Some excerpts from recent Alan Kay emails
There's an interesting book on the topic discussed in these emails, entitled "Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned":http://amzn.to/2CtIrRRThere's a YouTube talk by the author on the subject here:https://youtu.be/dXQPL9GooyIThe rough idea is this:- creativity often arises by stumbling around in a problem space, or in operating "randomly" under an artificially-imposed constraint- modern life is obsessed with metrics and goal-setting, and this has extended into creative pursuits including science, research, and business- sometimes, short-term focus on the goal defeats the goal-given aims (see e.g. shareholder value focus)- the authors point out that when they were researching artificial intelligence, they discovered that systems that focused too much on an explicitly-coded "objective" would end up producing lackluster results, but systems that did more "playful" exploration within a problem space produced more creative results- using this backdrop, the authors suggest perhaps innovation is not driven by narrowly focused heroic effort and is instead driven by serendipitous discovery and playful creativityI found the ideas compelling, as I do find Kay's description of the "art" behind research.