Alan Kay: Doing with Images Makes Symbols

I have to thank Michael Berman for sharing a link in this comment to a 1987 video featuring Alan Kay discussing the history of computer interface design. It’s really an excellent history lesson in the development of human interfaces for computers. He discusses Ivan Sutherland‘s groundbreaking Sketchpad, Douglas Engelbart’s Mother of All Demos, the FLEX Machine,  Seymour Papert’s LOGO, the RAND tablet and  Smalltalk. It’s really compelling to listen to Kay frame these various developments so clearly and intelligently. This video is gem if you want a  solid history of human intereaction with computers from the 1960s through the early 1980s.