On 1/18/07, John Maxwell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <<SNIP>>
> http://thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/Dynabook/dissertation > > I'm very interested in any comments you might have. > > > - John Maxwell Hi John -- I've read up through pg 20 of your intro thus far, to right before you launch into Alan's story. Since you track this list you probably know I was on the team representing Python at a Shuttleworth Foundation summit in Kensington last April, Alan Kay attending, Papert invited but as you know a tad elderly. There are so many ways to give an account of the early years of the computer revolution. Any thumbnail will be inadequate but mine is more like Neal Stephenson's in "In the beginning..." which goes to Morlocks and Eloi per H.G. Wells, much as you fork to experts and end-users (a mythology it looks like you're preparing to fight, which is heartening). The Morlocks needed free and open source and didn't get that with CP/M, DOS, OS/2, Windows, or Mac (up until OS X). In school they got it with Unix *if* on the team to play with (develop) Unix, e.g. at UC Berkeley, source of FreeBSD. Or they got it at IBM, internally, with VMS, APL or whatever. But once "on the outside" (no longer lucky enough to be in school or inside a large computer savvy corporation), a young Morlock penguin was "frozen out", kept away from her or his chief joy. With hardware getting ridiculously inexpensive, that *had* to change, and it did (I'm not a technological determinist, but I think it'd have taken forces way greater than SCO to quell the geek takeover of geekdom). So in my telling, the revolution hadn't really started yet in those early Wordstar and WordPerfect days. That was an office culture revolution, a change of equipment, but had little to do with real computing or computer science *except* where so-called power users were concerned, with their spreadsheet macros, with their xBase. I call that the "the bizapp revolution" and I lived through it first hand, could write a 300 page novel and/or autobio about it easy. Yawn. Actually, might be fun. Title "Have xBase Will Travel" -- to Bhutan even, both solo and later with my wife, Dawn Wicca, and her/our young Alexia (1980s). Anyway, you've picked an interesting topic: the trajectory of Alan Kay and his Dynabook concept (Prospero's Books to Shakespeare). Having met the man, I have to say he still intrigues me. We're very different animals he and I, but we managed to share beer together, and agree on many points, plus disagree amicably and/or reach a divergence of views on many more. So I plan to read on. Kirby _______________________________________________ Edu-sig mailing list Edu-sig@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/edu-sig