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“Knowing more than your own field is really helpful in [thinking creatively]. I’ve always thought that one of the reasons the 1960s were so interesting is that nobody was a computer scientist back then. Everybody who came into it came into it with lots of other knowledge and interests. Then they tried to figure out what computers were, and the only place they could use for analogies were other areas. So we got some extremely interesting ideas from that. And of course, the reason being educated is important is simply because you don’t have any blue [orthogonal] contexts if you don’t have any other kinds of knowledge to think with. Engineering is one of the hardest fields to be creative in, just because it’s all about optimizing, and you don’t optimize without being very firmly anchored to the context you’re in. What we’re talking about here is something that is not about optimization, but about rotating the point of view.”
—Alan Kay