Think about your current career. Now, think back to an object that you loved that influenced your decision to follow that path. For me it was a Commodore 64 that an uncle owned. Anytime my uncle was away I’d sneak in some programming time, making the machine blink its borders, or animate a smily face across the screen, eventually freaking out my mom by writing a program that wrote “This is GOD speaking!” across the screen while blaring a crazy synthesized seemingly infinitely ascending tone. Now think about this: can today’s computers awaken that curiosity and sense of awe that eventually lead you to a career in computers or are they now so opaque that, unless someone purposefully installs a programming environment, they’re unlikely to engage with the computer in a way that leads you to experiment with it?
I started thinking about this when I was reading a review of Falling for Science: Objects in Mind, a book that asks a similar question: what beloved object began your love for science? The book consists of 51 essays, including some from senior scientists, answering that question. You can probably guess some of the objects, like LEGOs and computers, for example. But some objects are a little more surprising, like chocolate meringue pie and My Little Pony.
My initial reaction was a nostalgic feeling that, no, today’s computers don’t lend themselves to that type of engagement, they’re opaque, not transparent .. get it? naked … nevermind. Sure, today’s computers come pre-installed with software that lets you make movies, music, and write documents; programs that lets you create stuff and, an environment with tool for creative activities, but activities unrelated to computation. I think of today’s machines with tons of craplets and compare it to my first PC, which had BASIC and the source for a little game about a monkey that hurled bananas; basically, stuff that let you play with the raw bits of the machine. Yeah, the end product oftentimes was a video game, or some multimedia thing, but I had to translate from computer code to sounds, graphics, or algorithms. That’s the sort of stuff that led me to my interests in computability theory, communication, and HCI. My social and physical interactions with computers have had tremendous influence on what I’ve done, even down to the subject of my college essay. I think that’s why the mac feels like such a great environment; because it comes with all the media stuff installed AND with programming and scripting languages that let you muck with the machine.
I really like Turkle’s concluding remark that “at a time when science education is in crisis, giving science its best chance means guiding children to objects they can love”.
No Trackbacks
You can leave a trackback using this URL: http://machine501.com/blog/2008/09/09/naked-computer/trackback/
2 Comments
I’d agree that it’s great the Mac comes with a lot of command line programming languages and the awesome Quartz Compositor, but XCode is still an optional install, which means it’s not that different from downloading Visual Studio Express.
And of course Linux and Solaris also have many of the same languages out of the box.
What would be great would be shipping something like NodeBox out (which simplifies PyObjC) or Shoes (which has the exact intention you talk of) or making Quartz Composer one of the default Dock/Desktop Icons – something to tempt the user into playing, and feeling they can without breaking things, rather than a hidden power (Terminal = Danger to lots of people).
The use of Python in NodeBox makes me hold back, as I think that may be intimidating to the complete newcomer to programming – perhaps Ruby or fscript’s version of Smalltalk would make a good alternative. NodeBox is also more ‘a new Logo’ while Shoes is more ‘a new BASIC’. The important thing with both is that they are specifically not aimed at Enterprise developers.
These aren’t the only pedagogic languages out there (the OLPC has similar aims) but I guess it comes back to the point that without making them blatant to the end user, it takes that extra step to look (and indeed then decide).
@JulesLt: thanks for the comment and suggestions.
Something I didn’t quite get through my post was that the target audience for these machines was someone already interested in computers to begin with. Though you can argue with the C64 that they were aiming for personal pc/gaming market (On The Edge [http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Fall-Commodore/dp/0973864907/] is a fun read). So, although you could use the C64 for just gaming, you couldn’t run away from that prompt when you started the machine, and its innards and needs were much more on the surface. For example, you’d have to type weird commands to get it to “load” a program, you didn’t just double click on something, you had to swap disks in and out for some programs when a program needed to load another bit of code. All this stuff made the workings of the computer apparent, brought them to the surface. Now, you can get away without even knowing that the apple has a terminal. I’m not saying that it’s bad that this stuff is hidden. I’m glad it is because that means more people can use it and get stuff done that’s not computer related. But, now kids do not encounter the computer as a computing machine, instead it’s a swiss-army machine, with a calendar, a mail program, a gateway into the internet.
That makes me wonder about the controlled interaction imposed on the user by the iPhone. Apple certainly has no obligation to make their device open and available to tinkering, but what opportunities for discovery people get to miss on when they can’t play with the device other than in the way the manufacturer intended.