Greate Insight from Alan Kay

Proverb: In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Rober Heinlein: In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is in for a hell of a rough time.

Alan Kay talks about how his version summarizes much of human history.

Alan Kay: In the country of the blind, the one-eyed people run things, and the two-eyed people are in for a rough time! His view of how this works is that the two-eyed people come up with a glorious symphony of how life will be so much deeper and richer if we just did X. The regular world acts as a low pass filter on the ideas. In the end, we are lucky to get a dial tone. The blind won't see it and the one-eyed people only catch a glimpse but they think their glimpse is the whole thing. In our day and age, they think that money can be made from a glimpse, something will happen. They want to sell to the mass market of the blind so they will water the glimpse down much farther. It could be educators who help the blind learn how to see. This is what science has done for the entire human race, but learning is a chore, so most are not interested especially marketing people. This is too bad especially when we consider the efforts that the two-eyed people have to go through to even have a glimpse happen. One of the keys is for the two-eyed people to turn into evangelists. Both Ted and Doug Englebert were tireless over their lifetime in pointing out that in this dial-tone world the Emperor not only has no clothes, but his cellphone can't transmit real music.

Source: Alan Kay's tribute to Ted Nelson at "Intertwingled" Festival