RICHER@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA (Mark Richer) (01/23/86)
From: Mark Richer <RICHER@SUMEX-AIM.ARPA>
[Excerpted from the AI-Ed distribution.]
Computer Currents, 22-oct-85 [a computer newspaper]
Strehlo: What's the nature of the research?
Kay: It's yet another attempt to try and understand the thin
edge of the long wedge. At PARC, the children used Smalltalk on the
interim Dynabook to build their own application programs, their own
editors and animation and stuff like that. In this case, we're sort
of upping the ante to try and do a system in which the children can
create little mentalities, animal level mentalities that can be put
into a simulated environment where they have to survive. If you will,
it's like creating a little Disney character that you then put out
into a big world."
Strehlo: We see this kind of thing on a simple level in adventure
games where the player has to give characters the traits needed to
achieve some goal.
Kay: Right, exactly.
Strehlo: And this just goes further? How would it go further?
Kay: "It goes a lot further. We're shooting for something that will
be dynamically animated and will actually learn things. The idea is
to get kids to be more thoughtful about thinking by getting them to
try to think about how animals think, and by taking the results of
these comtemplations and actually building animal-like creatures that
work. It's exciting. There's very little in existing AI or computer
graphics that really serves this project, which is nice. We get to
invent it." [AI-ED editor: If you are familiar with Doug Lenat's
work, you might not be surprised to learn that Doug and Alan are
friends. When Alan was at Atari, Doug consulted on the KNOESPHERE
project along with ALan Borning, David McDonald, Craig Taylor &
Stephen Weyer ... in alphabetical order. See IJCAI proceedings #8,
p.167-169 if you are interested .. it's a bit vague and far out though]
Strehlo: Who do you have working with you on this project?
Kay: I've got Marvin Minsky helping on the AI stuff, I've got Seymour
Papert helping on some of the curriculum design, I've got the visual
language lab at MIT helping on the graphics for the animals and stuff.
All different kinds of disciplines, different kinds of students, are
working on it. If we can anchor the place over the next couple of
years, and there's every reason to believe it's going to happen,
Project Vivarium is going to be the most exciting place in the world
to work.
[...]