From: Jeff Davis (jdavis@socketscience.com)
Date: Tue Apr 27 1999 - 14:51:33 MDT
To David Musick and assorted co-conspiritors (sic),
I was very impressed and pleased by your education post to the list. So
important is the subject to me that I set off to compose a responding post
before finishing even the first page of yours
Then I returned to finish reading about your experiences with programming.
I strongly agree that the reliably unambiguous connection between cause and
effect--you do a thing, you get a thing--that is the essence of successful
programming, is a terrific basis for precise and valid analytical thinking.
Gadgeteering with mechanical objects in the material world has a similar
accurate feedback training potential, but requires a variety of material
objects. In programming the variety is a more fundamental property of the
medium.
I hope and suspect that the existence and ubiquitous presence of
programming in the lives of all people from here on out will improve human
intelligence significantly.
IF THIS IS TRUE, THEN AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL TO INTRODUCE KIDS TO PROGRAMMING
AT THE EARLIEST POSSIBLE AGE WOULD BE A MAJOR, MAJOR BREAKTHROUGH--AN
EXTROPIAN BREAKTHROUGH--IN HUMAN ADVANCEMENT.
A real creative coup would be to find a way to make it accessible to the
very youngest minds--I think of the baby in the crib looking up at his
mobil, with the bright dangling objects, objects which when pulled on could
be the input device (no way this is a new idea), with a video screen and
speakers higher up and behind. Imagine the music and movies that could
come out of that!
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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