b. 1940 · American computer scientist · Xerox PARC, Smalltalk & the personal computer · 2003 Turing Award
Alan Kay is an American computer scientist central to the invention of the modern personal computer, object-oriented programming (Smalltalk) and the graphical user interface during his years at Xerox PARC. He dates the maxim “The best way to predict the future is to invent it” to a 1971 PARC planning meeting, and it became a rallying cry for building the future rather than forecasting it. The idea’s earliest documented voice, however, is physicist Dennis Gabor, who wrote in 1963 that “the future cannot be predicted, but futures can be invented.”