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Nice long-form overview and, from what I can tell, well-balanced trying to deal with legacy / reputation as a "smart toy" and somewhat inconclusive research on
by 6stringmerc 10y ago
Nice long-form overview and, from what I can tell, well-balanced trying to deal with legacy / reputation as a "smart toy" and somewhat inconclusive research on the whole. Intuition is a good "out" in this case, because not every toy works for every learning style for every child, etc. One thing I did see:
>Marvin Minsky, the MIT scientist who helped pioneer artificial intelligence, has even said that “the decline of American inventiveness” can be traced to the rise of Lego, arguing that by becoming the most common construction toy, it’s pushed out construction toys like Tinker Toys and Erector sets that can get kids building simple machines.
Whoa, those are some names I haven't seen in a while but did grow up playing with. Tinker Toys in particular. To me, the criticism isn't fair - those were toys and learning tools from a prior generation. I'm pretty sure the only reason I grew up with Tinker Toys was because I had a Grandmother who grew up during the Great Depression and was of the generation that enjoyed them. My Parents much more embraced Legos, and, quite simply, getting bags or bins full of used, miscellaneous bricks at garage sales was a huge creativity boost. Then, later, turn around and sell or donate them. Rarely did I see Tinker Toys or Erector sets around. Technics seemed to bridge the gap between Legos and higher-level engineering / complexity / use of motors.
What does feel important about Legos & playtime, to me, is the manipulation of 3D space, coordination, and dexterity training. There is no such replacement via a 2D screen, and 3D / VR or AR aren't even close. The ROI on play time, age appropriate, with Lego-type hands-on exploration is worth keeping in mind. No batteries. Easy to clean. Hard to break. An Occam's Razor of developmental toys.
- mturmon 10y agoWhat a nice summary. You write "what does feel important...is the manipulation of 3D space, coordination, and dexterity training..." and I wanted to highlight this versus "making machines" -- Minsky, of course, being a big proponent of machines even for no purpose at all (the delightful https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useless_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useless_machine). My kid has always enjoyed making shapes in 3D, but not so much the machines part. For 3D manipulation and creativity, she's spent more creative time with Magformers and the magnetic Y-ball and X-ball toys you can find at museum shops, than with Legos.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoMy grandfather bought me an Erector set, and it was one of the best toys I ever had - but it definitely required a larger investment of time and effort than Lego did. Before you even consider that you need to plan out or follow instructions to build a machine, it just plain takes longer to connect the various pieces, with the fiddly little nuts-and-bolts that you steadily lose over the years anyway. I have a kid, now, and I definitely look forward to getting to play... or watch someone play... with Erector sets and Lego and all those toys. edit: Thinking about it some more, Lego is Minecraft, and Erector/Meccano is Kerbal Space Program.
- arethuza 10y agoI had a fair amount of Meccano, Lego and a weird thing called Philiform that was apparently a version of Lego created by Philips. I actually have fondest memories for Meccano - possibly as it was the one I played when I was older. Did used to get upset at my dad "borrowing" bits to help make repairs to cars, greenhouses etc.
- rkv 10y ago>I actually have fondest memories for Meccano What really hooked me was that they were so well suited for electrical components. Adding gears to the axle and making it turn on its own.
- mc32 10y agoI have to say I agree too. I had a Gabriel(?) erector set and it was the best toy. I enjoyed legos too but the erector set was the most fascinating as it mimicked real things like real cranes or cars (in that they had moving mechanics which obeyed laws of physics and you got to screw things together and took them apart, they were mostly metal so it had less of a "toy" feel as well).
- tlrobinson 10y agoYeah, I guess Marvin Minsky wasn't aware of Technic and Mindstorms. I largely attribute my "inventiveness" to my childhood obsession with LEGO. I had Erector set (actually "Meccano"), but preferred LEGO/Technic because they just snapped together, you didn't have to spend time screwing a bunch of tiny nuts and bolts together. The feedback loop was shorter. I also had some other construction toys like Capsela. I don't think I had Tinker Toys, but they seem much more simplistic. By middle school Technic were the only LEGO sets I was interested in (unfortunately Mindstorms came later, but I had one of it's predecessors, Technic Control Center).
- nicklaf 10y agoYeah, I guess Marvin Minsky wasn't aware of Technic and Mindstorms Which would be somewhat amazing, given Mindstorm's pedigree.
- kbouck 10y agoThat would be amazing considering his relation to Seymour Papert [1], who: - Co-invented Logo Programming language - Authored "Mindstorms" [1] - Collaborated with Lego to produce (Logo-programmable) Lego Mindstorms. - Was made co-director of the MIT AI Lab by...... Marvin Minsky [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Papert [2] https://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful-Ideas/dp/0465046746/ https://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerfu...
- icebraining 10y agoLEGO does have Technic, but it's a small and relatively unpopular subset of the whole universe, hence he may still be right. And the rest of LEGO not only has less of an emphasis in machines, as it also comes with minifigs and other components that can be used for more typical "roleplaying with dolls/action figures" over construction.
- jfroma 10y agoProd owner of a capsele too. I didnt have Legos when I was a kid but loved so much my capsela. I wrote a blogpost about it and the positive effect on my career: http://joseoncode.com/2012/02/01/capsela-the-game-that-changed-my-life/ http://joseoncode.com/2012/02/01/capsela-the-game-that-chang... Original post in hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8797905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8797905
- giardini 10y ago>"Marvin Minsky ... has even said that “the decline of American inventiveness” can be traced to the rise of Lego, arguing that ... it’s pushed out construction toys like Tinker Toys and Erector sets..." Minsky's not the only person who has come to that conclusion. Tinkertoys were a good match for young boys' sometimes clumsy hands and, for the older more patient boy, Erector sets were a perfect way to spend a solitary rainy day. Some chemistry professors, students and engineers still work with Tinkertoy-like tools every day.
- gohrt 10y ago"the decline of American inventiveness” is assumed without any sort of proof.
- RHSeeger 10y agoI have very fond memories of playing with both Legos and my Erector Set with my father, growing up. My daughter has both Legos and Tinker Toys. All the "build things with your imagination" toys are fantastic. Of all the toys that I had as a child, Legos had by far the biggest impact. When I was in college, my mother gave away my "big box of legos" to my cousins. I was, and still am to some degree, devastated. I'm buying legos for my daughter now and its going to be a long time before I can afford to replace what was lost. I still harass my mother about it from time to time (and it's been decades). Side note: Buying new legos for my daughter, I've come to realize just how much my parents spent on toys for me (and my sister). Even given the fact that the price of legos has increased less (per brick) than inflation, they're expensive. I have dreams of coming upon a great lego stash at a garage sale, so I can jumpstart my daughter's collection and creative "scope". :)
- DanBC 10y ago> I have dreams of coming upon a great lego stash at a garage sale, so I can jumpstart my daughter's collection and creative "scope". :) You can buy Lego by the kg or pound from Ebay. Depending how much cleaning and sorting you're prepared to do you can get some bargains.
- douche 10y agoYou can find some real treasures on Ebay, if you come across some lots where people are selling uncategorized tubs and don't know what they've got. I picked up one lot that had about $500 worth, if you were trying to buy them on BrickLink, of complete, partially disassembled sets for $40.
- kbouck 10y agoObserving my 7yo son's open-ended play with modern-era LEGOs, I must disagree with Minsky. Perhaps the LEGO sets have changed since this this comment was made. I find the current LEGO Technic pieces to be the perfect tool for open-ended exploration, and for building of simple machines. While the sets do come with prescriptive instructions to build something specific out of that set - you aren't forced to follow them. Those instructions are more of a demo of what you can do with the pieces. The pieces are almost all generic, and closely model their real-world mechanical equivalents -- beams, pins, gears, axels, motors, linear actuators, switches, battery power supplies. There a great book exploring all the technic fundamentals: "Unofficial LEGO Technic Builder's Guide" [1]. It covers concepts like leverage, torque, gears, gear ratios, differentials, suspensions, transmissions, etc. Throw in the fact that technic electronic components (motors, lights, sensors) can be driven by code (eg. scratch on a rapsberry pi), and I can't imagine a better learning toy which is initially so approachable, and yet has such a high ceiling for advanced learning. If you want to see what incredible creations are possible in the hands of the masters, check out "Incredible LEGO Technic" [2]. [1] https://www.nostarch.com/technicbuilder2 https://www.nostarch.com/technicbuilder2 [2] https://www.nostarch.com/incredibletechnic https://www.nostarch.com/incredibletechnic
- thro1237 10y agoLooks like a nice book. I have zero exposure to legos. Which lego kit should I buy to go along with the book? An amazon link would be very helpful. Thanks.
- kbouck 10y agoIf you're willing to go all-in, get a big technic set which has the most "power functions" components (motors, remotes, battery box). These are the parts that are harder to come-by unless you order them individually (which is more expensive). When I looked >= 1-2 years ago, the best single set for spare parts I found was the Volvo L350F wheel loader aka. "42030" [1] (each lego set is uniquely identified by a numeric id). It had the most power functions parts I could find, and probably gives you all the beams, wheels, gears, and other parts you need. You can supplement your collection with specific parts from places like BrickLink [2] or even the lego.com store [3]. NOTE: Be warned that LEGO is changing their Power Functions plug shape. Most current sets are still on Power Functions 1.0, and new sets will eventually become 2.0 [1] https://www.amazon.com/technic-Volvo-L350F-wheel-loader/dp/B00H4908ZM https://www.amazon.com/technic-Volvo-L350F-wheel-loader/dp/B... [2] https://www.bricklink.com/ https://www.bricklink.com/ [3] https://shop.lego.com/ https://shop.lego.com/
- Glyptodon 10y agoFrom what I remember of my childhood Tinker Toys were just low-quality (things would fall apart easily) and weren't as flexible in terms of what you could construct. Erector, on the other hand, was prohibitively expensive which made it hard to have a meaningful enough collection to build what you wanted.
- mcphage 10y ago> and weren't as flexible in terms of what you could construct The things you made were a lot more abstract, but people have even made computers using Tinkertoys: http://www.retrothing.com/2006/12/the_tinkertoy_c.html http://www.retrothing.com/2006/12/the_tinkertoy_c.html (which doesn't excuse the fact that Minsky was flat-out wrong there)
- usefulcat 10y agoI played with Legos extensively when I was a kid (1980s). Overall, they were definitely my favorite, and in fact I kept all of them and now my 4 year old son has them and loves them. I'm not sure I agree with Minsky, but I have definitely noticed that the Legos of today are very different to the ones I grew up with. Today there is a far, far greater variety of pieces available. This is definitely a very mixed blessing. On one hand, it does offer a skilled builder many more options, and certainly allows the creation of things that look much better than what could have been created with Legos of thirty years ago. However it also means that finding the right piece takes far more time, which I remember as being the least fun aspect of Legos. Then there's also the fact that reduced constraints are often not beneficial to the creative process. As a kid, certainly I would have always liked to have had more Legos, but as an adult I realize that an unlimited amount (or, perhaps more importantly, variety) of Legos would probably not have been for the best.
- wvenable 10y agoAs I kid I loved all the special pieces I could find; they became the centerpiece of most of my designs. Odd enough much of what I built as a kid, I can't build now because my son's large collection of Lego's doesn't include many of cool 80's space pieces. :)
- drivers99 10y agoI still have my 80s space pieces (some still in boxed sets) from when I was a kid, so I really enjoyed it when The Lego Movie had the "80s space man" who always wanted to build a spaceship. When I got back from the theater, I built a space ship from those parts (of my own design, in the spirit of the movie.) I'll probably pass them down to grandkids some day. :)
- ronald_raygun 10y agoI think there are generational technical toys. For example, I think snap circuits are a ridiculously awesome toy for kids.
- sea-shore 10y agoI think one of the big arguments agains the standard Lego blocks is that you can not build triangles, which is kind of important when building structures.
- gonzo 10y agohttp://www.webofstories.com/play/marvin.minsky/10;jsessionid=E79D548F158155F94DA4DB07CE910FEA http://www.webofstories.com/play/marvin.minsky/10;jsessionid... Marvin Minsky says LEGO isn't ideal, because you can't build triangles, no pulleys so .. no machines.
- MagnumOpus 10y agoWhich can only be said of basic Lego. Triangular connections, pulleys and gears are some of the most basic Lego Technic advances - and Technic has existed for 40 years now, though that is maybe slightly too late for Marv's kids to play with them...