The talk wasn't all that successful. It was about Elephant (his new language) and a friend who was there told me it was "rambling" and hard to understand. Apparently things brightened up, though, when McCarthy started answering questions about Lisp.
"... It was about Elephant (his 'McCarthys' new language) and a friend who was there told me it was "rambling" and hard to understand ..."
Rambling, hard to understand, maybe. But given the time this guy has been around (Lisp will turn 50 in October) and he's been thinking about computing for so long I'm not surprised. The ideas will be dense. But I did find a copy of McCarthy talking about Elephant just before this talk. Listening to it now ~ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=116403
I often wonder why http://startupschool.org has never asked McCarthy along to talk about languages and language choice?
The talk wasn't all that successful. It was about Elephant (his new language) and a friend who was there told me it was "rambling" and hard to understand. Apparently things brightened up, though, when McCarthy started answering questions about Lisp.