Alan Kay: Doing with Images Makes Symbols (Full Version)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a favourite tech talk full of good ideas from forgotten 1980s software, worth watching in full.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 8 HN commenters across 8 different months, 2016 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec cconroy · 2016-10 · on “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”
Doing with Images Makes Symbols, Alan Kay. [this video] The title says it all. It's really a summary of several software systems with good ideas abound. I believe all the software is 80s or prior. Edit: I also forgot to mention some psychology and math.
Strong rec agumonkey · 2017-08 · on “Concrete-free washing machines are lighter to transport, just as good in a spin”
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 [this video]
Strong rec scroot · 2018-05 · on “Media for Thinking the Unthinkable (2013)”
> 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: [this video]
Strong rec theodpHN · 2023-10 · on “Alan Kay: Doing with Images Makes Symbols [video]”
Dang, Alan Kay's old talks are so amazing. Check out this Smalltalk program written in 1975 by a 12-year-old girl. [this video]
Recommends skadamat · 2017-12 · on “Communicating Advanced Mathematics to Kids”
So many things I could say about this, but I"ll let Alan Kay speak for me - [this video] Alan talks about how ideas in Calculus could be manifested from an early age and a richness in understanding built up as they aged up: - at very young ages, kids really respond well through "doing" / the enactive channel. When asked to draw a circle, kids in Papert's group would first emulate what a LOGO turtle would do by rotating their body in a circle (making tiny increments in x and y). - as they got a bit older, the visual / iconic channel was more developed and they could understand the abstraction of a circle on pencil/paper and how the concepts carried over there - closer to early teens, symbols were
Recommends jdale27 · 2018-04 · on “Ask HN: What is your favourite tech talk?”
I was going to mention Growing a Language, but since it's already been posted, here is Alan Kay's "Doing with Images Makes Symbols": [this video] .
Recommends e12e · 2018-09 · on “Show HN: TechYaks – Best of 50k tech talks ranked by confidence intervals”
Maybe these are mostly too new, or you have different (more practical, hands on?) definition of tech-talk - but from a quick look the only speakers I expected - and found - were Sandi Mets and Rob Pike. If it's practical, I'm surprised not to see the js "wat" lightning talk (which I now can't seem to find...). If it's more general "best of", I'd expect something like Guy Steele "growing a language" : [LINK] Douglas Engelbart "the mother of all demos": [LINK] Alan Kay "doing with images makes symbols": [this video] Or, if that's too long, the much more condensed ted talk: "a powerful idea about teaching ideas": [LINK] (Maybe that's not a "tech talk"?) Rich Hickey "simple made easy" : [LINK] To nam
Recommends artem247 · 2020-11 · on “Programs are a prison: Rethinking the building blocks of computing interfaces”
> (see also Alan Kay's vision of software inspired by biological cells and systems – lots of talk, no non-trivial proofs of concept). I just wanted to say that actually Kay's vision was implemented in something very non-trivial, both on the hardware side - Alto, and the Smalltalk operating system. They were used by real people and exhibited lots of traits that this article talks about. And some of their ideas were hugely influential in mainstream computing. I love the demo of one of the Smalltalk programs in this talk by Alan Kay [0], starts at around 40:30 [0] - [this video]