5 ms·

What would a computer look like if it were designed for a technically precocious girl?

owyn 5y ago
Oh, there's a good sci fi book which tackles that idea. It's not the only idea in the book, but it's a major theme. It's right there in the title. Neal Stephenson "The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" It's a 25 year old book but slight spoiler, it's about what happens when this book made for a rich billionaire's child falls into the hands of a poor child. Among many interesting ideas, the book has its own source of funding (think, crypto) and uses that to hire actors (like zoom with full on mo-cap) to bring to life the characters in the story. IIRc, the lessons/dialog are all written but the actors can bring them to life and ad-lib, and one actor in particular ends up being the remote mother for this child. Oh, another bonus part of the story I remember to give you an incentive to read it, there's a multi-page digression about how turing machines work retold as a fantasy allegory with like, castle bridges, chain links and trolls.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  I forgot about that book! It is indeed a good one, and second the recommendation to anyone who hasn't read it. Although if that's the one with the drum people, they're kind of weird and might be off-putting to some.
- cscottnet 5y ago
  Funny thing: I was hired by OLPC specifically to implement that book: https://blog.printf.net/articles/2011/06/18/narrative-interfaces/ https://blog.printf.net/articles/2011/06/18/narrative-interf...
simplestats 5y ago
Probably the same. From what I can tell, "technically precocious boy" means the same thing as "technically precocious". It's a no-win situation for the researchers.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Do they even bother to clarify what they mean by "technically precocious"? I've seen some references to the MIT hacker culture in the OP, but back in the day this was strictly about a tiny minority of people in the most technical parts of academia; by and large, children would not have had any exposure to computers for personal use until very late in the history of that culture, and the research questions about "constructivism" were precisely about how to make this kind of exposure educationally meaningful. I suppose that I'm seeing a lot of fuzzy, loosely-connected memes in the intro to the book but not much clear thinking and reasoning that would result in an intelligible argument. The problem is that if you assume "being able to use a device" is what qualifies you as precocious then the argument becomes moot. But I'm not sure what else the authors could mean.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    "constructivism", and similar ideas about schools with no lessons where children just learn what they want to, are all based on children of smart parents who encourage such things. The average child is happy watching youtube videos about unboxing single use plastic toys 24/7

owyn 5y ago

Oh, there's a good sci fi book which tackles that idea. It's not the only idea in the book, but it's a major theme. It's right there in the title. Neal Stephenson "The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" It's a 25 year old book but slight spoiler, it's about what happens when this book made for a rich billionaire's child falls into the hands of a poor child. Among many interesting ideas, the book has its own source of funding (think, crypto) and uses that to hire actors (like zoom with full on mo-cap) to bring to life the characters in the story. IIRc, the lessons/dialog are all written but the actors can bring them to life and ad-lib, and one actor in particular ends up being the remote mother for this child. Oh, another bonus part of the story I remember to give you an incentive to read it, there's a multi-page digression about how turing machines work retold as a fantasy allegory with like, castle bridges, chain links and trolls.

nitrogen 5y ago
I forgot about that book! It is indeed a good one, and second the recommendation to anyone who hasn't read it. Although if that's the one with the drum people, they're kind of weird and might be off-putting to some.
cscottnet 5y ago
Funny thing: I was hired by OLPC specifically to implement that book: https://blog.printf.net/articles/2011/06/18/narrative-interfaces/ https://blog.printf.net/articles/2011/06/18/narrative-interf...

simplestats 5y ago

Probably the same. From what I can tell, "technically precocious boy" means the same thing as "technically precocious". It's a no-win situation for the researchers.

zozbot234 5y ago
Do they even bother to clarify what they mean by "technically precocious"? I've seen some references to the MIT hacker culture in the OP, but back in the day this was strictly about a tiny minority of people in the most technical parts of academia; by and large, children would not have had any exposure to computers for personal use until very late in the history of that culture, and the research questions about "constructivism" were precisely about how to make this kind of exposure educationally meaningful. I suppose that I'm seeing a lot of fuzzy, loosely-connected memes in the intro to the book but not much clear thinking and reasoning that would result in an intelligible argument. The problem is that if you assume "being able to use a device" is what qualifies you as precocious then the argument becomes moot. But I'm not sure what else the authors could mean.
- mavhc 5y ago
  "constructivism", and similar ideas about schools with no lessons where children just learn what they want to, are all based on children of smart parents who encourage such things. The average child is happy watching youtube videos about unboxing single use plastic toys 24/7