[Edu-sig] Tracing the Dynabook: A Dissertation

[kirby urner]

On 1/18/07, John Maxwell <jmax at sfu.ca> wrote:

<<SNIP>>

>    http://thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/Dynabook/dissertation
>
> I'm very interested in any comments you might have.
>
>
>   - John Maxwell

Hi John --

I've read up through pg 20 of your intro thus far, to right before you
launch into Alan's story.

Since you track this list you probably know I was on the team
representing Python at a Shuttleworth Foundation summit in
Kensington last April, Alan Kay attending, Papert invited but
as you know a tad elderly.

There are so many ways to give an account of the early years
of the computer revolution.  Any thumbnail will be inadequate
but mine is more like Neal Stephenson's in "In the beginning..."
which goes to Morlocks and Eloi per H.G. Wells, much as
you fork to experts and end-users (a mythology it looks like
you're preparing to fight, which is heartening).

The Morlocks needed free and open source and didn't get
that with CP/M, DOS, OS/2, Windows, or Mac (up until
OS X).  In school they got it with Unix *if* on the team to
play with (develop) Unix, e.g. at UC Berkeley, source of
FreeBSD.  Or they got it at IBM, internally, with VMS, APL
or whatever.  But once "on the outside" (no longer lucky
enough to be in school or inside a large computer savvy
corporation), a young Morlock penguin was "frozen out",
kept away from her or his chief joy.  With hardware getting
ridiculously inexpensive, that *had* to change, and it did
(I'm not a technological determinist, but I think it'd have
taken forces way greater than SCO to quell the geek
takeover of geekdom).

So in my telling, the revolution hadn't really started yet in
those early Wordstar and WordPerfect days.  That was an
office culture revolution, a change of equipment, but had
little to do with real computing or computer science *except*
where so-called power users were concerned, with their
spreadsheet macros, with their xBase.

I call that the "the bizapp revolution" and I lived through it
first hand, could write a 300 page novel and/or autobio about
it easy. Yawn.  Actually, might be fun.  Title "Have xBase
Will Travel" -- to Bhutan even, both solo and later with my
wife, Dawn Wicca, and her/our young Alexia (1980s).

Anyway, you've picked an interesting topic:  the trajectory of
Alan Kay and his Dynabook concept (Prospero's Books to
Shakespeare).  Having met the man, I have to say he still
intrigues me.  We're very different animals he and I, but we
managed to share beer together, and agree on many points,
plus disagree amicably and/or reach a divergence of views
on many more.  So I plan to read on.

Kirby