Alan_Kay

{{Infobox_Scientist
| name = Alan Curtis Kay
| image = Alan-C-Kay2b.jpg
| image_width = 150px
| caption = Alan C. Kay
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1940|5|17}}
| birth_place =
| death_date =
| death_place =
| residence =
| citizenship = [[United States]]
| nationality =
| ethnicity =
| field = [[Computer Science]]
| work_institutions = [[PARC (company)|Xerox PARC]] [[Atari]] [[Apple Inc.]] [[Advanced Technology Group|ATG]] [[The Walt Disney Company|Walt Disney]] [[Walt Disney Imagineering|Imagineering]] [[University of California, Los Angeles|UCLA]] [[Kyoto University]] [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]] Viewpoints Research Institute [[Hewlett-Packard]] [[HP Labs|Labs]]
| alma_mater = [[University of Colorado at Boulder]], [[University of Utah]]
| doctoral_advisor =
| doctoral_students =
| known_for = [[Dynabook]] [[object-oriented programming]] [[Smalltalk]] [[graphical user interface]] [[Window (computing)|windows]]
| author_abbrev_bot =
| author_abbrev_zoo =
| prizes =
| religion =
| footnotes =
}}
'''Alan Curtis Kay''' (born [[May 17]], [[1940]]) is an [[United States|American]] [[computer scientist]], known for his early pioneering work on [[object-oriented programming]] and [[Window (computing)|windowing]] [[graphical user interface]] design.
He is the president of the Viewpoints Research Institute, and an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the [[University of California, Los Angeles]]. Until mid 2005, he was a Senior Fellow at [[HP Labs]], a Visiting Professor at [[Kyoto University]], and an Adjunct Professor at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] (MIT).[http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2005/07/hp_converting_s.html]

== 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.

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 [[Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency|ARPA]] research, he quit his career as a professional musician.

In 1968, he met [[Seymour Papert]] and learned of the [[Logo (programming language)|Logo]] [[computer programming|programming]] [[programming language|language]], a [[Programming language dialect|dialect]] of [[Lisp (programming language)|Lisp]] optimized for [[education]]al use. This led him to learn of the work of [[Jean Piaget]], [[Jerome Bruner]], [[Lev Vygotsky]], and of [[Constructivism (learning theory)|Constructivism]]. These further influenced his views.


In 1970, Kay joined [[Xerox]] Corporation's [[Palo Alto, California|Palo Alto]] Research Center, [[PARC (company)|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 Inc.|Apple Computer]] in their [[Apple Lisa|Lisa]] and [[Macintosh]] computers.

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 is the architect of the modern overlapping windowing [[graphical user interface]] (GUI)<ref>{{citation
| last1 = Bergin, Jr.
| first1 = Thomas J.
| last2 = Gibson, Jr.
| first2 = Richard G.
| place = New York, NY
| year = 1996
| publisher = ACM Press, Addison-Wesley
| title = History of Programming Languages -- II
| url = http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=234286}}</ref>. Because the Dynabook was conceived as an educational platform, Kay is considered to be one of the first researchers into [[mobile learning]], and indeed, many features of the Dynabook concept have been adopted in the design of the [[One Laptop Per Child]] educational platform (with which Kay is actively involved).

After 10 years at Xerox PARC, Kay became [[Atari]]'s chief scientist for three years.

== Recent work and recognition ==
Starting in 1984, Kay was an Apple Fellow at [[Apple Inc.|Apple Computer]] until the closing of the ATG ([[Advanced Technology Group]]), one of the company's R&D divisions. {{Fact|date=February 2007}} 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.

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.

=== 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 (programming language)|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.

=== Tweak ===
In 2001, it became clear that the Etoy architecture in Squeak had reached its limits in what the Morphic interface infrastructure could do. Andreas Raab was a researcher working in Kay's group, then at Hewlett-Packard. He proposed defining a "script process" and providing a default scheduling mechanism that avoids several more general problems [http://tweak.impara.de/ABOUT/FAQ/OriginalTweakMemo/]. The result was a new user interface, proposed to replace the Squeak Morphic user interface in the future. [[Tweak programming environment|Tweak]] added mechanisms of islands, asynchronous messaging, players and costumes, language extensions, projects, and tile scripting [http://tweak.impara.de/TECHNOLOGY/Whitepapers/]. Its underlying object system is [[Class (computer science)|class-based]], but to users, during programming (scripting), it acts like it is [[Prototype-based programming|prototype-based]]. Tweak objects are created and run in Tweak project windows.

=== 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 (laptop)|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.

=== Reinventing programming ===
On 31 August 2006, Kay's proposal to the [[United States]] [[National Science Foundation]], NSF, was granted, thus funding Viewpoints Research Institute 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 [http://irbseminars.intel-research.net/AlanKayNSF.pdf]. 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?" [http://www.intel-research.net/berkeley/viewseminarabstract.asp?index=605]

The system being developed makes extensive use of [[parsing]] via a [[Parsing#Bottom-up parsers|bottom up]] rewrite [[Formal grammar|grammar]] [http://www.cs.usfca.edu/~parrt/course/652/labs/jburg.html], [http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/research/groups/nlp/gazdar/nlp-in-prolog/ch05/chapter-05-sh-1.2.html], [http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~kal/courses/compilers/module3/mybuparsing.html].

Besides Kay, several key persons are working on this effort. Ted Kaehler and [[Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls, Jr.|Dan Ingalls]] are former Xerox PARC researchers who have worked with Kay for decades; Ingalls now works at [[Sun Microsystems]]. [[Ian Piumarta]] is a former [[Institut national de recherche en informatique et en automatique|INRIA]] researcher [http://www-sor.inria.fr/~piumarta/], with Alessandro (Alex) Warth, a UCLA Ph.D. computer science student[http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~awarth/]; both now work at Viewpoints. Piumarta's work is documented on his website [http://piumarta.com/pepsi/], and includes the [[Virtualization|Virtual]] [[Virtual Machine]], a multi-language, hardware independent execution platform [http://vvm.lip6.fr/]. [[Andreas Raab]] lead the Tweak effort while working at [http://www.impara.de/ Impara GmbH], he now works for [http://www.Qwaq.com/ Qwaq Inc]. [[Yoshiki Ohshima]] [http://www.is.titech.ac.jp/~ohshima/ohshima-e.html], a former student at [[Tokyo Institute of Technology]], ported Squeak to [[Sharp Corporation|Sharp]] [[Sharp Zaurus|Zaurus]], maintains the [[iPAQ]] port, and made a [[Multilingualism|multilingual]] Squeak.

=== Awards and honors ===
Alan Kay has received many awards and honors. Among them:
* 2001: [http://www.udk-berlin.de/doku/award.html 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 Taylor (computer scientist)|Robert W. Taylor]] and [[Charles P. Thacker]].
* Honorary doctorates:
** 2002: Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan (Royal Institute of Technology) in Stockholm. [http://www.kth.se/om/fame/hedersdoktorer/1.3974?l=en]
** 2005: [[Georgia Institute of Technology]].
** 2005: [[Columbia College Chicago]].
** 2007: Laurea Honoris Causa in Informatica - [[Università di Pisa]], Italy.
* 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.

==Personal background==
Kay is an avid and skilled [[musician]] who plays [[keyboard instrument]]s and [[guitar]]. He has a special interest in early keyboard instruments like the [[baroque]] [[pipe organ]], and old guitars. He was a former professional jazz and [[Rock music|rock and roll]] [[guitarist]]. He is married to [[Bonnie MacBird]], a [[writer]], [[actor]], [[artist]], [[television producer]] who shares his passion for music.

== Famous quotations==
Alan Kay's most frequently quoted statement is "The best way to predict the future is to invent it.", 1971, [http://www.smalltalk.org/alankay.html].  This phrase has entered popular cultures and is used in the TV series [[The X-Files]].

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, [http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2004-11.html#e2004-11-06T21_03_42.htm].

"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." [http://www.squeak.org/]

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." [http://www.smalltalk.org/articles/article_20040731a.html] 

"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." [http://www.purl.org/stefan_ram/pub/doc_kay_oop_en]

Alan Kay on [[Lisp (programming language)|Lisp]]: "The greatest single programming language ever designed." [http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2003/04/03/alan_kay.html]

"People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware." [http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Creative_Think.txt]

==References==
<references/>

==Articles==
* "Computers, Networks and Education" - ''[[Scientific American Special Issue on Communications, Computers, and Networks]]'', September, 1991. [http://www.squeakland.org/school/HTML/sci_amer_article/sci_amer_01.html]

==External links==
{{Sisterlinks|Alan Kay}}
* [http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/GASCH.KAY.HTML Alan Kay biography]
* [http://www.mprove.de/diplom/referencesKay.html Detailed Alan Kay bibliography]
* [http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/~noah/nmr/book_samples/nmr-26-kay.pdf Personal Dynamic Media] – By Alan Kay and [[Adele Goldberg (computer scientist)|Adele Goldberg]]
*[http://www.fortune.com/fortune/fastforward/0,15704,661671,00.html ''A PC Pioneer Decries the State of Computing''] – By David Kirkpatrick, ''[[Fortune magazine]]'', [[8 July]] [[2004]] (Available for fee)
*[http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=alan%20kay Doing with Images Makes Symbols: Communicating with Computers] Video lecture by Alan Kay with lots of examples of early graphic user interfaces
*[http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=COM9802 The Computer "Revolution" Hasn't Happened Yet!] talk at EDUCOM 1998 (computers in education)
*[http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/futures.htm Predicting the Future] remarks from 1989 Stanford Computer Forum
*[http://video.csupomona.edu/streaming/tae/eda_index.html Education in the Digital Age] talk
*[http://acmqueue.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=273 A Conversation with Alan Kay] Big talk with the creator of Smalltalk—and much more.
*[http://thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/Dynabook From Dynabook to Squeak - A Study in Survivals] listof links tracing the evolution of Kay's vision
*[http://gagne.homedns.org/~tgagne/contrib/EarlyHistoryST.html The Early History of Smalltalk]
*[http://www.windley.com/archives/2006/02/alan_kay_is_com.shtml The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Prevent It]
*[http://www.windley.com/archives/2006/02/alan_kay_the_10.shtml The $100 Laptop, Learners, and Powerful Ideas]
*[[Association for Computing Machinery]] [http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=950566.950580 Video Interview with Alan Kay]
*[[Turing Award]] lecture: [http://www.acm.org/talks/AlanKay/ACM-Kay2.htm "The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet"]
* [http://www.diamondconsultants.com Diamond Management and Technology Consultants ], where Alan is a board member.
* [http://www.viewpointsresearch.org/ Viewpoints Research Institute]
*[http://moryton.blogspot.com/2007/12/computer-revolution-hasnt-happened-yet.html Transcript: The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet, OOPSLA 1997]

{{Turing award}}



{{Persondata
|NAME= Kay, Alan Curtis
|ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
|SHORT DESCRIPTION= [[Computer Science]]
|DATE OF BIRTH= {{Birth date and age|1940|5|17|mf=y}}
|PLACE OF BIRTH=
|DATE OF DEATH=
|PLACE OF DEATH=
}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kay, Alan}}

[[Category:1940 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:American computer programmers]]
[[Category:American computer scientists]]
[[Category:American jazz guitarists]]
[[Category:Apple Inc. employees]]
[[Category:Computer pioneers]]
[[Category:Hewlett-Packard people]]
[[Category:Human-computer interaction]]
[[Category:Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty]]
[[Category:People from Springfield, Massachusetts]]
[[Category:Turing Award laureates]]
[[Category:University of California, Los Angeles faculty]]
[[Category:University of Colorado alumni]]
[[Category:University of Utah alumni]]

[[cs:Alan Kay]]
[[de:Alan Kay]]
[[es:Alan Kay]]
[[eo:Alan Kay]]
[[fr:Alan Kay]]
[[ko:앨런 케이]]
[[hr:Alan Kay]]
[[id:Alan Kay]]
[[it:Alan Kay]]
[[nl:Alan Kay]]
[[ja:アラン・ケイ]]
[[no:Alan Kay]]
[[pl:Alan Kay]]
[[pt:Alan Kay]]
[[ru:Кэй, Алан Куртис]]