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Alan Kay: Doing with Images Makes Symbols (Full Version)

Kenneth Friedman · 44.4K views · 2015-04-29 · 1:37:45

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Overview

A full upload of Alan Kay's 1987 talk, with demos of several Smalltalk-era software systems and ideas about visual, kinesthetic and symbolic reasoning. It includes a Smalltalk program written by a 12-year-old and footage of the Rand tablet.

On Hacker News

HN recommends it as a favourite tech talk full of good ideas from forgotten 1980s software, worth watching in full.

Recommended by 8 HN people across 8 months · HN mentions 2016–2023

Topics

Tech pioneers & interviewsGUI, HCI & interface historyEducation & learning
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alan kaysmalltalklearninguser interfaces1980s computing

What people said

theodpHN · 2023-10 · Strong recommendation

Dang, Alan Kay's old talks are so amazing. Check out this Smalltalk program written in 1975 by a 12-year-old girl. [VIDEO]

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scroot · 2018-05 · Strong recommendation

> Visualizations are great for shared intuition, but it should only be used at the end of a long personal struggle which should involve hours upon hours of undistracted effort, preferably involving something tactile like a pen and pencil. There is a classic Alan Kay talk that touches on this very issue, called "Doing With Images Makes Symbols." It discusses what the true power of HCI really is: that complex ideas (or even "unthinkable" ones) can be expressed via HCI using some combination of visual, kinesthetic, and symbolic reasoning. The whole talk is well worth watching, but here is the part I feel is most relevant for Victor's point: [VIDEO]

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agumonkey · 2017-08 · Strong recommendation

I'm already trying hard not to fall into full alankayism [1] and this only reinforces my view. Jobs said that many people in companies are clueless... [1] for people that never watched his talk where he demonstrates how pretty old and forgotten software can be, enjoy this fully [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Kenneth Friedman, played through YouTube.

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