4 ms·

I saw a reference to Martin Gardner's article when I was in, maybe, 9th grade. So I went to the main branch of the NY public library ("reading between the lion

I saw a reference to Martin Gardner's article when I was in, maybe, 9th grade. So I went to the main branch of the NY public library ("reading between the lions") and looked up the article on microfiche. It was fascinating and fun - from how to make a row of equilateral triangles with nothing more than a ruler, pen and paper. Many, many hours were spent on the various flexagon derivatives. Years later, I made a JS page to combine images and print hexaflexagons for my son's classmates. Had some fun with that as well; it was much more confounding than I expected. Nowadays, microfiche is gone, the public library is unfortunately not in most kids vernacular, and the attention span that would be required to enjoy doing the math I did has been hijacked. (TikTok !== figure-out-flexagon)

marcelluspye 4y ago
[flagged]
- collegeburner 4y ago
  your comment is agephobic
O__________O 4y ago
TikTok has a lot of creative content on flexagons: https://www.tiktok.com/tag/flexagon https://www.tiktok.com/tag/flexagon It’s also not intended for long-form content, which is fine. If someone is super interested in the topic, related math, etc — easy to find information elsewhere using search engine and the short videos are much more likely to get someone’s attention.
- sam_goody 4y ago
  Oh sure, the internet has a lot more related info readily available than was ever possible by using microfiche. And my phone can keep track of more more phone numbers than I was ever able to memorize. But, I know far fewer numbers now than I did as a kid, and my son will know far less than I did about flexagons. One reason may be because he knows it is readily available, he won't learn it himself. And one reason is because there is so much surface level learning available, which is so easy and interesting to consume, that anything that takes work and time is postponed, and eventually conditioned to be ignored. This is true for porn, fast-food, caffeine, or what have you - easy, gratifying, effortless dopamine rushes will destroy the positive (and ultimately more gratifying) activities that the brain chemicals were supposed to encourage in the first place. As someone who works with youth, the level of constant distraction that the smartphone has created is not plausibly denied.
  - MrsPeaches 4y ago
    A few random thoughts on this. 1. The main issue I see is that smartphones are primarily devices for consumption (vs creation). The creation you can do easily are well established tools (digital writing, photography and videography). Where TikTok and Insta have succeeded is simple editing tools for the latter two (+ sharing and social algos etc). 2. To the action we as technologist need to take, is to build tools for smartphones that have a focus on creation rather than consumption (or to fuse the two, a la explorable explanations). 3. It may also be that the smartphone is a broken paradigm and we need to start thinking beyond smartphones, with a keen awareness that powerful corporations have a strong incentive to ensure that consumption is at the core of the technology experience (e.g. Meta and VR).
    - syntheweave 4y ago
      It's very easy to turn the smartphone into a reasonable creation tool, the trick is not act like the world ends at the bounds of the device. Seeing smartphone software as the complete editing tool - in the mold of desktop software - isn't that interesting, creatively speaking. It's very precise to use software in that way, to emulate professional workflows from generations ago and create all sorts of shortcuts and configurations. But it only affects decision-making workflows in a limited sense, because what the precision mostly does is pull you down the road towards polishing your output more and more, making smaller and smaller edits with more and more layers. Why are you polishing it? If you exit the software and change mediums, you can actually accomplish more with less, because then you can just accept the limitations and finish. Software is often at its best with mixed media approaches where it supplements a few tasks with a light layer of edits, a data processing step, or a preliminary design iteration. But there are many traditional techniques and technologies that don't need it, or amount to "we strap some AI onto it to turn an imprecise machine into a precise one". The consumption-device viewpoint of the phone is an invention of the software industry. The reality is that people are doing a lot of productive things just by turning the phone into a portable scanner or audio recorder. It's already the fastest way to grab references for most media. If you set up a Bluetooth keyboard and a stand, the small screen works fine for typing up run-once code to solve immediate problems. The things blocking creativity are a combination of the software ecosystem being unready to deprofessionalize itself and exit the industrialized "app" model(and it is unready - we have a lot of maturation to do still to automate programmers out of their jobs), and the atmosphere of social media to engage in rat races for likes and follows, which is caused through incoherent models of assigning credit and blame, poor mechanisms of identity management, etc.
bigdict 4y ago
National education crisis averted: https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/pubs/focus/Gardner_Hexaflexagons12_1956.pdf https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/pubs/focus/Gardn...
lmm 4y ago
> Nowadays, microfiche is gone, the public library is unfortunately not in most kids vernacular, and the attention span that would be required to enjoy doing the math I did has been hijacked. (TikTok !== figure-out-flexagon) The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.
- ChrisClark 4y ago
  Said every single generation once they got older.
- miffy900 4y ago
  Weird you would re-surface that quote in response to that, since I don't think a reasonable person would interpret it as a criticism of younger generations, but of the changing times we now live in. No one ever starts at a public library to study a particular topic, you almost always go to an internet resource first [usually Google]. And TikTok/the internet generally, has hijacked attention spans, but not just of children, but of adults as well.
  - lmm 4y ago
    The comment I replied to explicitly talks about "kids" not knowing about the public library.
    - miffy900 4y ago
      Even then, the OP mentioning that kids don't know about public libraries was NOT a criticism; you quoting Socrates is just bizarrely out of place as Socrates' quote was a strident critique on his perception of the behaviour of younger generations.
      - lmm 4y ago
        > the OP mentioning that kids don't know about public libraries was NOT a criticism I disagree. It verry much came across as a critique of the younger generation.
bigiain 4y ago
> I saw a reference to Martin Gardner's article when I was in, maybe, 9th grade. > So I went to the main branch of the NY public library ("reading between the lions") and looked up the article on microfiche. Ouch. Now I feel old. I read that article in Dad's collection of Scientific American magazines...
mulmen 4y ago
Careful that you do not become the old man yelling at clouds. TikTok is visible. Kids teaching themselves math isn’t. That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. The kids are alright.

marcelluspye 4y ago

[flagged]

collegeburner 4y ago
your comment is agephobic

O__________O 4y ago

TikTok has a lot of creative content on flexagons: https://www.tiktok.com/tag/flexagon https://www.tiktok.com/tag/flexagon It’s also not intended for long-form content, which is fine. If someone is super interested in the topic, related math, etc — easy to find information elsewhere using search engine and the short videos are much more likely to get someone’s attention.

sam_goody 4y ago
Oh sure, the internet has a lot more related info readily available than was ever possible by using microfiche. And my phone can keep track of more more phone numbers than I was ever able to memorize. But, I know far fewer numbers now than I did as a kid, and my son will know far less than I did about flexagons. One reason may be because he knows it is readily available, he won't learn it himself. And one reason is because there is so much surface level learning available, which is so easy and interesting to consume, that anything that takes work and time is postponed, and eventually conditioned to be ignored. This is true for porn, fast-food, caffeine, or what have you - easy, gratifying, effortless dopamine rushes will destroy the positive (and ultimately more gratifying) activities that the brain chemicals were supposed to encourage in the first place. As someone who works with youth, the level of constant distraction that the smartphone has created is not plausibly denied.
- MrsPeaches 4y ago
  A few random thoughts on this. 1. The main issue I see is that smartphones are primarily devices for consumption (vs creation). The creation you can do easily are well established tools (digital writing, photography and videography). Where TikTok and Insta have succeeded is simple editing tools for the latter two (+ sharing and social algos etc). 2. To the action we as technologist need to take, is to build tools for smartphones that have a focus on creation rather than consumption (or to fuse the two, a la explorable explanations). 3. It may also be that the smartphone is a broken paradigm and we need to start thinking beyond smartphones, with a keen awareness that powerful corporations have a strong incentive to ensure that consumption is at the core of the technology experience (e.g. Meta and VR).
  - syntheweave 4y ago
    It's very easy to turn the smartphone into a reasonable creation tool, the trick is not act like the world ends at the bounds of the device. Seeing smartphone software as the complete editing tool - in the mold of desktop software - isn't that interesting, creatively speaking. It's very precise to use software in that way, to emulate professional workflows from generations ago and create all sorts of shortcuts and configurations. But it only affects decision-making workflows in a limited sense, because what the precision mostly does is pull you down the road towards polishing your output more and more, making smaller and smaller edits with more and more layers. Why are you polishing it? If you exit the software and change mediums, you can actually accomplish more with less, because then you can just accept the limitations and finish. Software is often at its best with mixed media approaches where it supplements a few tasks with a light layer of edits, a data processing step, or a preliminary design iteration. But there are many traditional techniques and technologies that don't need it, or amount to "we strap some AI onto it to turn an imprecise machine into a precise one". The consumption-device viewpoint of the phone is an invention of the software industry. The reality is that people are doing a lot of productive things just by turning the phone into a portable scanner or audio recorder. It's already the fastest way to grab references for most media. If you set up a Bluetooth keyboard and a stand, the small screen works fine for typing up run-once code to solve immediate problems. The things blocking creativity are a combination of the software ecosystem being unready to deprofessionalize itself and exit the industrialized "app" model(and it is unready - we have a lot of maturation to do still to automate programmers out of their jobs), and the atmosphere of social media to engage in rat races for likes and follows, which is caused through incoherent models of assigning credit and blame, poor mechanisms of identity management, etc.

bigdict 4y ago

National education crisis averted: https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/pubs/focus/Gardner_Hexaflexagons12_1956.pdf https://www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/pubs/focus/Gardn...

lmm 4y ago

> Nowadays, microfiche is gone, the public library is unfortunately not in most kids vernacular, and the attention span that would be required to enjoy doing the math I did has been hijacked. (TikTok !== figure-out-flexagon) The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

ChrisClark 4y ago
Said every single generation once they got older.
miffy900 4y ago
Weird you would re-surface that quote in response to that, since I don't think a reasonable person would interpret it as a criticism of younger generations, but of the changing times we now live in. No one ever starts at a public library to study a particular topic, you almost always go to an internet resource first [usually Google]. And TikTok/the internet generally, has hijacked attention spans, but not just of children, but of adults as well.
- lmm 4y ago
  The comment I replied to explicitly talks about "kids" not knowing about the public library.
  - miffy900 4y ago
    Even then, the OP mentioning that kids don't know about public libraries was NOT a criticism; you quoting Socrates is just bizarrely out of place as Socrates' quote was a strident critique on his perception of the behaviour of younger generations.
    - lmm 4y ago
      > the OP mentioning that kids don't know about public libraries was NOT a criticism I disagree. It verry much came across as a critique of the younger generation.

bigiain 4y ago

> I saw a reference to Martin Gardner's article when I was in, maybe, 9th grade. > So I went to the main branch of the NY public library ("reading between the lions") and looked up the article on microfiche. Ouch. Now I feel old. I read that article in Dad's collection of Scientific American magazines...

mulmen 4y ago

Careful that you do not become the old man yelling at clouds. TikTok is visible. Kids teaching themselves math isn’t. That doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. The kids are alright.