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Alan Kay

b: , May 17, 1940

Alan Curtis Kay is an American computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design, and for coining the phrase, "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." He is the president of the Viewpoints Research Institute, and an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also on the advisory board of TTI/Vanguard. Until mid 2005, he was a Senior Fellow at HP Labs, a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University, and an Adjunct Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

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Any medium powerful enough to extend man’s reach is powerful enough to topple his world. To get the medium’s magic to work for one’s aims rather than against them is to attain literacy.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first.

Humans are communications junkies. We just can't get enough.

In success there's a tendency to keep on doing what you were doing.

It [the computer] is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools.

Simple things should be simple. Complex things should be possible.

Some people worry that artificial intelligence will make us feel inferior, but then, anybody in his right mind should have an inferiority complex every time he looks at a flower.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.

The world owes you nothing. It was here first.