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Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

1401 points alankay | 2 comments | 20 Jun 16 18:04 UTC | HN request time: 0.587s | source

This request originated via recent discussions on HN, and the forming of HARC! at YC Research. I'll be around for most of the day today (though the early evening).
1. 0xdeadbeefbabe ◴[20 Jun 16 18:54 UTC] No.11940330[source]▶
I get the impression from the book Dealers of Lightning that Bob Taylor played an indispensable role in creating Xerox Parc. What are the Bob Taylors of today up to, and why aren't they doing something similar?

Edit: just noticed HARC and YC-Research. I'll check it out.

replies(1): >>11940756 #
2. alankay1 ◴[20 Jun 16 19:39 UTC] No.11940756[source]▶
"Dealers of Lightning" is not the best book to read (try Mitchell Waldrop's "The Dream Machine").

That said, Bob Taylor cannot be praised too highly, both for Parc and for his earlier stint as one of the ARPA-IPTO directors.

Simple answer: There aren't a lot of Bob Taylors in any decade (but there are some). Big difference between then and now is that the funders were "just right" back then, and have been "quite clueless" over the last 30 some odd years. An interesting very recent exception is what Sam Altman is doing -- this is shaping into the biggest most interesting most important initiative since the 70s.