cac.ophony.org

…I didn’t realize my family was special for having one of the early Commodore 64 home computers. I also didn’t realize how fortunate I would later feel at having learned a little Basic (the programming language), and how to touch-type when I was eleven. But today’s kids–whoo! I’m envious.

As reported in the New York Times today, we now have Arts and Crafts for the Digital Age. The German Science Studies theorist Friedrich Kittler has argued that one of the problems with the way most people currently interface with technology is that it is entirely at the level of software. The average person knows very little about their computer’s hardware, and is possibly quite frightened by it. We tend to assume it’s very powerful, and easily damageable. But with the PicoCricket Kit, designed by Mitchell Resnick (assistant professor of learning research at the MIT Media Lab), any child who can afford this $250 toy can begin to interact with digital technologies as both hardware and software. They can learn to program the small computer that comes along with the pipe cleaners, the legos, the electric wiring, and the felt.

The Vex Robot, from InnovationFirst (a robotics company) and Radioshack, is also mentioned. The article quotes a vice-president at InnovationFirst, “Talk to the average high school students, they are a lot smarter…They like open-ended problems, and a lot like to take the tools that are available to solve open-ended problems.” Not mentioned in the article is technoartist Natalie Jeremijenko, who has worked with high school and university students to reprogram robotic dogs made by Sony. These newly ‘feral dogs,’ so named for their street-smart capabilities, are able to sniff out toxic waste such as dry cleaning solvents and paint thinner. Robots… the next critical thinking tool?

When I was a kid, my mother bought my sister and I Erector Sets, in the hopes that we would become engineers. Maybe I’ll just have to save up for the PicoCricket Kit.