Comment by mwcampbell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mwcampbell | Hacker News Reader

This passage from the synopsis made me stop and think:

> they were designed for “technically precocious boys”—idealized younger versions of the developers themselves

I was a technically precocious boy; I got my start on Apple II computers in the late 80s. I think it's common for nerds of my generation to look at newer computers, particularly mobile devices, and worry that they're robbing future generations of what we had in our childhood -- a computer that gave us an open, kind of hard-to-miss invitation to tinker, learn to program, and go as deep into the software stack as we wanted to go (it wasn't actually that deep on those old computers).

I'm tempted to think that I wasn't actually that special as a kid, and if newer computers were designed for technically precocious kids, there might be more such kids in future generations. But then, in my family with two brothers and a sister, I clearly was the only computer nerd. And I think it's likely that my siblings (and especially my mother, who was using a computer for real work) were happier with later computers than they were with our first Apple IIGS. So while I admit I was initially indignant at the quote above, I can see why it was actually pointing out a real problem.

Ames' concept of the "technically precocious boy" is her entire thesis in a nutshell: that the creators of the OLPC projected their values, experiences, and assumptions onto the whole project.

I have conducted hours of interviews with early personal computing pioneers and have noticed a lot of similar backstories when they first talk about what attracted them to computing. Almost all of the men I've interviewed have some memory of taking apart and re-assembling devices when they were young boys and they recall this as being formative.

On the other hand, what is computing? What is it supposed to "be like"? Is it a technology like a car, or a bicycle, or other complex productive machinery? Or is it instead like pencil and paper and the writing systems / literacy that go along with it?

If we go with the latter concept -- a "new kind of literacy" -- then this argument of the "technically precocious boy" only applies to the specific form of the technology produced. In other words, imagine criticizing ancient Mesopotamian scribes trying to extend the reach of writing because they specifically sought to teach in other lands the imprinting reed shapes into clay. One could argue (for good reason) that this is probably a bad approach, but that's less to do with the fact that said scribes learned this process as boys and/or had some initial affinity for it.

Ames also hedges her bets in the book early on: she bases her critique entirely on the writings of people like Papert and Negroponte, but explicitly says she will not be evaluating constructivism as a pedagogical framework. That's sort of too bad -- Papert et al were not just creating computing systems they thought would revolutionize education. They assumed that there would already be some kind of forthcoming revolution in education regardless, and they wanted to secure computing's place in that new world. It never came to pass. I feel like it's an under explored angle.

Of course these are complicated questions. Ames' book is really valuable as a postmortem, especially the parts that are based on her fieldwork. And I do think that the "technically precocious boy" framing is good in that it creates space to have a really nuanced conversation about this aspect of computing and education.

What would a computer look like if it were designed for a technically precocious girl?

Oh, there's a good sci fi book which tackles that idea. It's not the only idea in the book, but it's a major theme. It's right there in the title.

Neal Stephenson "The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer"

It's a 25 year old book but slight spoiler, it's about what happens when this book made for a rich billionaire's child falls into the hands of a poor child. Among many interesting ideas, the book has its own source of funding (think, crypto) and uses that to hire actors (like zoom with full on mo-cap) to bring to life the characters in the story. IIRc, the lessons/dialog are all written but the actors can bring them to life and ad-lib, and one actor in particular ends up being the remote mother for this child.

Oh, another bonus part of the story I remember to give you an incentive to read it, there's a multi-page digression about how turing machines work retold as a fantasy allegory with like, castle bridges, chain links and trolls.

I forgot about that book! It is indeed a good one, and second the recommendation to anyone who hasn't read it. Although if that's the one with the drum people, they're kind of weird and might be off-putting to some.

Funny thing: I was hired by OLPC specifically to implement that book: https://blog.printf.net/articles/2011/06/18/narrative-interf...

Probably the same. From what I can tell, "technically precocious boy" means the same thing as "technically precocious".

It's a no-win situation for the researchers.

Do they even bother to clarify what they mean by "technically precocious"? I've seen some references to the MIT hacker culture in the OP, but back in the day this was strictly about a tiny minority of people in the most technical parts of academia; by and large, children would not have had any exposure to computers for personal use until very late in the history of that culture, and the research questions about "constructivism" were precisely about how to make this kind of exposure educationally meaningful. I suppose that I'm seeing a lot of fuzzy, loosely-connected memes in the intro to the book but not much clear thinking and reasoning that would result in an intelligible argument.

The problem is that if you assume "being able to use a device" is what qualifies you as precocious then the argument becomes moot. But I'm not sure what else the authors could mean.

"constructivism", and similar ideas about schools with no lessons where children just learn what they want to, are all based on children of smart parents who encourage such things.

The average child is happy watching youtube videos about unboxing single use plastic toys 24/7

> the "technically precocious boy" is her entire thesis in a nutshell

Yuck? Amidst the many confused claims people have made for OLPC cultural imperialism, one that's valid (but seemingly rarely mentioned?) was its insistence on On Laptop Per Girl, even where that went against the grain. And IIRC, that was as much over XO for reading books, as over XO for writing or "computing". Mashing "literacy for girls" into "toys for boys", or "access to books" into "tech toy"... I hope that's not the thesis?

I'm not even that old and I completely agree with your point. One would think that easy access to beginner friendly programming languages and environments would be a boon to technically precious children. However I think for most kids, highly addictive and cheap video games and social media end up monopolizing all the time and attention. It's really sad to see all that neuroplastic potential being wasted on TikTok. Personally, I came up around the dawn of Facebook and was only (partially) saved by being too poor to afford many video games or an expensive computer, and being too much of a loner to care about Facebook.

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