Alan Kay's Views on Computers in Schools

Key points summarizing Alan Kay's views on computers in schools, drawn from his interviews, writings (e.g., "Powerful Ideas Need Love Too!" in 1995), and talks over the decades:

Computers are tools, not magic solutions
                The computer is simply an instrument whose music is ideas. Knowledge and real intellectual growth aren't stored in the machine itself; it's a medium for powerful thinking, but only when used with deep ideas and skilled guidance.
       

The piano analogy
                Putting a piano in every classroom won't create a developed music culture, because the music lives in people (musicians), not the instrument. Similarly, placing computers in every school doesn't automatically improve education or foster deep learning — schools often lack ideas for meaningful use.
       

Tokenism and superficial adoption
                Schools frequently have few real plans for computers beyond access. This leads to "tokenism" where tech is present but underused, much like having abundant books or pencils without improving reading or math skills.
       

"Chopsticks culture" risk
                Without proper support (e.g., retraining teachers as "musicians" in ideas/computing), kids might just tinker playfully ("piano by bricolage" or chopsticks-style playing), creating superficial engagement rather than genuine growth or new ways of thinking.
       

Sad observations in classrooms
                Kay has described visiting "computerized classrooms" where everyone seems happy and engaged, but closer inspection shows little that's intellectually stimulating or truly growth-promoting — more like "junk food" technology: enjoyable but lacking nutrition.
       

The real barrier is adults' imaginations
                The biggest obstacle to better education with computers is the completely impoverished imaginations of most adults (teachers, administrators, policymakers), who fail to envision or implement profound, idea-centered uses inspired by thinkers like Seymour Papert.

No revolution yet
Despite decades of promises (from the 1970s Dynabook vision onward), the educational technology "revolution" hasn't truly happened because focus stays on hardware/access rather than cultivating powerful ideas, contexts for growth, and teacher expertise in using computers as a new medium for thinking.
       

        These critiques remain relevant, as Kay has consistently argued that computers could enable revolutionary learning (e.g., simulating, modeling, inventing knowledge), but only with visionary, human-centered approaches — not just more devices.

The only time I've had to do phone activation is for activating Terminal Service Licenses for Citrix clusters in enterprise. I wonder if that will also be affected or not.

Also he told me that back in the day a live band was paid well, but now live bands barely find any work for weddings, and if they do barely get paid anything.

My dad's a retired photographer. He told me that, back in the day, for a wedding the photographer got paid well, and the DJ barely got paid anything. But today, it's switched, the photographer barely gets paid anything, and the DJ demands a huge fee.

It's important to know every "high level behavior" of what your code is doing.

For example, even if you write a simple "Hello World" app, there's many layers of processing. Even if you write your "Hello World" app in assembler, there's a ton of various OS subsystems and hardware firmwares and microcontrollers involved. But at the end of the day, you trust your OS and hardware, and understand that your "Hello World" app will most likely just output "Hello World", but there's a always possibility of rare quirks. For example if a solar flare happens when you run your Hello World app, and the solar flare interrupts a boolean logic operation, then your "Hello World" app crashes, which is generally accepted as it's rare.

But if you don't understand the "high level behavior", then that's a problem.

Claude AI Prompt:
For the attached code, justify and explain the code.
Remove unnecessary code, inconsistent code style, imaginary API usage, comments serving as LLM prompts, or other indications of AI-generated output.

For me, as an adult, I found that taking vitamin D, and magnesium threonate really helps with my memory and speed. I remember a CS teacher of mine said that for me, I was the opposite of most other students. I would be the first student to quickly grasp algorithms, and make connections and such, but I needed to improve on my code organization and syntax. One job I had a coworker that was the other way around, as he had a dual major in CS and English. We worked great together. I would come up with elegant ideas, and he would help organize them.

I always struggled with timed tests. I had a lot of childhood trauma living in section 8 housing and my family being a victim of many various crimes at a very young age, so I've always had a ton of anxiety. I was that kid in the hallway still doing my advanced math test in the hallway as I needed 3 times the time to finish, but always got an A. I also was afraid of submitting any answer unless I checked it forwards, backwards, and thought of multiple ways of solving it. In my real job I'm an IT architect\engineer. I have worked on systems that affect 100s of millions of people. I also worked on hospital systems, where messing up IT could affect real people lives. You want someone like me who takes time to triple check before risking peoples lives, or causing millions of dollars in outages or data loss.

For example, the original version of Lil Nas X - Old Town Road, without Billy Ray Cyrus, is completely missing from the internet.

If connected to the internet, wouldn't the below stop 99% of these issues:
Auth1: restrict connections by source IPv4 or IPv6 of the vendor (if vendor managed). The customer could add their own HQ IPv4 or IPv6 source addresses.
Auth2: require a legit client certificate when connecting to them that's signed by the vendor (if vendor managed). The customer could also add their own client cert from their internal CA.
Auth3: require username\password

Only if all 3 auth layers pass can you connect.

I research various human cellular pathways and treatments as a hobby.

AI seems to not "piece" ideas together.

For example, let's say:
* paper #1 suggests that compound X activates pathway A
* paper #2 suggests that activation of pathway A will then also activate pathway B.

If I ask AI, what compounds activate pathway B, it is very unlikely to tell me compound X as a possibility.
(bringing together research from both papers)

In the example, giving $8.10 makes sense in case they want change of a quarter, instead of a dime and a nickel (along with the dime already in their pocket). Most people rather have larger value coins than an array of a bunch of small value coins. A handful of dozens of pennies in change would be rather annoying to most people.

AI will probably decrease menial\redundant work, and will probably actually increase jobs, as organizations will just demand more. Similar to what the invention of spreadsheets did to the accountant field.

How The Electronic Spreadsheet Revolutionized Business
https://www.npr.org/2015/02/27...
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GOLDSTEIN: When the software hit the market under the name VisiCalc, Sneider became the first registered owner, spreadsheet user number one. The program could do in seconds what it used to take a person an entire day to do. This of course, poses a certain risk if your job is doing those calculations. And in fact, lots of bookkeepers and accounting clerks were replaced by spreadsheet software. But the number of jobs for accountants? Surprisingly, that actually increased. Here's why - people started asking accountants like Sneider to do more.

SNEIDER: You could play the what-if game, you know, what if I did this instead of that?
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I don't understand why anyone doesn't get a perfect score on the ACT test. I took it as a kid, and it was long, but very easy. SAT on the other hand has questions that you wouldn't know in real life. For the SAT they might as well be asking you what's 1,000 digits of pie, that is something you wouldn't know unless you studied for it.