Alan Kay

Alan Kay (born May 17, 1940) is an American computer scientist, known for his early work on object-oriented programming and user interface design. Until 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, and an Adjunct Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is also the president of the Viewpoints Research Institute.

Early life and work

Originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, Kay earned a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Molecular Biology from the University of Colorado, and another Master's degree and Ph.D. from the University of Utah. At the University of Utah in the 1960s, Kay worked with Ivan Sutherland on pioneering graphics applications including Sketchpad. Around this time, he also worked as a professional jazz guitarist.

Kay joined Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1970. In the seventies 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 in the Apple Macintosh.

Kay is one of the fathers of the idea of object-oriented programming, along with some colleagues at PARC and predecessors at the Norwegian Computing Centre. 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).

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

Recent work and recognition

Starting in 1984, Kay was a Fellow at Apple Computer until Steve Jobs eliminated the company's R&D group. He then joined Walt Disney Imagineering as a Disney Fellow and remained there until Disney ended its Disney Fellow program. After Disney, 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 Research Institute.

Squeak and Croquet development

Kay collaborated with many others to start the open source Squeak dynamic media software in December 1995 when he was still at Apple, and he continues to work on it. 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 seeks to offer an open source networked 3D environment for collaborative work.

$100 laptop

At the World Summit on the Information Society in November 2005, the MIT research laboratories unveiled a new laptop" target="_blank" >^* co-developed by Kay for students around the world.

Awards and honors

In 2001 Alan Kay received the UdK 01-Award in Berlin, Germany for pioneering the GUI.
In 2003 he received the ACM Turing Award for his work on object-oriented programming.
In 2004 he received the Kyoto Prize and the Charles Stark Draper Prize along with Butler W. Lampson, Robert W. Taylor and Charles P. Thacker
In 2005 he received an honorary doctoral degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Personal Background

Kay is an avid and gifted musician who plays keyboards 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/producer/actor/artist.

Famous Quotations

Alan Kay is quoted as saying "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." He is also attributed with "Technology is anything that was invented after you were born."

External links

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"

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Alan Kay