Alan Kay has agreed to do an AMA today

You invented a lot of what I'm using this very instant to compose this message.

I yearn to do great works of engineering and art, which I consider what you have done.

How do you come up with ideas?

There's coming up with ideas: learn to dream while you are awake, the ideas are there.

There's coming up with a good idea: learn how to not get buried in your ideas (most are mediocre down to bad even for people who have "good idea skills"!)

I write down ideas in notebooks to get rid of them. Every once in a while one will capture a different point of view.

And, there's the Princeton Tea joke of scientists comparing what they did for ideas. One says "I have them in the middle of the night so I have a pad by my bed". Another says "I have them in the shower so I have a grease pencil to write them on the walls". Einstein was listening and they asked him about his ideas. He said "I don't know, I've only had two!"

(Some people are better at filtering than others ...)

I'm not Alan, but I saw one of his talks[1] about how they did invent all those things we're using now, which you are very much referring to.

What he said was important was to have a big horizon, at least 10 years. Anything less would not do.

Then envision what should be possible in that time. "It would be ridiculous if $X wasn't possible in $Y years" and then backtrack on what would technically be required to make that happen.

Rinse repeat. He said that with good company support and a good team, you often found yourself delivering at half that time none the less (but again, you should never constrain yourself to that little, or else you will stress towards performing, instead of thinking properly about the problems needing to be solved).

Alan: Hope I didn't butcher your message too much :)

[1] I think it might be this one, but I honestly haven't checked. See it anyway. It's a good talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs

I will endeavour to consider your advice and move my mind from the margins to the center. Thank you!

Seems like a good a strategy as any. :) Thanks for the pointer!

> There's coming up with ideas: learn to dream while you are awake, the ideas are there.

Any advice on how to do that, especially for those of us who are completely non-visual thinkers (aphantasia)?

Dreaming can work without images. What are your sleeping dreams like?

Apparently aphantasia doesn't appear to affect dreams (from research I've read), when sleeping I do have visual dreams, but awake, nothing but black even with eyes closed no matter how hard I try to imagine a picture.

If you are not blind then you can see pictures. So this would be interesting to follow up ...

Not sure I understand what you're implying, I'm not blind, and only recently realized other people actually see pictures in their mind while awake. But dreaming while awake would be awesome if achievable.

I'm saying that you don't see what is on your retina, but something that is manifested by your brain (and this is why you can see images when you dream).

So I'm guessing that there is a path for you to imagine images. It could be very similar to how most people who think they are tone deaf can be helped to hear pitches quite accurately.

Ah, yes, I'm hoping this is true as well hence my interest in what you said about learning to dream while awake. If you don't have any specific recommendations I'll continue researching on my own.

Try doing some after images and see what happens ...

Will do; thanks.

How much impact have actual dreams had in your work? Have you ever gotten ideas or answers in dreams?

Bob Barton got most of his great ideas in sleeping dreams.

Most of my ideas come in "waking dreams" (this is a state that most children indulge in readily, but it can be retained in a more or less useful way -- I don't think you quite get into adulthood by retaining it, so it's a tradeoff).

Main thing about ideas is that, however they come, most of them are mediocre down to bad -- so steps have to be taken to deal with this major problem.

10 years is too close -- 30 years out will generally lose the pernicious connection to the present and "how do we get there?". The idea is to "go out there and bring the ideas back" rather than try to go from the present to the future.

My personal experience is it's not as much "seeing" as "feeling" whatever I "see". Like with open eyes staring at but not looking at something, instead mentally focusing on peripheral, where the peripheral is more of an idea than the impression of photons hitting your retina. I often almost feel like I'm drawing the diagrams or interfaces I might think of, with sweeping gestures and so on. I definitely think it's something that gets better with practice.

Sure, but most people have actual visuals when they imagine, most with color. That's where I want to get.

I mean, I CAN have visuals like that, as I don't have aphantasia. But I don't believe most of my ideas originate from the visual imagining. It usually starts with concepts, is connected through logic, and then along the way images may or may not be generated, depending on what I am ruminating about.