The laptop turns 35 As the laptop turns 35, we look at the past, present and future of portable computing with Dr. Alan Kay, the industry pioneer who first envisioned the concept of a portable...

One of the true luminaries of personal computing, Alan Kay conceived of laptops and graphical interfaces years before they were realized. At XeroxPARC, Apple, HP and Disney, he has developed tools for improving the mind. Why you should listen "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

Dynabook Alan Kay is an American computer scientist, known for his early pioneering work on computers, object-oriented programming and windowing graphical user interface design. Alan Curtis Kay was born on May 17, 1940, in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Alan Kay is considered by some as the “father of personal computers” because he envisioned a small computing system in the 1970’s, long before notebook computers were available. The One Laptop per Child program and the Children’s Machine have adopted his concepts about children and learning.

Alan Kay's evening talk is entitled Learners, Powerful ideas, and the $100 Laptop. He says that he's never found the right order for the ideas in the title. Computer companies in the 1960s thought Moore's law meant that they'd get higher margins.