Portrait of Alan Kay.

Alan Kay

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.

Dynabook
Imagines a personal medium for learning and expression.
Smalltalk
Builds a world of objects that exchange messages.
Dynamic Thought
Makes a representation something you can change.
1940NOW

Alan Kay

Computer Scientist & Pioneer of Personal Dynamic Media

History of computing · Learning by making Start hereA Personal Computer for Children of All AgesThe Dynabook as a personal medium for learning, expression and exploration.Read the paper
1968

A computer to grow with

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.

1972

Children of all ages

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.

2008

Return to the questions

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?

Papers & recollections

Ideas & artefacts

Talks & demonstrations

Keep exploring

Return to the threadHistory of computing · Learning by making
Seymour PapertAn educational influence on the Dynabook conceptBret VictorA continuing inquiry into authorable dynamic mediaMarshall McLuhanConsider how the form of a medium changes what we can do
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