Alan Kay

Alan Kay

Alan Curtis Kay (born May 17, 1940) 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).

Read more about Alan Kay:  Early Life and Work, Recent Work and Recognition

Famous quotes containing the words alan and/or kay:

    Power lasts ten years; influence not more than a hundred.
    Korean proverb, quoted in Alan L. Mackay, The Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1977)

    However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.
    —Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)