kelvin@cs.utexas.edu (Kelvin Thompson) (10/07/88)
[I e-mailed Robret Dorsett a reply to his fine article about Macs, Apples, and computers in education. He suggested I post it. Here it is -- sort of artsy-fartsy bullshitty, but *I* find it interesting.... :-) --KKT] Very nice article. You get my vote for prez. But I have one minor quibble: > 3. Computer education: this should take the form of teaching how to use the > computer as a form of expression, as a *tool*. Alan Kay -- the Lord God King Guru of human/computer interaction -- is very careful to distinguish between the computer as a form of expression and as a tool. More specifically, he says the computer is a *medium*, which is a different sort of thing from a tool. Two distinguishing characteristics: [1] A tool is (mostly) only good for what it was made for, but you can always come up with surprising new uses for a medium. [2] You use a medium to make a tool. For example: A computer is a medium; a word processor is a tool. You can make a computer compose and perform music; you can only write text with a word processor. You use a computer to create a word processor. A beautiful example from Kay: Paper is a medium. You can use it to keep a diary, blot up spills....or make paper airplanes. Of course you can come up with lots of exceptions and gray areas, since most things have some characteristics of both. Still, I think it's an interesting distinction to make. [...and Robert replies..... (and I re-reply)] > Date: Thu, 6 Oct 88 17:26:12 edt > From: juniper!mentat@emx.utexas.edu (Robert Dorsett) > Message-Id: <8810062126.AA08356@juniper.UUCP> > To: ut-emx!cs.utexas.edu!kelvin@emx.utexas.edu > Subject: Re: Computers in education (Re: Golden Gate) (LONG) > > Oookay, I'll buy the "medium" idea. But then again... you can't use a > paper as an expressive medium without a pencil (a tool). What's the > analogy for computers? :-) Who says Origami(sp?) isn't expressive? No pencil there. > I quite like Kay. I attended his lecture at UT a couple of years ago; > he has many interesting ideas (ideas, apparently, which Jobs bungled up > in copying to the Mac). I wasn't terribly thrilled about his DC-3 > metaphor ("All of the dials should point in the same direction in > 'normal' states"), but it was certainly interesting... Do you know if > he's been published in anything recently? It was at that exact same lecture I first heard him and got interested. A year or so later (i.e. a few years ago) he had the lead article in Scientific American and said a lot of the same things. Last I heard, he was working on the Vivarium project for Apple and MIT. I don't keep up with the HI literature enough to know more. And let me rush to Jobs' defense [...pause a sec to put on the asbestos suit...]. Kay has been talking ever since the seventies about the computer as an appliance, and my understanding is that that's exactly what the original Mac (closed architecture and all) was trying to accomplish -- you just plug it in, flip the switch, and you're ready to go -- no week-long training courses, no agonies of cables, screwdrivers, and manuals. What exactly did Jobs screw up, given the technological and marketing limitations of the time? -- -- Kelvin Thompson, Lone Rider of the Apocalypse kelvin@cs.utexas.edu {...,uunet}!cs.utexas.edu!kelvin
lsr@Apple.COM (Larry Rosenstein) (10/07/88)
In article <3488@cs.utexas.edu> kelvin@cs.utexas.edu (Kelvin Thompson) writes: >to go -- no week-long training courses, no agonies of cables, >screwdrivers, and manuals. What exactly did Jobs screw up, given >the technological and marketing limitations of the time? Two comments attributed to Alan Kay were: (1) The Macintosh was like a Honda with a 1-gallon gas tank. (In reference to the 128K model.) (2) The Macintosh was the first personal computer worth criticizing. Larry Rosenstein, Object Specialist Apple Computer, Inc. 20525 Mariani Ave, MS 46-B Cupertino, CA 95014 AppleLink:Rosenstein1 domain:lsr@Apple.COM UUCP:{sun,voder,nsc,decwrl}!apple!lsr