[Edu-sig] creating an interface vs. using one (Michel Paul)

[ajsiegel at optonline.net]

----- Original Message -----
From: kirby urner 
> There's also another theme woven in, which is that before my Minister
> of Education stint, I was already a top dog in what's called the
> Fuller School (e.g. bfi.org), a pirate ship captained by R.
> Buckminster Fuller (Applewhite as quartermaster). I bring that
> experience with me to edu-sig, e.g.

Thank you for the reasoned summary, for anyone who might care.

But I would add that perhaps our most fundamental disagreement is the role that
commercial interests are playing in shaping the debate over the use of technology in
education, and the extent to which that role is and will continue to lead to distorted
sub-optimum, potentially disastrous results. My view of the past is different.  Technology
is being used, IMO, as the breach in the wall that traditionally had kept commercial interests
at bay in this realm. Good tradition. If you would like to make the case that the TI Calculator 
was the vanguard, I won't disagree. I believe that commercial interests intruding in this 
realm necessarily destroys the the natural selection of those ideas that are best fitted to 
the common good. So perhaps you are right that the you are up against more then the 
merits of the case in trying to dislodge TI.  Will it be different when it is time to dislodge 
Microsoft?

When Kay was filling Disney auditoriums with teachers, and pontificating about the future
of education from that perch, you granted him the Genius exemption. I saw taking a 
leading role in making our classrooms safe for the profit motive.

Unwittingly. perhaps.  But geniuses are not supposed to be unwitting. The you think he knows 
something I don't carries no weight with me - within the parameters of my position 
here. That  he thinks he does, I have no doubt.

Calling him a schmuck in Squeakland might be a breach of good faith - there being no
reason to be there is that is how I feel.  Notice, I am not.

I see no breach of anything in stating that opinion, in the context I do, here.

For the record, one of the first things I remember Guido doing when he went to work
for a private company was to announce that CP4E was from that time to be considered
a personal interest, and unconnected to his professional employment.

Notice, I am here. 

Art
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/attachments/20060925/7f9c6219/attachment.htm