[Cuis-dev] Inventing the next Licklider

[Luciano Notarfrancesco]

Hi Casey,
I’m not sure I’ve read the paper you’re talking about, could you please
post a link?
Thanks,
Luciano

On Sun, 9 Jan 2022 at 12:30 PM Casey Ransberger via Cuis-dev <
cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st> wrote:

> This is still somewhat off-topic but I don’t care about that anymore.
>
> There are a preponderance of people here who can understand Alan’s paper
> and we have very limited time to make use of his insights.
>
> Also, look, I understand that hero-worship doesn’t jive with what we think
> or what we do. I understand why my call for ideas about how to “create the
> next Licklider” has been rejected on general principle. This crap with the
> next “person X” is bloody tiresome.
>
> We have maybe ten years to sort ourselves out. Alan’s paper is worth
> reading, but really: what are *we* going to do, as a global community, to
> address these concerns?
>
> If we are to be the inheritors of the Smalltalk legacy, if that’s how we
> want to style ourselves as a community: how many of us have read the PDF
> file Alan Kay has been circulating?
>
> Can we pull our heads out of our asses and save our species? Because the
> clock is ticking.
>
> I came to Cuis because Juan understood the goals behind Smalltalk. We had
> a good time cutting Squeak 3 down to size. After I’d shipped Squeak 4.
>
> We’re out of time. The solution isn’t computer science. Maybe computer
> scientists can contribute to the ultimate solution that ensures our
> grandchildren will still have a planet.
>
> Please, do whatever you can.
>
> —Casey
>
> > On Jan 1, 2022, at 8:51 PM, Casey Ransberger <bahweep at icloud.com> wrote:
> >
> > We’re in an emergency.
> >
> > I’m not talking about the Pandemic.
> >
> > There was an amazing person once who probably coulda licked the problem.
> (Sorry.) Just knocked it out. He assembled a huge team of incredibly
> curious do-ers, people who said #doIt: a lot.
> >
> > One of the things we got out of it was the internet, which I used to
> find the other thing we got out of it, Smalltalk.
> >
> > I think maybe we spend too much effort trying to groom “the next Alan
> Kay” (and mostly without funding.) My view at last is that we were looking
> for the wrong person. Tap a community with polymaths in it and you’ll find
> a replacement for Alan Kay; what we need now is someone who can find the
> research funding for “people, not projects” and this person has been
> elusive.
> >
> > We probably have a decade (if we’re lucky) to identify and support a
> suitable replacement for JCR Licklider before our species is on an
> inevitable road to extinction. With each passing day, that person has less
> time to work with.
> >
> > So I posit this question: how do we forster, shepherd, and above all
> *teach* a human to think like Lick did? How do we fund it?
> >
> > I’m starting to get the idea in my head that we’re dead without a
> well-funded thought leader and I’m disinclined that it should be anyone
> with smaller ideas that Licklider’s.
> >
> > Sorry if this seems off topic, but I promise you that if you read
> enough, it isn’t. We’re arguably a splinter group created when ARPA became
> DARPA and funding for individual scientists dried up.
> >
> > We still have a whole planet to rescue. How should we go about that?
> >
> > —Casey
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