Charan Pushpanathan

charanp2@illinois.edu

Vision as a Cat Toy: Why Great Ideas Should Never Be Caught

Written 30 November 2024; by Charan Pushpanathan

TLDR: A reflection on balancing immediate, achievable goals with larger transformative visions, using the metaphor of a cat toy to illustrate how inspiring ideas keep us moving forward even without a definite endpoint. Involves few insights from Alan Kay and Xerox PARC.

The metaphor "Great visions are not goals, but the ultimate cat toy" means that great visions are not rigid, specific endpoints (like goals) but rather engaging, dynamic, and inspiring ideas that spark curiosity, exploration, and continuous effort.

Just as a cat toy captivates a cat and keeps it chasing and playing, a great vision captivates people, driving them to think creatively, experiment, and move forward, even if they never "catch" or fully achieve the vision. The metaphor highlights the playful and aspirational nature of a vision, implying it's about the journey and the possibilities it opens up, rather than a concrete finish line.

From my constructivism, I will discuss the power of long term and short term goals, I'm biased about it depends on the situational awareness. Sometimes a force triggers you to continue or exit for both goals.

Short term. It often ends soon, taking a shortcut and fastest tunnel. The bounties are high here and often looks like a dopamine rush. For example, from the perspective of HCI researcher, if you want to build a word processor or an alien computing, you can easily build those things. It has an existence and sources from how to build from minus one to n. As Kay^[1] noted about Microsoft Word's development at Xerox PARC^[2], it made "Microsoft many many billions of dollars when it was released 15 years later"^[3] - this represents the short-term, commercially-focused thinking.

In the long term, it takes long process. You need to keep on chasing and learning what you can. It's a never-ending goal. As well, you will get lots of criticism but do not lose your faith when you take a long term goal. Coming back to the word processor analogy, as Kay emphasized: "We want you to steal the ideas but for Christ's sake steal the whole idea don't steal a protest caricature."^[3] The long-term view isn't just about building a word processor - it's about understanding the deeper principles of human-computer interaction, augmenting human intellect (as Engelbart envisioned), and creating systems that fundamentally enhance how humans think and work.

This connects to Kay's broader point that "better is the enemy of what is actually needed."^[3] The short-term goal might be to make a better word processor, but the long-term goal should be to fundamentally rethink how humans interact with text and ideas. As Kay noted about Xerox PARC's approach, they built "flexible supercomputer time machines" to live and work in the future - this represents true long-term thinking.

Kay's talk also reminds us that "Visions are not the same as goals." Short-term goals are specific and achievable, while long-term visions, like Licklider's vision^[4] of "computers becoming interactive intellectual amplifiers for everyone universally networked worldwide," guide us toward larger possibilities, even if we don't know exactly how to get there.

The key is recognizing when each approach is appropriate: short-term goals for immediate practical needs, and long-term visions for fundamental advancement of the field. As Kay demonstrated through PARC's history, both can coexist - you can build practical tools while pursuing deeper insights and transformative change.

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