I've seen him give this great talk before, but IMO the delivery this time feels rushed and a bit disjointed. That said, the last few minutes summarize his powerful "Gretzky Game" idea so succinctly that they're worth the price of admission alone.<p>I would recommend watching the last 18 seconds of this version (starting at <a href="https://youtu.be/ZDM33CMJvp8?t=3452" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/ZDM33CMJvp8?t=3452</a>), internalizing the Gretzky Game slide on the screen, backing it up and watching the fuller explanation in the preceding ~3 minutes (starting at 54:18, <a href="https://youtu.be/ZDM33CMJvp8?t=3258" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/ZDM33CMJvp8?t=3258</a>), and then finally watching a different, more expansive version of the talk like this one, given at Qualcomm: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs</a>.<p>Oddly specific advice, I know, but hopefully helpful to somebody.
I just realized where the 'V' logo in "Viewpoints Research Institute" came from (you can see it here: [0]):<p>The diagram comes from the book "The Act of Creation"[1], where Arthur Koestler discusses the common themes in creative acts, including the idea of juxtaposition.<p>In research, you start with a baseline level of knowledge and do a random walk until you encounter a (not necessarily) totally orthogonal set of ideas. Once you combine the two, boom! Something new is created. A lovely book, that I'd recommend to anyone.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.vpri.org" rel="nofollow">http://www.vpri.org</a>
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Creation" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Act_of_Creation</a>
Kay mentions The Dream Machine, which in my opinion is one of the better books on some of the early work in computing systems. Heartily recommend it.<p><a href="http://amzn.to/2r5cf0h" rel="nofollow">http://amzn.to/2r5cf0h</a>
I like the philosophy of going out into the future and bringing it back into the present. I feel like a lot of startups are making an error in failing to do this.<p>For example, in the not-to-distant future, we won't need parking spaces. You'll just hail the self-driving car (or similar) using your phone. People won't own their own cars.<p>So if your startup is designed to help people get parking spaces, how much potential is it really going to have? Probably not much.<p>Similarly, the internet is transforming education. Information is everywhere. A startup focused on helping kids get into college feels a little shortsighted to me. It might provide a useful service to some people today in the context of present challenges, but there's no way it's going to turn into a unicorn.<p>Anything related to helping people find jobs is also probably a non-starter. Do you imagine a future in which we need everyone to contribute to the extent that it's worth paying them what today we would consider a "fair salary" for their labor? I certainly don't.<p>Take the salary part out of the job and maybe you have something. What about a platform for helping people find interesting ways to spend their time?<p>Take the college part out of education and all kinds of possibilities open up. For that matter, take the job training part out too. I've become pretty disgusted as Udacity, Coursera, and edX have gradually shifted toward teaching people "career skills." There are still some good MOOCs out there, but you have to wade through all the "learn these skills to make more money in your career" crap.<p>What about a platform to foster pure intellectual curiosity? That's what I was hoping these MOOCs would be.
6 powerful ideas that I took away from this:<p>1. Live in the future: If you live in the present your ideas are going to derived from the present, and therefore will be incremental. Paul graham points to a similar idea in his essay here <a href="http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html</a><p>2. Learn the rules and break them like pro: An important idea that says learn deeply about a field (industry or language or medium - whatever) before you go about breaking its rules. This is something that should be discussed more. On one hand, this implies that rules need to be broken carefully by understanding something very well. On the other hand, a certain "naivete" also has been proven to be successful (As he himself says in another portion of this talk). Requires more thinking...
I have to say that I have worked with two geniuses who changed industries (caused a "Disruption"), but while they were "outsiders" they understood the industry they were changing very deeply, and could point to very specific flaws in them (legacy rules) that were ready to be broken.<p>3. Scientists and engineers working together: I love this specific idea. He points to the Manhattan project and the Radar project as successful examples (and ofcourse, Xerox PARC itself). I also understand why OpenAI is organized the way it is -- they must have taken inspiration from Alan's ideas.<p>4. Progress is the only important thing: This is very similar to YC's idea of have a metric and grow it by X% week over week. One of the big things (IMHO) that YC cracked was to find way to fund hard tech problems, using this very specific idea that worked very well in software. Break a big problem into small parts and show progress on it every week/month/quarter etc. It is a simple and elegant way to think (and work).<p>5. Advance something very important: This idea is dedicating your life to an important goal / problem. This idea stirred me the most (for personal reasons). This especially rings true for me, esp when I meet someon who found "overnight success" after toiling aways at something for 10-15 years. This idea requires a lot of reflection. Alan says: "Fix big human problems"<p>6. Argue for clarity, not to win: An amazingly simple yet powerful message. So much of our interactions would be better if we (if I) did more of this.<p>3 Sidenotes:<p>a) I wish he had answered the question about "What caused the regression?" that someone asks (I think Sam) after watching a demo of an early "iPad" from the 1960s. It is really important to understand this. Elon Musk often says that tech advancements don't just happen automatically, some group of smart people need to work together to make it happen. I think something happens that governments, VCs, technologists stop working on advancing tech in some areas. Some of it is explained by lack of a "great adversary" (WW II, Cold War etc), but still it would be great to understand this very deeply. Thiel's famous book also talks about regression in tech, without fully explaining it. It is an important observation, that merits a deep discussion. I would be curious to hear what Alan says. Maybe @Sama can fill in (?)]<p>b) Special mentions to two ideas, not because of the ideas, but because how he puts them. a) "Fund people not projects" (basically how early stage funding works) - but Alan says, these are "artists are people who do their art because they must". And b) While talking about "build your own tools if you have the chops" he says "...Otherwise you are working the past on some vendor's bad idea of what computing is about". I love how he puts these thoughts across.<p>c) I recommend the video @_pius links to in the comments: it is called "the power of simplicity". One of the great Alan Kay talks.
Crossposting question from other thread: What's the "Visions: Cosmic and Romantic" that's referred to around 36 minutes into the video? Google doesn't turn up anything.
This is Alan Kay's best explanation of his "inventing the future" philosophy.<p>To make trillions the big companies of the world (Apple etc..) have to spend money on big ideas and invent whole new industries.<p>Apple is sitting on billions of dollars in cash overseas.