So basically David Shaw's position was: we need to get children to become fluent in computers, this will be essential in the 21st century, if we don't then a la

So basically David Shaw's position was: we need to get children to become fluent in computers, this will be essential in the 21st century, if we don't then a large part of our country will be for all intents and purposes a third world country. But don't expect this to be cheap in the short run. In the long run it will be cheap, because the alternative is a disaster. Seymour Papert's position was: we need children to spend time with computers, and this is going to be dirt cheap. The whole debate was not whether or not children need to be exposed to computers, but whether it will be cheap. David Shaw's points were that hardware depreciates faster than Papert's projection (1.5-2 years instead of 5) and that sysadmin costs are much higher than hardware costs (Papert said there's no need for sysadmin, the kids can do it themselves). On both counts I think Shaw was right in 1995. Where are we 25 years later? All kids are exposed to computers, if anything they have too much screen time. And the sysadmin costs have plummeted; for NYC for example [1], out of a total annual budget for 2020 of $26.9 BN, only $36.6 MM are earmarked as "Prof. Services -Computer Services", or 0.14%. [1] https://council.nyc.gov/budget/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2019/03/040-DOE-Expense-2020.pdf https://council.nyc.gov/budget/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2...