When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world.
Alan KayThe protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or like a language to be shaped and exploited.
Alan KayPerl is another example of filling a tiny, short-term need, and then being a real problem in the longer term.
Alan KayBad User on Device is a medium that can dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many tools. It is the first metamedium, and as such it has degrees of freedom for representation and expression never before encountered and as yet barely investigated.
Alan Kay