{"id":148,"date":"2005-11-19T02:12:50","date_gmt":"2005-11-19T02:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/worlds_of_possi\/"},"modified":"2005-11-19T02:12:50","modified_gmt":"2005-11-19T02:12:50","slug":"worlds_of_possi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/technology\/worlds_of_possi\/","title":{"rendered":"Worlds of Possibility"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onclick=\"window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=144,height=117,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false\" href=\"http:\/\/silverjacket.typepad.com\/.shared\/image.html?\/photos\/uncategorized\/tnlaptopcrank.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"81\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/silverjacket.typepad.com\/blog\/images\/tnlaptopcrank.jpg\" title=\"Tnlaptopcrank\" alt=\"Tnlaptopcrank\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; float: left;\" \/><\/a>I nearly shed a tear today reading a brief quote by Nicholas Negroponte about <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/news\/print\/0,1294,69615,00.html\">his effort to provide $100-laptops to every child in the developing world<\/a>, whether they want one or not. (They may not even know they want one.) The part that misted my eyes I&#8217;ve put in bold.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Giving the kids a programming environment of any sort, whether it&#8217;s a tool like Squeak or Scratch or Logo to write programs <strong>in a childish way &#8212; and I mean that in the most generous sense of the word, that is, playing with and building things<\/strong> &#8212; is one of the best ways to learn. Particularly to learn about thinking and algorithms and problem solving and so forth.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>As mental prosthetics, computers are literally mind-bending, mind-expanding tools. Giving naive, undereducated children, presumably bubbling with glorious potential, their own personal computers will explode their universes. I&#8217;m talking new dimensions. Now imagine giving them the freedom to PLAY in that space, to BE CHILDISH and create things from scratch. That&#8217;s an experience perhaps as powerfully transformative as learning to read and write.<\/p>\n<p>I can only compare it to my own bursts of self-realization within the worlds of LEGO, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/news\/mac\/0,2125,54365,00.html\">HyperCard<\/a>, and LSD. But next to those, this is like handing a kid a fucking magic wand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I nearly shed a tear today reading a brief quote by Nicholas Negroponte about his effort to provide $100-laptops to every child in the developing world, whether they want one or not. (They may not even know they want one.) The part that misted my eyes I&#8217;ve put in bold. Giving the kids a programming [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,34,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-mind-brain","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}