The iRise Blog

The CIO|08  Conference kicked off its first full day of sessions with an opening keynote from Alan Kay the President of Viewpoints Research Institute. Kay is a true innovator in computer science. From his development of the dynamic object-oriented programming to his involvement in the design of the ARPANET, he has been a leader and innovator in the field.  As Kay coined the phrase “the best way to predict the future is to invent it,” I was keenly interested to hear his take on innovation and communication of new concepts and ideas.

First, I was impressed by his ability to have “outlaw” thoughts and run successfully with them. But by the end of his presentation, it was his clarity around how difficult, yet essential it is in our society to not only have these thoughts, but also to promote them. That clarity will leave me with more lasting impression of Alan Kay.

Kay feels that the willingness to accept one man’s view of the world as truth, may prevent the truth and, hence, innovation from being given the forum to root itself and grow. From this my mind wanders to collaboration and visualization as tools to innovation. If we leverage the potential “outlaw” thoughts gained from a greater group (the book The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations), over and above that of just one analyst and their view of reality, will your software too not be more innovative by its very nature?

Kay mentioned these quotes from Marshall McLuhan during his presentation:

• “People are driving faster and faster into the future…but steering only by looking through the rearview mirror”
• “Remembering is not the same thing as thinking. Don’t worry about whether it is right or wrong…try to find out what is going on!”

Both quotes challenge you to ask what is “Normal”?, and is that what we should really strive towards? These are the questions Kay continued to present to the audience. He indicated that most people in the world deal with NOW as “normal” and “reality,” however, dealing with NOW as “an arbitrary construct that can be qualitatively changed and improved” can allow for new thoughts, for innovation.

One could counter with “We’re in business to Make Money!  It is from this stand that Kay challenged the audience that the desire for money in terms of billions should not be enough. Trillions should be their focus. His proof was to say the “ARPA/PARC has now generated more than $20 trillion from an investment of a few hundred million in today’s dollars.” To get this type of real ROI, Kay says one needs to embrace new paradigms to get you from billions to trillions. For that you need to take higher risks on new ideas, and it’s only working on more grandiose and out of the box projects where that type of impact can occur.

Remember, a few people who can have an enormous impact so try and find out what is going on not just what is normal. One of Kay’s last slides says “How many lines of code, and for what?” indicated to me, he too asks that we consider what we are building before we do so. As Heinlein says “the bull wears itself out on the cap but fails to see the sword.”

We must see the sword, we must find context and clarity in our activities as technology professionals.

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