[Argentina] Fwd: [IAEP] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric

Mon Feb 14 22:18:50 EST 2011

Hola a todos!

Leyendo correo atrasados :), destaco este thread
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/archive/iaep/2011-February/012398.html
Copio abajo toda la charla (leer desde abajo hacia arriba) por si
alguien aun no la leyó.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 1:21 PM
Subject: Re: [IAEP] [squeakland]  Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric
To: Ron Teitelbaum <horont at earthlink.net>, Chunka Mui <chunka at cornerloft.com>
Cc: voluntarios y administradores OLPC para usuarios docentes
<olpc-sur at lists.laptop.org>, "squeakland.org mailing list"
<squeakland at squeakland.org>, Carlos Rabassa <carnen at mac.com>,
america-latina at squeakland.org, Maho 2010 <maho at realness.org>, olpc
bolivia <olpc-bolivia at lists.laptop.org>, IAEP SugarLabs
<iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>, OLPC Puno <olpcpuno at gmail.com>

Hi Ron,

I've already played this game ad nauseum with many groups on the web.
So I urge everyone to rise above the temptation to name your favorite
idea that seems "new".

But do you really think there were no peer to peer and cloud computing
systems already deployed before 1980? (Hint: I used both quite a lot
back then, and for a short time actually was in charge of an ARPA task
group to define an AI "cloud resource" for the already running ARPAnet
-- the one that got built was a multiple processor system (C.mmp)
designed by Gordon Bell)

For much larger issues and inventions than DHT, let me refer you to
the 1978 PhD thesis of David Reed (popularly known as "the '/' in
TCP/IP") at MIT.1978. If you haven't heard of David or read this
thesis, then this helps make my main point.

Since it would be really improbable for me to be aware of all
developments after 1980 (and even some before), I don't claim there
have been none.

I simply asked for 3 (or even one) since 1980 comparable to personal
computing, GUIs, the Internet, Engelbart's notion of "online system",
etc. Previous essays into this yielded many suggestions, but I was
able to identify prior art for all such.

For example, Tim Berners-Lee was suitably embarrassed when he found
out about Engelbart - first for the web not doing as well in the
design, goals and execution, and secondly, because as a physicist he
would have been drummed out of Physics if he had not tried to "stand
on the shoulders of giants" (as Newton said), and he had assumed
falsely (and I think partly because our field is so careless about its
historical great steps up) that computing had no Netwons, and the
Internet had somehow just appeared without thought out purposes, and
he failed to look for them.

Best wishes,

Alan

________________________________
From: Ron Teitelbaum <horont at earthlink.net>
To: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>; Chunka Mui <chunka at cornerloft.com>
Cc: voluntarios y administradores OLPC para usuarios docentes
<olpc-sur at lists.laptop.org>; squeakland.org mailing list
<squeakland at squeakland.org>; america-latina at squeakland.org; Carlos
Rabassa <carnen at mac.com>; Maho 2010 <maho at realness.org>; olpc bolivia
<olpc-bolivia at lists.laptop.org>; IAEP SugarLabs
<iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>; OLPC Puno <olpcpuno at gmail.com>
Sent: Sun, February 6, 2011 7:28:18 AM
Subject: RE: [squeakland] [IAEP] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric

Hi Alan,

One thing that comes to mind right away is DHT research.  I could be
wrong but it seems to me that the 90’ saw the birth of DHT, P2P and
Cloud Computing.

Ron Teitelbaum

On Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 11:43 AM, Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I don't think of "teachers" or "teaching" as dirty words. And I don't
> separate them by age group, profession, or whether parents or not. (Do I
> have to say that good teachers facilitate learning ....?)
>
> There are lots of poor teachers in the world (for many different reasons),
> but it's important to understand that no child ever invented Calculus, nor
> did any adult until very recently in our 200,000 years on the planet. Good
> teachers are vital, and most especially for the powerful invented ideas and
> knowledge that is less strongly built into our genetically and culturally
> fashioned brain/minds.
>
> So we need good teachers from our peers, our parents, our schooling systems,
> our vocations, our delights, etc.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Alan
>
> ________________________________
> From: K. K. Subramaniam <kksubbu.ml at gmail.com>
> To: squeakland at squeakland.org
> Cc: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>; Chunka Mui
> <chunka.mui at devilsadvocategroup.com>; voluntarios y administradores OLPC
> para usuarios docentes <olpc-sur at lists.laptop.org>;
> "america-latina at squeakland.org" <america-latina at squeakland.org>; Carlos
> Rabassa <carnen at mac.com>; Maho 2010 <maho at realness.org>; olpc bolivia
> <olpc-bolivia at lists.laptop.org>; IAEP SugarLabs <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>;
> OLPC Puno <olpcpuno at gmail.com>
> Sent: Sun, February 6, 2011 6:36:38 AM
> Subject: Re: [squeakland] [IAEP] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric
>
> A lot of thought provoking ideas listed in one mail. Wow!
>
> On Sunday 06 Feb 2011 5:20:15 am Alan Kay wrote:
>> For the US, it has been calculated that it is not possible to create
>> enough
>> knowledgeable K-8 teachers for math and science over the next 25 years,
>> even for the 30:1 student teacher ratios we have today. It has been
>> estimated that this problem is much worse in the developing world.
> Student-Teacher ratio is about teaching not learning. I learnt the hard way
> that a different mind-set is needed to work with learning.
>
> Parents and Family seems to have done a fairly good job in the 0-6 year
> range.
> When we get into the next stage (6-12), the learning environment breaks
> down.
> Mothers don't go around with a growth chart and taunt their babies with "You
> should have been crawling by six months. You will get a C for your crawling.
> Sit facing the wall for the next five minutes!" ;-). In India at least,
> families are held responsible for their children's development. In the next
> stage, why not hold teachers responsible for outcomes but facilitate them to
> achieve their goals using whatever they find appropriate?
>
> In one exercise, we worked with teachers across 120 rural schools near
> Bangalore to attain one specific goal, 'get every student to read Kannada
> and
> Division by 7th grade' using whatever means at their disposal, even if they
> have to take assistance from locals who are not teachers but like being with
> children. Teachers took the help of external evaluators to detect
> non-learners
> in June to create a target set. When the eval was repeated six months later,
> the number dropped to near zero in 102 schools. Other schools are now
> catching
> up. The effect of empowerment spilled over into other topics and boosted the
> overall morale of students. The marginal funding required for this exercise
> was trivial.
>
>> Computers can represent books and all other media, and they should be able
>> to actively help us learn to read them (even if we start off not being
>> able to read at all).
> Children will learn to read only when they have to read to learn. The thirst
> for knowledge has to go beyond what they can get from their family or
> school.
> This is a challenge in countries like India with dense population and an
> oral
> tradition. The chasm between pre-literate to semi-literate is quite large.
>
> A teacher in a rural public school narrated a case of a 6th grade student
> who
> wouldn't write or read and was at the bottom grade. When we introduced
> computers into the school, he was attracted to TeX morph in Etoys that
> typeset
> multilingual texts. He played with this morph sporadically over four months
> to
> generate various letter shapes and words (including misspellings) and then
> broke into fluent writing and reading. He had stumbled on a strong reason to
> read. Once he crossed the chasm, he stopped using the computer and switched
> over to books. Computer became a complex device. This incident had a big
> impact on the teacher who was, at that time, in her third trimester of her
> pregnancy.
>
>> The great funding in the 60s was done mostly by the government, and for
>> personal computing and pervasive networks was spread over more than 15
>> universities and research companies who formed a cooperative research
>> community. (The story of this is told in "The Dream Machine" by Mitchel
>> Waldrop).
> Given the scale and scope of education, public funding and social
> participation is the only solution. Private funding comes with too many
> strings attached :-(.
>
> Subbu
>

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Edward Cherlin <echerlin at gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 6, 2011 at 12:04 AM
Subject: Re: [IAEP] [squeakland] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric
To: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
Cc: voluntarios y administradores OLPC para usuarios docentes
<olpc-sur at lists.laptop.org>, "squeakland.org mailing list"
<squeakland at squeakland.org>, "america-latina at squeakland.org"
<america-latina at squeakland.org>, Carlos Rabassa <carnen at mac.com>, Maho
2010 <maho at realness.org>, olpc bolivia
<olpc-bolivia at lists.laptop.org>, IAEP SugarLabs
<iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>, Chunka Mui <chunka at cornerloft.com>, OLPC
Puno <olpcpuno at gmail.com>

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 14:11, Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi Chunka,
>
> I've been challenged on this point more than once, and have challenged back
> to come up with one invention that was done after 1980 that matches up to
> the top 10 done before 1980.

Second the motion. The Internet comes from DARPA. Interactive,
collaborative computing comes from Doug Engelbart's group at SRI, with
government funding. Alan's work on Smalltalk at Xerox was founded
directly on Doug's. The Apple Mac (and Lisa) GUI and Windows are just
high-budget, low-concept retoolings of parts of Smalltalk, without the
good stuff.

The innovations in education that I use come from Maria Montessori,
Jean Piaget, Georges Cuisenaire, Caleb Gattigno, and others in the
early to mid 20th century. The pioneers of computers in education
include Omar Khayyam Moore (who supplemented the computer with a
graduate student), Ken Iverson, and Seymour Papert in the 1960s.
Almost all of the rest of us are working out details from their great
insights, or more often ignoring most of their work to concentrate on
some tiny part of it.

Men of one idea, like a hen with one chick, and that a
duckling.--Henry David Thoreau

Alan has asked what Silicon Valley will do when it runs out of Doug
Engelbart's ideas. I don't think the situation is globally that dire,
but I do think that the next wave will not come from Silicon Valley,
but from somewhere unexpected, quite likely some place where our XO
children are allowed sufficient freedom to innovate, or find ways to
do it regardless.

However, there is a substantial movement now to replace printed
textbooks with less expensive computers with Free Software and
Creative Commons content. There is a substantial movement to create
unencumbered content, particularly in academic publishing. There is
not a very rapid uptake of these tools in school systems, but it is
early days yet.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you,
then you win.--Mahatma Gandhi

Then they claim that it was their idea all along.--Edward Mokurai Cherlin

I am in discussions with Dan Cohen the Mathman, mathman.biz, over his
Calculus By and For Young People, and with the company that Caleb
Gattegno founded to commercialize his Silent Way of teaching
languages, for donations of content to Sugar. I will be talking with
the Squeakland list about putting their approaches into Etoys
software.

> This has not happened. I've been able to show the prior art for all
> suggestions.
>
> Essentially everything in the last 30 years has been commercializations and
> other forms of "innovation" based on what was funded by ARPA, ONR, and by
> extension, Xerox in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
>
> The important point here is that there are many new inventions needed, and
> they can be identified, but no one has been willing to fund them. It's not
> that the early birds got the worms, but that most of the needed worms out
> there are being missed.

The problem in education research goes much deeper than lack of
funding. It is deeply political, and touches many people's sense of
who and what they are, including parents, teachers, school
administrations, and politicians.

There are worms that got initial research funding, but the political
environment is so toxic that we cannot use the results.

An example of a toxic dispute that is not overtly political is whole
word vs. phonics in teaching reading. Both are required in English,
which has many variant spellings for its phonemes, and words such as
'once' that conform to no rule at all. One of the political dimensions
of this and related disputes is that teachers refuse to discuss
linguistics research. In part it is a status thing, a Thorstein
Veblen/Theory of the Leisure Class phenomenon, because teachers want
to teach the high-status version of any language, not the vernacular,
and because teachers have been losing status in the US for decades,
with shrinking pay, benefits, and rights, and constant attacks from
political grandstanders.

An example of a purely political dispute is evolutionary biology vs.
Creationism, where some Creationists have convinced themselves that
Darwin is the Apostle of the Antichrist, and most agree that science
is part of a plot to destroy all that is good and true in human
society. Sex education is to them the clearest symptom that this moral
decay is deliberate.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 4:11 PM
Subject: Re: [IAEP] [squeakland]  Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric
To: Chunka Mui <chunka at cornerloft.com>
Cc: voluntarios y administradores OLPC para usuarios docentes
<olpc-sur at lists.laptop.org>, "squeakland.org mailing list"
<squeakland at squeakland.org>, "america-latina at squeakland.org"
<america-latina at squeakland.org>, Carlos Rabassa <carnen at mac.com>, Maho
2010 <maho at realness.org>, olpc bolivia
<olpc-bolivia at lists.laptop.org>, IAEP SugarLabs
<iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>, OLPC Puno <olpcpuno at gmail.com>

Hi Chunka,

I've been challenged on this point more than once, and have challenged
back to come up with one invention that was done after 1980 that
matches up to the top 10 done before 1980.

This has not happened. I've been able to show the prior art for all suggestions.

Essentially everything in the last 30 years has been
commercializations and other forms of "innovation" based on what was
funded by ARPA, ONR, and by extension, Xerox in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.

The important point here is that there are many new inventions needed,
and they can be identified, but no one has been willing to fund them.
It's not that the early birds got the worms, but that most of the
needed worms out there are being missed.

Cheers,

Alan
________________________________
From: Chunka Mui <chunka at cornerloft.com>
To: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
Cc: Carlos Rabassa <carnen at mac.com>; "america-latina at squeakland.org"
<america-latina at squeakland.org>; squeakland.org mailing list
<squeakland at squeakland.org>; Maho 2010 <maho at realness.org>; IAEP
SugarLabs <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>; voluntarios y administradores
OLPC para usuarios docentes <olpc-sur at lists.laptop.org>; olpc bolivia
<olpc-bolivia at lists.laptop.org>; OLPC Puno <olpcpuno at gmail.com>
Sent: Sat, February 5, 2011 10:53:44 AM
Subject: Re: [squeakland] [IAEP] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric

On Jan 30, 2011, at 9:21 AM, Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com> wrote:

GE is being congratulated for recognizing that the iPhone and iPad are
pretty good ideas and technological realizations. But isn't this like
the congratulations Bill Gates got for finally recognizing the
Internet (about 25 years after it had started working)?

Seems as though Apple had a lot more on the ball than Bill Gates or GE
here (they used to do computing in the 60s, but couldn't see what it
was).

And most of the ideas at Apple (and for personal computing and the
Internet) came from research funding that no company or government has
been willing to do since 1982.

Alan -- Could you say more about this point?  Surely there's been tons
of CS and IT funding since '82, both govt funding to universities and
massive research budgets at msft, hp,
Regards,
Chunka

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 8:50 PM
Subject: Re: [IAEP] [squeakland]  Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric
To: Chunka Mui <chunka.mui at devilsadvocategroup.com>
Cc: voluntarios y administradores OLPC para usuarios docentes
<olpc-sur at lists.laptop.org>, "squeakland at squeakland.org"
<squeakland at squeakland.org>, "america-latina at squeakland.org"
<america-latina at squeakland.org>, Carlos Rabassa <carnen at mac.com>, Maho
2010 <maho at realness.org>, olpc bolivia
<olpc-bolivia at lists.laptop.org>, IAEP SugarLabs
<iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>, OLPC Puno <olpcpuno at gmail.com>

Hi Chunka

It's basically "hunting and gathering" vs. "agriculture". Or
"parisitism" vs "symbiosis". These are built into human nervous
systems by genetics, but it is still surprising given that we've had
agriculture for more than 10,000 years, and one would think it would
be more generally noticed and understood.

Here is an example from today that is like the impulse and vision that
propelled the 12 year effort that invented personal computing and the
Internet.

The idea reaches back to the 60s and 70s, but an above threshold
invention was not accomplished.

Children need to be helped to learn important things, such as reading
and writing, mathematics and science and engineering. The helpers need
to understand the subject matter, and also how to help the learning
process with individual learners. Studies have shown that for many
learners, just lowering the learner-to-helper ratio makes an enormous
difference.

For the US, it has been calculated that it is not possible to create
enough knowledgeable K-8 teachers for math and science over the next
25 years, even for the 30:1 student teacher ratios we have today. It
has been estimated that this problem is much worse in the developing
world.

Vision: It is a destiny for interactive computers to become sensitive
expert learning helpers for many important parts of human knowledge
which children need to learn.

This is an extension of what the printing press has meant for
learning. There aren't enough Socrates' and other great teachers to go
around, but important parts of their magic can be captured in print,
replicated and distributed by the millions. This allowed more ordinary
teachers plus great-books to do some of what great teachers can do.
And this changed the world.

Computers can represent books and all other media, and they should be
able to actively help us learn to read them (even if we start off not
being able to read at all). And we should be able to go much farther
beyond the book, to make computer helpers that can also understand and
answer many questions in ways that extend our learning rather than
undermines the growth of our minds.

These computer helpers also help the human helpers. It's not about
replacing humans (even if they don't exist) with computers, but making
a more powerful learning environment using technology to help.

This is a hard vision to pull off, just as personal computing was. The
funding needed to be long term in the 60s because much had to be done
to (a) even find a version of the vision that could serve as "problem
and goals", and very importantly (b) to "grow" the grad students and
PhDs, who as second and third generation researchers, were able to
frame the problem and do the inventions.

The payoff has been enormous. The inventions at PARC alone have
generated about $30 Trillion dollars of wealth worldwide (and yes
Xerox's return on their investment in PARC has been more than a factor
of 200 (from the laser printer alone).

The great funding in the 60s was done mostly by the government, and
for personal computing and pervasive networks was spread over more
than 15 universities and research companies who formed a cooperative
research community. (The story of this is told in "The Dream Machine"
by Mitchel Waldrop).

The funders today do not have a lot of vision, and they have even less
courage. A new kind of user interface that can help people learn is
not just for the very important needs of education around the world,
but will also open up learning in business, defense, and for consumer
design and products.

How much would this cost? A critical mass of institutions and
researchers could be supported starting at about $100M/year. By
contrast, the estimated US spending for Iraq and Afghanistan for 2011
is about $170B. So we are talking initially about less than 1/10 of 1
percent of the cost of these wars.

What's the hitch. First there is risk. It is a very difficult problem.
But I think a bigger hitch is that it is likely to take more than 10
years to pull off. This is longer than any corporate or government
cycle.

Perhaps a larger hitch lies in one of the biggest changes in funding
today as compared to the 60s. There is no question that a funder of
large research monies for high risk projects is "responsible". Today's
funders are so worried about this responsibility that they confuse it
with "control" and tried to insert themselves in the decision
processes. This is a disaster (they are funders not researchers, and
the more visionary and difficult the projects, the less their opinion
can be at all germane.)

The 60s funders made no such error. They said "we can't evaluate
projects behind the Beltway, so we'll fund people not projects". This
required trust in both directions, but it is a proper and good
allocation of expertise.

The other thing that the 60s funders pointed out when queried by
worried politicians, is that they were "playing baseball" not "going
to school", meaning that given the high risk and high payoff of the
research, they only needed to bat .350 and "the world will be
changed"). Today's funders want certainty, and this is engineering at
best, and this does not change the world because the hard important
problems never get worked on.

Best wishes

Alan

________________________________
From: Chunka Mui <chunka.mui at devilsadvocategroup.com>
To: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
Cc: Carlos Rabassa <carnen at mac.com>; "america-latina at squeakland.org"
<america-latina at squeakland.org>; "squeakland at squeakland.org"
<squeakland at squeakland.org>; Maho 2010 <maho at realness.org>; IAEP
SugarLabs <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>; voluntarios y administradores
OLPC para usuarios docentes <olpc-sur at lists.laptop.org>; olpc bolivia
<olpc-bolivia at lists.laptop.org>; OLPC Puno <olpcpuno at gmail.com>
Sent: Sat, February 5, 2011 1:31:45 PM
Subject: Re: [squeakland] [IAEP] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric

Alan  --

I’ve seen many organizations claim to be committed to “innovation,”
while eschewing “invention.”  Everyone harvesting while refusing to
sow makes for bad strategy, both societal and corporate.  I guess it’s
“rational” in some short-term sense and another example of the free
rider problem.  There’s an insidious side-effect as well.  By
rejecting invention, those organizations implicitly or explicitly
restrict the consideration set for even incremental innovation.  It’s
hard to reach for even small aspirations if you’re always being told
to not be “too far out.” So my experience matches your general point.

I don’t make much experience, however, with the specific example that
you were referring to.  I’d like to hear more about your perspective
about the guiding principles pre and post ‘82, and how each set of
leaders/funders rationalized their viewpoints.  I’d also be interested
in your sense of the trend on this topic, since we have a new
generation of high tech corporate leaders and funders and, clearly,
another round of massive wealth being generated.

Regards,
Chunka

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Alan Kay <alan.nemo at yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 12:21 PM
Subject: Re: [IAEP] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric
To: Carlos Rabassa <carnen at mac.com>, america-latina at squeakland.org,
"squeakland.org mailing list" <squeakland at squeakland.org>, Maho 2010
<maho at realness.org>, IAEP SugarLabs <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>,
voluntarios y administradores OLPC para usuarios docentes
<olpc-sur at lists.laptop.org>, olpc bolivia
<olpc-bolivia at lists.laptop.org>, OLPC Puno <olpcpuno at gmail.com>

GE is being congratulated for recognizing that the iPhone and iPad are
pretty good ideas and technological realizations. But isn't this like
the congratulations Bill Gates got for finally recognizing the
Internet (about 25 years after it had started working)?

Seems as though Apple had a lot more on the ball than Bill Gates or GE
here (they used to do computing in the 60s, but couldn't see what it
was).

And most of the ideas at Apple (and for personal computing and the
Internet) came from research funding that no company or government has
been willing to do since 1982.

Cheers,

Alan

________________________________
From: Carlos Rabassa <carnen at mac.com>
To: america-latina at squeakland.org; squeakland.org mailing list
<squeakland at squeakland.org>; Maho 2010 <maho at realness.org>; IAEP
SugarLabs <iaep at lists.sugarlabs.org>; voluntarios y administradores
OLPC para usuarios docentes <olpc-sur at lists.laptop.org>; olpc bolivia
<olpc-bolivia at lists.laptop.org>; OLPC Puno <olpcpuno at gmail.com>
Sent: Sun, January 30, 2011 4:11:49 AM
Subject: [IAEP] Plan Ceibal y/and General Electric

We try to learn from those who have succeed for a long time:

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1XWm2q8nQ-l5KUJ_PWkQruLDx-nZ7nsKDfg4idDlsU50

Carlos Rabassa
_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep

_______________________________________________
IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!)
IAEP at lists.sugarlabs.org
http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep