Computers and Children

applematters and Mrs. du Toit
have a interesting take on children and computers. My daughter is the same age as his and while I let her play with the computer a little it is not a big deal. In 16 years when she graduates High School it won't have mattered much which platform she used as a toddler.

There are few programs around now that share anything but name with the programs available 16 years ago.
Sixteen years ago we had desktop computer in the low tens of MHz, harddrives were new and only in the 10s of MB. Now we have GHz laptop computers and GB harddrives that fit in our pockets and play music and PDAs with more power then the desktops of 16 years even imagined. A car now has 100 microprocessors in it, back then car were just beginning to be modeled on the computer and were completely mechanical.
In all likelihood there will be some kind of disruptive change that will completely change how we do things in the next 16 years. I have no idea was it could be but that isn't the problem.

The problem is to teach our children to think so they can handle the fast coming changes. They need to be able to have a chance to play with and explore these things without fear. True freedom comes from being able to make mistakes. The problem with school is that most students learn the lesson of "Don't make mistakes." This is the wrong lesson. The right lesson is "Recover from your mistakes quickly."

There is so much that is learnable, I keep being amazed at the things I never even knew that are out there. People made fun of the Administration when they talked about known-knowns, known-unknowns and unknown-unknowns, these people are the stupid ones. While I know a lot about computers, I know that I don't know how to make a fab for making them. While I know that econometics exists, I know nothing at all about ancient Mongolian philosophy or even if there was such a thing. To think you know everything is arrogant at best and abjectly stupid at worst.