sábado, 25 de junio de 2016

June 2016, Alan Kay is back

So it was early may 2016 when YCombinator anounced HARC, and the fact that Alan Kay and his team would be under YC's umbrella for some time (I guess 5 years at least). I got really excited. Also, some links like Alan Kay's recommended reading list. On that occasion I was happily surprised (or not so) when I saw the recommendation of Eduard deBono's Lateral Thinking.

Then, a few days ago, Alan Kay agreed to do an AMA in Hacker News, and the thing exploded.  People showing amazing respect for him, and himself answering tirelessly all questions with wise and info-stuffed answers. 'Too much' food for thought.  References to History of computers' books (The dream machine being one that I didn't know), to how to read books, state of funding, research, computers, history..... Oh, and Rich Hickey and Alan Kay discussing about data.

Today, a couple of links about restoring Alan Kay's XEROX Alto popped up in HN. And more links to Alto's hardware manual and Alto's manual.
Fun fact: One of the designers of Alto was Chuck Thacker, which was also co-inventor of the Ethernet LAN.

 And.... this post had to be published 3 days ago, but once you start looking for links on PARC related stuff, you enter the rabbit hole, and spend 3 days reading and watchin videos, without attending to any of your other duties. For me it's been these three videos. Two new one old.

Enjoy and be amused.

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