On a meta note, the ability to model/create these types of system dynamics on a computer is what I believe Alan Kay meant when talking about computational liter

On a meta note, the ability to model/create these types of system dynamics on a computer is what I believe Alan Kay meant when talking about computational literacy. These types of systems don't lend themselves well to closed form analytic descriptions, and thus computer models are a medium that can be used by individual's/groups to better understand them. Both the ability to read (ie look at other people's models and understand the underlying assumptions) and write (ie create your own simulations) is a 21st century need that is barely visible in the popular vision of computering for children (and adults). It's as if our current mathematics education focused on teaching the abacus instead of the much more powerful representation using Arabic numerals, which scales much better.