While there's no question that some of Alan Kay's achievements are very important, I cannot help but thinking that our industry's tendency to surrender to 'fanism' (e.g: douglas crockford, linus torvalds) - is ridiculous.
Learning the educated insights from the brilliant minds in history is not 'fanism', it's benefiting and building off their experiences and is what Alan refers to when he says: "Point of view is worth 80 IQ points"
In his talk he uses Leonardo Da Vinci who despite being one of the smartest people in existence wasn't able to invent a motor for any of his machines, a feat accomplished by a less capable Mr Ford who did it en-masse.
Not learning from history is one of the reasons why the state of the industry is where it's at today.
I never said "Alan is the most important person alive in Computer Science" (though he's obviously a contender)
And I have no regrets over the title "The Deep Insights of Alan Kay"...
Alan has generated a wealth of intellect, experience and insights in his works that most IT people still don't know about or even know who he is. The objective of the post is to bring some of his meaningful and powerful ideas to the surface and summarize them so it's more palatable and more accessible to more people - I think the title accurately captures this.
