Think Fast
I found the Mindstorms article interesting with its approach to looking at computers specifically for their impact to children & education. I think Papert has a good point when discusses how children learn how to think with help from the guidance of computers. I agree when he says that by teaching computers how to think, the children are inadvertently teaching themselves different ways to think. I believe that this is true, because children today think differently than the generations before them. This is because of the way that they are brought up but a lot the way that they learn. There is no question that adults today work quicker and expect things to be done faster than the generations before them. This is realted to their upbringing and how they learn. Children today are taught to work with computers and technology at a fast pace. E-mail instead of writing a letter. Text message. AIM. We teach computers to do things instantly for us, and in return we accept ourselves to work faster. Monkey see, monkey do. Or something like that…
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March 11th, 2008 at 7:57 am
You’re right that as society progresses, we work at a much faster pace to the point that it affects our way of thinking. To use your example of standard mail in comparison to Email, I’d say that standard mail is all but obsolete (at least for me) for text based letters. Mail is still useful to deliver non-electronic packages (you can digitally send a laptop, but when there is some teleporting technology out there, I imagine the death of UPS and USPS). Overall, I can’t imagine a world without Email or instant messaging, and I can’t imagine a world that takes three days to mail a message to someone in California and no instant messaging option available.