Alan Kay: "In 1968 I saw two or three things
that sort of changed my whole notion of computing. The way we
had been thinking about it was sort of Doug Englebart's view that
the mainframe was like a railroad, owned by an institution that
decided what you could do and when you could do it. Englebart
was trying to be like Henry Ford. A personal computer as it was
thought of in the sixties was like an automobile. In 1968 I saw
Seymour Papert's first work with kids and LOGO, and I saw the
first really great handwriting character recognition system at
Rand. It's a fabulous system. And that had a huge influence on
me because it had an intimate feel. When I combined that with
the idea that kids had to use it, the concept of a computer because
something much more like a supermedium. Something more like a
superpaper."