Founder School Session: The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental

Alan Kay spoke about it length in many of his talks. For example: [VIDEO] Excellent video. I highly recommend everyone working in or with IT to see it. I think he is right. PCs and smartphone are mostly recreating thing from the past, and not the best things either. However, this isn't because we invented everything there is to invent. It has more to do with how research in computing is currently funded and how companies approach invention and innovation.

>He thinks that you can just design something nice from whole cloth and people will use it. Because that's exactly what they did in Xerox Park, many times over. >That's why his designs aren't deployed. No comment. >But he's basically confusing research and engineering, as if engineering wasn't even a thing, and you can just come up with stuff and have people use it because it's good. Kay has many talks about the difference between invention and innovation (which are much better terms than ones you're using). In fact, his analysis of this difference is probably the most insightful and though-provoking technology talk I have ever seen: [VIDEO] Of course, this subject makes a lot of developers highly uncomfortable, hence a lot of shallow, ignorant, knee-jerk dismissals. "Everything is incremental." "Everything is the only way it could be." "This is fine." And so on. Thing is, Kay worked at Xerox and Apple. He read a myriad of books and research papers on computing, which he constantly references in his talks and writings. He worked and continues to work with some of the most forward-thinking people in the field of computing. In late eighties he foresaw most of the current computing trends - which is verifiable via YouTube. Even without any context his talks display a considerable depth of thought. In short: unlike some people, he actually knows what he is talking about. >The point is that it couldn't have been any different. It wasn't designed; it was evolved. And that is why so

This slow reading idea also jives with Alan Kay's observation of "Slow Deep Thinking" which allowed us to have massive & non-incremental leaps into the future. [LINK] Video by Kay which goes into more depth: [VIDEO]

Wow that's exactly how I feel. I couldn't even formulate it that well. But I'm very happy to know that other people feel this itch as well. Your sentiment of "aiming for the future we want" instead of "piling up more stuff on our existing stack" reminded me very much of this talk: [VIDEO]

I'd like to argue something contrarian in this thread: you could be on the right path. Some facts to keep in mind: - There are on the order of 20,000 new startups each year; most of the other people in this thread are from this pool. - Only 2-5 of those 20,000 startups will end up mattering (i.e., will reach a high enough valuation/impact on the world to move a needle). - Of these 2-5 startups that matter per year, almost none of them were pivots (Twitter is LoudCloud are the only examples I can think of). - The conventional wisdom is to take an incremental idea and run with it; "ideas don't matter and execution is everything"; run sprints and use the Lean Startup methodology to pull the market out of an idea (or pivot), and reach a local maxima. - This will only get you the result that 20,000 startups a year typically get: incrementalism, small victories, and/or failure. - There's also lottery ticket mentality to this conventional style of thinking: you're no different than anyone else, so stop ideating and start doing, and maybe you'll get lucky. If you've been at it for a year and haven't found anything good enough to give your life to, it could mean you are different than the average HNer. It could mean you have a calling to think bigger than most people do. Here is some material you may be interested in which bolsters this viewpoint: - Alan Kay's "The Future Doesn't Have to be Incremental": [VIDEO] - Peter Thiel's book Zero to One . Among other things, this book discusse

It's amusing that the same optical illusion has been discussed by Michael Abrash [LINK] and Alan Kay [VIDEO] in talks on very different topics recently. > Thomas Paine said in Common Sense , instead of having the king be the law, why, we can have the law be the king. That was one of the biggest shifts, large scale shifts in history because he realised "hey, we can design a better society than tradition has and we can put it into law; so, we're just going to invert thousands of years of beliefs". Pfft, tell that to the 13th-century Venetians: [LINK] . Constitutionalism isn't that new an idea.

My takeaway is the opposite—you buy Glass to buy Glass. A wearable computer with 1 hour battery life isn't practical, any your expectations won't be met, but you can be closer to the future so that you invent appropriately. Think problem-oriented vs. idea/tool-oriented mindset, illustrated by Alan Kay in his talk The Future Doesn't Have to Be Incremental: [VIDEO] . As you surround yourself with tools of the future, you can think of problems and solutions no one else sees (problem-finding as opposed to -solving).

Why did I get down-voted? I answered the question and added a little humor. "Innovation" is not analogous to "invention". (Here's Alan Kay on the subject: [VIDEO] ) TLDW: Technological adoption follows patterns of consumption like fashion. When we talk about "innovation" we're really talking about technologies that succeed in the marketplace and were successfully adopted by society. Over the last decade we've seen major tech growth in two areas: mobile computing (computers as fashion accessories) and social networks. Both happen to be areas where youth culture has historically served a role as early adopters. If you're looking for historical perspective to figure out when 20 somethings were given the keys to the tech kingdom, it happened over the last decade when tech companies started using youth culture to drive consumption and "innovation". Why do we need companies full of 20 year olds? 1) Because 20 year olds develop products for other 20 year olds. Most of them don't have the experience, wisdom or maturity to do anything else and they are fundamentally still trying to please each other and define themselves as a generation. 2) 20 year olds have a ton of energy, health and are willing to work ridiculous hours on bad code for lower pay. 3) Making millionaires out of a few 20 somethings every year helps feed the fire.