This just came up recently on the IAEP and fonc lists via Scott Ananian's
request for comments on his Nell proposal.
Moore's work continues to be impressive today (at least to me). Moore's
thinking was wide deep and rich -- and much of it is quite relevant and useful
today. There was a lot more to it than you suggest below.
IBM and John Henry Martin did "Writing to Read" in the mid-60s using the PC --
a very similar approach but with little or even no attribution to Moore's ideas.
From the technological standpoint, both of these ideas were very early and
expensive. But they fact that they were both quite successful should have made
them more memorable, and to be picked up in the last decade where these ideas
(and more) can be propagated quite inexpensively.
Of your reasons, "2" is the closest. One you didn't give wasÂ
4. Things get easily forgotten in a pop-culture
Cheers,
Alan
>________________________________
> From: Mohamed Samy <[email protected]>
>To: Fundamentals of New Computing <[email protected]>
>Sent: Monday, March 19, 2012 8:48 PM
>Subject: [fonc] O. K. Moore's talking typewriter: where is it now?
>
>
>In Alan Kay's original paper "A personal computer for children of all ages" in
>1972, he described an experiment by Omar Khayyam Moore; the talking
>typewriter: it was a device that spoke the words typed on it, but remained
>silent for whatever entered that isn't a word.
>
>The experiment was to leave the typewriter in a play area populated by
>toddlers (about the age of 3) and eventually the devices taught them - more
>precisely enabled them to teach themselves - reading and writing.
>
>My question is: why isn't everyone doing this now? You'd expect those results
>would influence schools, nurseries, and parents. You'd expect tons of such
>electronic devices to be for sale since decades ago. If there's something that
>would sell to parents, it would be 'instant reading teacher'. So why didn't
>this just spread?
>
>I have 3 guesses:
>1- The experiment was discredited for some reason or disproven by another
>later experiment.
>2- It was scientifically sound, but no one simply cared. That's perfectly
>possible since social and cultural aspects have much more influence than
>expected.
>3- No one of the scientific community cared, so no further work was done to
>prove or disprove it. It remains a hypothesis.
>
>I've tried to search online for papers or articles about the experiment, but
>most of what I found was news about it from the 60s...I thought I'd ask here :)
>
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>
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