Alan Kay

I recently watched Alan Kay: The Computer Revolution hasn’t happened yet. Keynote 00PSLA 1997 and Alan Kay: Graphical User Interfaces. (Both available through Google Video)

What a cool guy. The videos of computer interfaces from the 70’s and 60’s make me wonder why everything looks comparatively shabby today. I blame Microsoft, but in truth it’s everybody’s fault. For reinventing the wheel badly instead of looking for giants to stand on. His critique of the Web and HTML is alarmingly poignant.