Elected Fellow of: American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Royal Society of Arts, Computer History Museum.

Other honors: J-D Warnier Prix d’Informatique, ACM Systems Software Award, NEC Computers & Communication Foundation Prize, Funai Foundation Prize, Lewis Branscomb Technology Award, ACM SIGCSE Award for Outstanding Contributions to Computer Science Education. Berlin is the capital city and one of the sixteen states of the Federal Republic of Germany. ... GUI can refer to the following: GUI is short for graphical user interface, a term used to describe a type of interface in computing. ... The A.M. Turing Award is given annually by the Association for Computing Machinery to a person selected for contributions of a technical nature made to the computing community. ... Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm that uses objects to design applications and computer programs. ... The Kyoto Prize (京都賞) has been awarded annually since 1984 by the Inamori Foundation, founded by Kazuo Inamori (fortune from ceramics). ... Charles Stark Draper (October 2, 1901 – July 25, 1987) is often referred to as the father of inertial navigation. ... Butler W. Lampson is a computer scientist, considered to be one of the most significant in the history of the field. ... Robert Taylor was director of ARPAs Information Processing Techniques Office (1965-69), founder and associate manager of Xerox PARCs Computer Science Laboratory (CSL [[1]]) (1970-77), manager of Xerox PARC CSL (1977-83), founder and manager of Digital Equipment Corporations Systems Research Center (1983-96). ... Charles P. (Chuck) Thacker is a distinguished engineer and computer pioneer. ... The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly known as Georgia Tech, is a public, coeducational university, part of the University System of Georgia, and located in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, with satellite campuses in Savannah, Georgia and Metz, France. ... The Berlin University of the Arts (Universität der Künste Berlin) in Berlin, Germany, was founded in 1975 with the merger of the Berlin State School of Fine Arts and the Berlin State School of Music and the Performing Arts. ...

Personal background

Kay is an avid and gifted musician who plays keyboard instruments and guitar. He has a special interest in the baroque pipe organ, early keyboard instruments and guitar. He was a former professional jazz and rock and roll guitarist. He is married to Bonnie MacBird, a writer, television producer, actor, artist. A musician is a person who plays or composes music Musicians can be classified by their role in creating or performing music: A singer (or vocalist) uses his or her voice as an instrument. ... Piano, a well-known instance of keyboard instruments A keyboard instrument is any musical instrument played using a musical keyboard. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Adoration, by Peter Paul Rubens. ... Organ in Katharinenkirche, Frankfurt am Main, Germany // The pipe organ (Greek ὄργανον, órganon) is a musical instrument that produces sound by admitting pressurized air through a series of pipes. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Rock and roll. ... A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. ... Bonnie MacBird is an actress, playwright, scriptwriter, and television producer. ... The term writer can apply to anyone who creates a written work, but the word more usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, or those who have written in many different forms. ... A Television producer oversees the making of television penis programs. ... Actors in period costume sharing a joke while waiting between takes during location filming An actor or actress is a person who acts, or plays a role, in a dramatic production. ... The definition of an artist is wide-ranging and covers a broad spectrum of activities to do with creating art, practising the arts and/or demonstrating an art. ...

Famous quotes

Alan Kay's most frequently quoted statement is "The best way to predict the future is to invent it.", 1971, [10]. This phrase has entered popular cultures and is used in the TV series The X-Files. For other uses, see The X-Files (disambiguation). ...

Kay elaborated on his theme on other occasions, "The future is not laid out on a track. It is something that we can decide, and to the extent that we do not violate any known laws of the universe, we can probably make it work the way that we want to.", 1984, [11].

"The real romance is out ahead and yet to come. The computer revolution hasn't started yet. Don't be misled by the enormous flow of money into bad defacto standards for unsophisticated buyers using poor adaptations of incomplete ideas." [12]

At a Hong Kong press conference in the late 1980s, Alan Kay said "Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born."

"I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind." [13] C++ (pronounced see plus plus, IPA: ) is a general-purpose, high-level programming language with low-level facilities. ...

"OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I'm not aware of them." [14]

Alan Kay on Lisp: "The greatest single programming language ever designed."^{[citation needed]} Lisp is a family of computer programming languages with a long history and a distinctive fully-parenthesized syntax. ...

"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." [15]

Articles

• "Computers, Networks and Education" - Scientific American Special Issue on Communications, Computers, and Networks, September, 1991. [16]

Scientific American presents the September 1991 Single Copy Issue: Communications, Computers, and Networks, was a special issue of Scientific American dedicated to articles concerning impending changes to the internet in the period prior to the expansion and mainstreaming of the world wide web via Mosaic (web browser) and Netscape (web...

External links

Find more information on Alan Kay by searching Wikipedia's sister projects
	Dictionary definitions from Wiktionary
	Textbooks from Wikibooks
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Images and media from Commons
	News stories from Wikinews
	Learning resources from Wikiversity

• Detailed Alan Kay bibliography
• Personal Dynamic Media – By Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg
• Alan Kay's HP bio
• A PC Pioneer Decries the State of Computing – By David Kirkpatrick, Fortune magazine, 8 July 2004 (Available for fee)
• Doing with Images Makes Symbols: Communicating with Computers Video lecture by Alan Kay with lots of examples of early graphic user interfaces
• The Computer "Revolution" Hasn't Happened Yet! talk at EDUCOM 1998 (computers in education)
• Predicting the Future remarks from 1989 Stanford Computer Forum
• Education in the Digital Age talk
• A Conversation with Alan Kay Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk—and much more.
• From Dynabook to Squeak - A Study in Survivals listof links tracing the evolution of Kay's vision
• The Early History of Smalltalk
• The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Prevent It
• The $100 Laptop, Learners, and Powerful Ideas
• Association for Computing Machinery Video Interview with Alan Kay
• Turing Award lecture: "The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet"
• Diamond Management and Technology Consultants , where Alan is a board member.
• Viewpoints Research Institute