One Point of View: The Power Of the Context

Abstract

I have long been an enthusiastic appreciator of great ideas in many genres-ranging from graphic, musical, and theatrical arts to mathematics, science, and engineering. I got lot of early encouragement from my artistic and musical mother and my scientist father. In fact, my best insights have come from odd takes on ideas around me-more like rotations of point of view than incremental progressions. For example, many of strongest aspects of my object-oriented ideas are based on philosophy, mathematics, biology, and computing in early 1960s. I got my start in computing with my colleague and friend, wonderful and generous Ed Cheadle, who got me deeply involved in building a little desk-top machine-the FLEX machine-that we called personal computer. Many later ideas were adapted from lively ARPA interactive-computing community and cosmic visions of Licklider, Taylor, Engelbart, Clark, Evans, Shaw, Ellis, and many others, about mancomputer symbiosis and intergalactic networks. My interest in children's education came from visit to Seymour Papert's early classroom experiments with EOGO. Adding in Marshall McLuhan led me to make an analogy to history of printed books-hence idea of notebook-sized, wireless-networked personal computer for children of all ages. The special quality of computers is their ability to simulate arbitrary descriptions rapidly, and real computer revolution will not take place until children learn to read, write, argue, and think in this powerful new way. The romance of that idea has driven all of my subsequent research. Immersed in ARPA Dream All of this was catalyzed when I was immersed in ARPA dream at University of Utah-what I call the power of context. One of greatest works of art during that fruitful period of ARPA/PARC research in 1960s and 1970s was almost invisible context and community that catalyzed energies of many researchers, making them better dreamers and thinkers. That it was great work of art is confirmed by worldchanging results that followed so swiftly. That it was almost invisible, in spite of its tremendous success, is revealed by disheartening fact that, as far as I'm aware, no government or company is doing edge-of-theart research based on these principles. Of course, I would like to be shown that I'm wrong on this last point. When I think of ARPA/PARC, I think first of good will, even before brilliant people. Dave Evans, my advisor, mentor, and friend, had amazing ability to act as though his graduate students were incredible thinkers. Only fools ever let him find out otherwise! 1 really do owe my career to Dave, and I learned from him most of what I think is important. Therefore, my part of this prize is dedicated to him. (Is it just coincidence that Dave was also Butler Lampson's advisor when they were both at Berkeley?) Good will and assumption that graduate students were world-class researchers who didn't have Ph.D.s yet was general rule throughout ARPA community. If one made pilgrimage to Doug Engelbart's diggings in Menlo Park, Bill English, co-inventor of mouse, would drop what he was doing to show visiting junior researchers everything. Later at PARC, Bill went completely out of his way to help me set up my research group. On our first visit to Lincoln Labs ARPA project, we students were greeted by principal investigator Bert Sutherland, who couldn't have been happier to see us or more interested in showing us around. Not too many years later Bert was my lab manager at Xerox PARC. A visit to Carnegie Mellon University in those days led to Bill Wulf, terrific systems designer who loved not only his own students but also students from elsewhere. A few simple principles administered with considerable purity made all of this work. It is no exaggeration to say that ARPA/PARC had visions rather than goals and funded people rather than projects. …