During a talk setup for Kristen Nygaard's birthday celebration, Alan Kay encountered audio feedback that reminded him of Claude Shannon's noisy channel coding theorem, prompting an improvised commentary on its relevance to real-world technical issues.
The following explanation is taken from <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49622607">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49622607</a>:<p>Alan Kay was performing an AV test before giving a talk for Kristen Nygaard's 100-year birthday celebration, and God threw a monkey wrench into the loop, which Alan broke out of with amazing ideas from Claud Shannon that he thinks about every day.<p>Alan Kay: Shannon Gave Us a Way of Dealing with Noisy Channels<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjntrqhn8pk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjntrqhn8pk</a><p>Alan Kay performs an improvisational avant garde layered audio feedback loop about Claude Shannon, live online during Kristen Nygaard's 100-year birthday celebration.<p>Alan was scheduled to talk about how encountering Simula sparked his early thoughts about objects. During setup, somebody had the live stream playing out loud near an open Zoom mic, so his own voice kept arriving back in his ears about 21 seconds late, over and over.<p>What he said was not random: "Shannon gave us a way of dealing with noisy channels." And: "I think about that almost every day. I realize what the fuck is going on and it's just so amazing." Shannon's noisy channel coding theorem is the math for exactly the kind of channel that was garbling him as he praised it.<p>Alan joked it was "being rerouted to Mars and back." At the speed of light, a 21 second round trip is about 3 million km one way -- eight trips to the Moon and back, not even a twentieth of the way to Mars at closest approach.<p>This is an accidental Zoom performance of Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting in a Room" (1969), where Lucier re-recorded his own voice in a room until only the room's resonance remained. Here what remains is the network: delay, compression, dropouts.<p>Bonus noise: YouTube's auto-transcript bleeps Alan's enthusiasm into [ __ ]. So the full chain is: Alan's voice, Zoom, stream, room, Zoom again times three, my screen recording, YouTube's speech recognizer, a censored transcript.<p>The fix: "Just turn off the audio at your end on Zoom."
# Alan Kay's Improvised Response to Audio Feedback: A Lesson from Claude Shannon
**TL;DR:** During a technical setup for a talk, Alan Kay encountered an audio feedback loop that caused a 21-second delay, prompting him to improvise commentary linking the issue to Claude Shannon's noisy channel coding theorem.
## Event Context
Alan Kay was preparing to give a talk for Kristen Nygaard's 100-year birthday celebration. The talk was intended to discuss how encountering Simula sparked his early thoughts about objects. During the audio-visual test before the event, a technical issue arose that led to an unexpected improvisation.
## The Audio Feedback Incident
During setup, someone had the live stream playing out loud near an open Zoom microphone. This created a feedback loop where Alan Kay's voice was fed back into his ears with a delay of approximately 21 seconds. He described the situation as "being rerouted to Mars and back," highlighting the significant latency.
Kay noted that he could not simultaneously deliver his演讲 and listen to the delayed audio. The repeated echoes made it challenging to speak, as the noisy channel garbled his own voice in real-time.
## Connection to Claude Shannon
The experience reminded Kay of Claude Shannon's work. He improvised a commentary on Shannon's contributions, stating:
- "Shannon gave us a way of dealing with noisy channels."
- "I think about that almost every day. I realize what the fuck is going on and it's just so amazing."
Kay emphasized that Shannon's noisy channel coding theorem provides the mathematical framework for exactly the kind of channel that was disrupting his audio—where information is corrupted by noise and delay. He praised Shannon's ideas as something he contemplates daily.
## Resolution and Reflections
The technical issue was resolved by muting the audio on the Zoom call. Kay suggested that the solution involved not sending any audio back to him, essentially isolating the channel to eliminate feedback.
This incident served as a live demonstration of the principles behind Shannon's theorem, showcasing how noise can interfere with communication and how theoretical concepts from information theory apply to real-world technical problems.
Source: [Alan Kay: Shannon gave us a way of dealing with noisy channels [video]](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cjntrqhn8pk)
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