From Tuesdays New York Times. (Strange it's still Monday on the west  
coast).

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/26/technology/26COMP.html

Alan Kay, a personal computing innovator who was a leader of Xerox's  
pioneering Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970's, has joined  
Hewlett-Packard as a senior researcher.

His arrival at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, which the company is  
announcing today, comes at a time when the company is hoping that  
research can point to new markets in personal computing and give the  
company an edge against Dell Computer — the pacesetter in today's  
personal computer business and a company known more for operational  
excellence than product innovation.

Hiring Dr. Kay is an investment in Hewlett-Packard's innovation  
strategy. Throughout his career, Dr. Kay has worked on the design  
concepts and underlying technology to improve the interaction between  
people and computers. In the late 1960's, when computing was done on  
room-size mainframe computers, Dr. Kay described a concept computer he  
called the Dynabook. It would weigh little more than a book; rest on  
the user's lap; and come with a flat-panel screen, a keyboard and a  
stylus, since it would recognize handwriting. It would communicate  
wirelessly.

The computer industry has been pursuing the Dynabook ever since. The  
recently introduced Tablet PC models, made by PC companies like  
Hewlett-Packard and running Microsoft software, is the latest entry.

At the Xerox research center, better known as PARC, Dr. Kay led the  
team that put a graphics-capable display, overlapping windows, icons  
and a point-and-click user interface into a working computer called the  
Alto. Apple's Macintosh and Microsoft's Windows are descendants of the  
Alto.

Dr. Kay and a few PARC colleagues, notably Dan Ingalls and Adele  
Goldberg, also developed Smalltalk, an influential programming language  
that uses blocks of code, known as objects, that are put together, like  
the cells that make up the human body, to build applications.

At Hewlett-Packard, Dr. Kay, who is 62, intends to continue pursuing  
his goal of improving the experience of computing. "The goal is to show  
what the next big relationship between people and computing is likely  
to be," Dr. Kay said in an interview.

The best way to do that, Dr. Kay explained, is to build prototypes that  
will "show ideas in motion."

"The trick for a person like me," he added, "is that you get people  
most excited by something that looks like a product. And I'm betting  
that some of it will be interesting to H.P."

With the PC business in the doldrums, many executives and analysts say  
they believe that the industry is entering maturity. Dr. Kay disagrees.  
Personal computing, he insisted, is "ripe for new markets — I don't  
think the real computing revolution has happened yet."

Dr. Kay declined to discuss his ideas precisely. Starting at Xerox  
PARC, he has focused on trying to make computing an engaging medium for  
play and learning, and he has often worked with children. After PARC,  
Dr. Kay held research positions at Atari, Apple and Disney, where his  
five-year contract ended in September 2001. Since then, he has worked  
mainly at a nonprofit organization he helped found, the Viewpoints  
Research Institute, which seeks to find ways to use computing to  
improve education for children as well as their understanding of  
complex systems like software.

Since he left Disney, Dr. Kay has been approached by other technology  
companies besides Hewlett-Packard. But the person who recruited him at  
Hewlett-Packard, Patrick Scaglia, who heads Internet and computing  
platforms research, had studied under the same professor, Dave Evans,  
at the University of Utah, which was a wellspring of early computer  
graphics research.

"Ultimately, it comes down to the vibes and trust," Dr. Kay said of his  
decision to join Hewlett-Packard.
...
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John M. McIntosh <johnmci at smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
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