New Media Art - History - Alan Kay

“the best way to predict the future is to invent it�

                                                      Alan Kay

Alan Kay was born in Springfield Massachusetts. Kay had learned to read by the age of 3 and in 1961 when he was expelled from Bethany College he relied on his musical talents to make a living giving guitar lessons. Around this time Kay Joined the volunteer service and performed well on a computed programming test. As a result he was sent to work on an IBM 1401 by the U.S. Air force. After leaving the air force, Kay studied mathematics and molecular biology at the University of Colorado, graduating in 1966. After graduating he enrolled at the University of Utah in Electrical Engineering (Gasch, 1996).

Kay has a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Molecular Biology from the University of Colorado as well as a Master’s and PHD from the University of Utah (Wikipedia, 2004).

Alan Kay led what was considered one of the most influential and crucial advancements in computer and human interactivity. Indeed ‘Kay’s research took root in the conviction that hypermedia, or ‘dynamic media’ as he called in represented a profound departure from static media such as painting, television, photography, print publishing, and film. He saw in hypermedia the radical interactivity that would characterize communications in the future’ (Packer, 2000).

Bush was one of the first to represent objects in a computer as pictures, an idea that he extended further by developing the concept of object orientation. Kay found based on his research into human learning that by employing graphics, people found it easier to interact with the computer, heightening interactivity, another step towards multimedia and Multimedia Art (Gasch, 1996).

As a result of his research Kay developed the Graphical User Interface or GUI. Introducing the idea of iconic, graphical representations of computer functions, such as the folders, menus and overlapping windows found on today’s desktop computers (Packer, 2000).

He also developed the prototype of the first personal computer, the Dynabook was conceived as a very portable notebook sized computer which was capable of synthesizing all media, pictures, animation sound and text and was an extremely important conceptual step for multimedia technology (Packer, 2000).

To add to his accomplishments, during 1967-8 Kay also helped design Arpanet, the forerunner of the internet (and an important part of multimedia and multimedia art history)

In addition to his work on both the Arpanet and his concept of the Dynabook, Kay’s work at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre) in the early 70’s was the basis from which the Apple Macintosh’s look grew. Indeed he was head of one of several groups at PARC that created many of the components in modern computing including: the personal computer with bitmap display, over lapping windows, word processing and much more (Hewlitt Packard, 2002).

Bibliography & Further Reading

(2002)‘Alan Kay – Biography,’ Hewlett Packard Development Company, [Online], Available: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/feature_stories/2002/alankaybio.html [2004, October, 3].

(2004) ‘Alan Kay,’ Wikipedia – the free encyclopedia, [Online], Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay [2004, October, 12].

Gasch, S. (1996) ‘Alan Kay,’ [Online], Available: http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/GASCH.KAY.HTML [2004, October, 26].

Packer, R. (2000) ‘Alan Kay – Interface <1972>,’ Multimedia- From Wagner to Virtual Reality, [Online], Available: http://www.artmuseum.net/w2vr/timeline/Kay.html [2004, October, 12].

Lauren Porter 12:26, 9 Sep 2004 (EST)

Lauren Porter 10:03, 29 Oct 2004 (EST)