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August 2, 2007

The Future's A. Kay

In discussing past lives with a new colleague, I found that he worked (back in the day) at Atari, with, of all folks, Alan Kay (who knew Alan was at Atari?!?).

In any case, it reminded me of one of my all-time favorite quotes, uttered by the aformentioned Mr. Kay:

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

There's a boldness there that rarely fails to get my blood pumping.

But its occurred to me: Alan's expression is also a rather clever, oh-so-polite and positive (if slightly passive aggressive) way for a technologist to say: "When I want your opinion, I'll give it you" (think about it) - no wonder I like it so much :)

How about you guys in the peanut gallery? Any favorite sayings that spin on multiple axes of rotation?

22 comments:

metamerist said...

Oh, all right...

If they can qualify as spinning on multiple axes of rotation, my favorites are ambiguous job recommendations (such as these).

"All in all, I cannot say enough good things about this candidate or recommend him too highly."

The Kay quote reminds me of an alleged Henry Ford quote:

"If I had asked them what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

Also: Strange coincidence. I recently learned Kay was at Atari too... after striking up a convo an ex-colleague of his at a cafe in Medocino on July 4th.

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