[Edu-sig] Alan Kay - another one of his ideas

[Andreas Raab]

Paul D. Fernhout wrote:
> I don't mean to complain specifically about these pages, just to point out 
> that while the supposed intent here is to make programming available to 
> the masses by using a dumbed down environment like a web browser, in 
> practice, this fails for me. Whereas, when I install Squeak or Python, it 
> works. So, I think Alan Kay may be going in the wrong direction here in 
> some ways, compared to Squeak. Not to say it might not be useful for 
> certain audiences, just that it fails the "everyone" test, at least for me.

Not surprising, really, because you're missing the point of Logowiki. 
Logowiki's main purpose is as an example for what "dynamic content" on a 
web page can mean, in particular in an educational setting. Remember 
that we lost the ability to author with the introduction of the world 
wide web and we're only about to get it back. The choice of Logo is 
simply because it's easily recognizable for the intended target audience.

[A secondary motivation for Logowiki is as an experiment in "zero 
install" deployment and to be able to see what can be done with Ajax and 
friends and a bit of compiler translation technology which is not so 
different from PyPy btw - parts of it would make perfect sense to 
translate Python to Javascript code on the fly]

> And of course, the site was also inaccessible when I first learned about 
> it (from Kirby's post to this list I think) from too much demand most 
> likely, so it also failed the cost test. Presumably, they just could not 
> afford to put enough resources into the project for "everyone".

Paul, you are confusing a demo with a product. Logowiki was done to 
explain to OLPC what we mean when we use terms like dynamic content and 
what may change if, for example, Wikipedia had the ability to included 
such dynamic, end-user authored content.

Cheers,
   - Andreas