Inventor of Dynamic Media
A computer scientist who imagined a personal medium for children of all ages. A place to read, draw, model and make ideas come alive.
Computer Scientist & Pioneer of Personal Dynamic Media
Kay’s Dynabook concept gave personal computing an educational ambition. The Computer History Museum connects his early mockup to the learning theories of Jerome Bruner and Seymour Papert.
The imagined machine would be something a person could learn through and create with. Its importance lay in the possibilities of the medium as much as its portable form.
A Personal Computer for Children of All Ages sets out the Dynabook vision through examples of learners using a personal computer. Reading, writing, drawing and modelling belong together.
At Xerox PARC, Kay worked with colleagues in the Learning Research Group on Smalltalk and interactive computing. The work was collective: a language, its environment, and the ways people could use it developed together.
In his Computer History Museum oral history, Kay looks back at the people and ideas behind his work. The account is a route beyond a list of inventions into the questions the research was trying to answer.
Read the early paper beside that recollection. What can today’s personal computers make easy to express, and what kinds of thought do they still make unnecessarily difficult?
1972 · Alan Kay · Original paper
The Dynabook as a personal medium for learning, expression and exploration.Read the paper2008 · Interview by Dag Spicer · CHM
Kay looks back on the people and research that shaped his work.Read the transcript1977 · Alan Kay & Adele Goldberg
Read PDF1993 · Alan Kay · Original paper at CHM
Read PDF1989 · Alan Kay · Original essay
Read PDF
Seymour PapertAn educational influence on the Dynabook concept
Bret VictorA continuing inquiry into authorable dynamic media
Marshall McLuhanConsider how the form of a medium changes what we can do