If you're not building something for people, what are you building? Art?
I'm fine with that, but just because you're making art, doesn't mean everyone else is an idiot.
Also I think it's very condescending to think that others didn't have vision.
Lastly it's cheap to criticize someone else for "shitty execution" when you yourself have the ability to show with your own execution but you clearly haven't. It's easy to throw around the word "execution" but it's not an easy thing to do.
Herein lies a dangerous assumption prominent in neoliberal thinking: that "building something for people" is only possible by making something that is inherently "profitable." Kay has spoken endlessly on the fact that PARC was -- in spirit, structure, and personnel -- largely the last gasp of the ARPA/IPTO funding culture. That we don't have this kind of basic research funding anymore is one of the reasons we don't have inventions on par with the Internet and personal computing. This is one of the points he harps on about.
Few companies today will create anything that is a truly shattering invention, for the simple fact that companies are not structured to invest the time and money in ways that such inventions demand: decade long cycles, where failure and "wasting" money is the norm. The quarterly earnings cycle prevents this. What's worse, that cycle has been absorbed into the way politicians and governments now think. Today the NSF wants you to demonstrate how your research will produce the desired results when applying for grants. That's not how exploratory basic research works. You'll only ever get more arcane iterations on current systems and technologies.
Kay has spent his life doing this kind of exploratory research. PARC, Squeak, STEPS -- I'd call all of that "execution." But perhaps others who see businesses and profits as the sole reason to get up in the morning would disagree.
1. I agree with your general argument about the need for deep research.
2. Which means you're making assumptions about what I'm thinking.
3. Please don't label others on the Internet with words like "Neoliberal", etc. We are all same people and there may be misunderstanding but we are not fundamentally different species.
4. My point was not to say these not-for-profit research is useless, but that if you're in this field, you should own it. If people build things that are mediocre and you know a better way, why not build one and show it for yourself? He hasn't done that because he doesn't know either. And by "Knowing" I mean actually knowing to build a product that people will use without any problem. It is easy to criticize implementation, it's not easy to actually do it yourself. With all due respect, prototyping and actually turning it into a product that general public can use are completely different ball games.
He didn't call you a neo-liberal. Your whole argument however does rely on the now widespread (and false) assumption that anything worthwhile can be made profitable with the current economic system.
By the way, Alan Kay has built stuff people can actually use. Scratch, for instance is so usable that even children can learn it.
Ah. Learning. I don't want to assume, but it looks like you missed the part where Alan Kay wants the general public to learn about computers, and stops viewing them as magic golems. This is a completely different ball game from merely making a popular consumer device.
What does building for people (which I am) have to do with making profits (which I don't)? What about sharing? Building for profit is the opposite of building for people, the two mind sets are not compatible.
I'm fine with that, but just because you're making art, doesn't mean everyone else is an idiot.
Also I think it's very condescending to think that others didn't have vision.
Lastly it's cheap to criticize someone else for "shitty execution" when you yourself have the ability to show with your own execution but you clearly haven't. It's easy to throw around the word "execution" but it's not an easy thing to do.