"User Interface: A Personal View" [1989]

"...the actual dawn of user interface design first happened when computer designers finally noticed, not just that end users had functioning minds, but that a better understanding of how those minds worked would completely shift the paradigm of interaction." (Alan Kay)

Influenced by Douglas Engelbart's demonstration of NLS in 1968 which featured the debut of the mouse, Alan Kay was the leader in the design of the GUI.

Douglas Carl Engelbart - The mind behind (NLS) - On-line System, a computing system that used a mouse with a computer screen, could send email, write text, etc. - influenced Alan Kay. About the Bootstrap Alliance, biography, career, and research. NLS was the second computer system connected to the ARPANET

The Demo [1968] -Douglas Engelbart
video demonstration of NLS - broken down into many small segments. Requires Real Media Player.

"...Kay synthesized these influences into what is considered the most crucial advancement of human-computer interactivity, the graphical user interface (GUI). Kay developed the idea of iconic, graphical representations of computing functions - the folders, menus, and overlapping windows found on the desktop..." (Randall Packer & Ken Jordan)

"It (the computer) is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools. " (Alan Kay)

"McLuhan's claim that the printing press was the dominant force that transformed the hermeneutic Middle Ages into our scientific society should not be taken too lightly - especially because the main point is that the press didn't do it just by making books more available, it did it by changing the thought patterns of those who learned to read.

...What McLuhan was saying is that if the personal computer is a truly new medium then the very use of it would actually change the thought patterns of an entire civilization." (Alan Kay)

Marshal McLuhan's Understanding Media: the Extensions of Man [1964], Kay realized that the computer is a medium, not just a tool or vehicle. Contains the first part of the book including, "The Medium Is The Message".

From psychologist Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner Kay believes that the computer is a medium and it must be learn by children if they are to succeed at a high level. It is easier for people to begin learning at an early age. Bruner also convinced Kay (through studies with children) that learning takes place in the following order:

Modeless Interaction

Having multiple windows on the screen at the same time was a good way to encourage creativity, problem solving, and keep the users focus. Multiple windows made the system modeless - meaning the user did not have to go backwards hierarchically to work in a different program i.e. switching from a text editor to a paint program by just clicking on the paint window.

Smalltalk, an object oriented computer language by Alan Kay, was created with modeless in mind. An example includes a simple text editor that allowed users to insert text into a middle of a sentence.

Visual Design for the User Interface
As We May Think - by Vannavar Bush. Online version
Alan Kay | Interface [1972]
The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet - From Educom 1998
Kay argues that we are still thinking of computers in terms of pager and until we fully understand its capabilities and are literate as to what the computer language is, the revolution has yet to begin. Requires Real Media Player.
Xerox PARC - Palo Alto Research Center
The Dynabook Revisited - Kay's answer to the replacement of the book.
Welcome To Squeakland
Squeak.org

Lynn Hershman

"The Fantasy Beyond Control" [1990]

B.C. - Before Computers and A.D. After Digital

"Despite some theories to the contrary, it is presumed that making art is active and viewing art is passive. Radical developments in communication technology, such as the marriage of image, sound, text, computers and interactivity, have challenged this assumption." (Lynn Hershman)

teknolust
lynnhershman.com
Art Museum - Hershman
ROBERTA BREITMORE NAMED NATIONAL CHAIRWOMAN
Myron Krueger Responsive
Setting Up An Interactive Videodisc

Television vs. Computer

"... a remedievalizing tribal influence at best. The intensely interactive and involving nature of the personal computer seemed an antiparticle that could annihilate the passive boredom invoked by the television. But it also promised to surpass the book to bring about a new kind of renaissance by going beyond static representations to dynamic simulation." (Alan Kay)

"Television is a medium that is by its nature fragmentary, incomplete, distanced and unsatisfying, similar to platonic sex. A precondition of a video dialogue is that it does not talk back. Rather, it exists as a moving stasis, a one-sided discourse, a trick mirror that absorbs rather than reflects." (Lynn Hershman)

Interactive Technology

"As interactive technology is increasingly visible in many areas of society the public impact is spectacular. Traditional narratives are being restructured. As a result, people feel a greater need to personally participate in the discobery of values that affect and order their lives, to dissolve the division that separates them from control, freedom; replacing longing, nostalgia and emptiness with a sense of identity, purpose and hope." (Hershman)

Human Art Composer