Ken Kahn (KenKahn@toontalk.com)
Mon, 7 Dec 1998 08:43:57 +0100
From: "Ken Kahn" <KenKahn@toontalk.com> Subject: [ifets] Re: ifets-digest V1 #68 Date: Mon, 7 Dec 1998 08:43:57 +0100
Matthias wrote:
>I wouldn't send my children to a school which extensively uses computers
>for learning useless things like word processing, spreadsheets and other
>applications.
I don't get very excited about so-called computer literacy courses either.
But computers can be used in much much more interesting and significant
ways. The following quote sums up my feelings quite well.
Best,
-ken kahn (www.toontalk.com)
-----
The protean nature of the computer is such that it can act like a machine or
like a language to be shaped and exploited. It is a medium that can
dynamically simulate the details of any other medium, including media that
cannot exist physically. It is not a tool, although it can act like many
tools. It is the first metamedium, and as such it has degrees of freedom for
representation and expression never before encountered and as yet barely
investigated. Even more important, it is fun, and therefore intrinsically
worth doing.
... Computers are to computing as instruments are to music. Software is the
score, whose interpretation amplifies our reach and lifts our spirit.
Leonardo da Vinci called music ``the shaping of the invisible,'' and his
phrase is even more apt as a description of software.
-Alan Kay, ``Computer Software'', Scientific American, September 1984
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