Alan Kay 昨天在 Hacker News 做了一次 AMA（无限制问答活动），有很多精彩的讨论。我想特地摘出一条。网友 guelo 问：您在一九七零年代构想未来的电脑时似乎很重视其教育功能，但今天显然电脑作为娱乐工具的角色超越了一切。「有没有什么介面可以引导大脑，让它尽量远离那些最糟糕的本能冲动，用到更有生产力的地方？」
Kay 答曰（为帮助大家了解背景，我在译文里加了三个链接和注释）：
We were mostly thinking of ‘human advancement’ or as Engelbart’s group termed it ‘Human Augmentation’—this includes education along with lots of other things. I remember noting that if Moore’s Law were to go a decade beyond 1995 (Moore’s original extrapolation) that things like television and other ‘legal drugs’ would be possible. We already had a very good sense of this before TV things were possible from noting how attractive early video games—like SpaceWar—were. This is a part of an industrial civilization being able to produce surpluses (the ‘industrial’ part) with the ‘civilization’ part being how well children can be helped to learn not to give into the cravings of genetics in a world of over-plenty. This is a huge problem in a culture like the US in which making money is rather separated from worrying about how the money is made.
（当时我们思考的主要是「人类的进化」，或者用 (Doug) Engelbart 小组的说法，「人类的增强」——这包括教育，但也包括很多别的东西。我记得当时有想，如果摩尔定律在一九九五年之后还能继续前进十年（摩尔原本的发想），类似电视和其它「合法毒品」一类的东西就会成为可能（译者：这里是指在计算设备上成为可能）。看到早期的电脑游戏有多好玩后（例如 Spacewar），我们就知道一定会这样，虽然当时电视之类的东西还没出现。（译者：也是指尚未在电脑上出现。）这就是工业文明生产盈余的体现（「工业」就是这个意思），而「文明」则是指电脑可以如何帮助小朋友在一个过度丰富的世界学习对抗基因本能带来的欲望。这一点对于美国这样的文化是个大问题——我们基本把赚钱和如何赚钱这两件事分割开来了。）
还能说什么呢？Alan thought about these 30 years ago，而今天，王路先生认为品味很大程度上由基因决定。
紧接着，网友 stcredzero 问了关于音乐有没有可能从现在的「游戏化」机制（gamification）里取经，而游戏化机制本身会不会有更正向的、用以提升人类智性活动效能的用法。Kay 给了一个非常古典，但毫不过时的回答：
I certainly don’t think of music along these lines. Or even theater. I like developed arts of all kinds, and these require learning on the part of the beholder, not just bones tossed at puppies.
（我当然不会从这个角度去想音乐。戏剧也不会。我喜欢各类艺术，观看艺术需要学习，这不是一个给小狗丢骨头的过程。）