IP: Two comments re: The Computer DELUSION

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 18:59:30 -0400
To: farber () cis upenn edu
From: Jock Gill <jgill () penfield-gill com>
Subject: Re: IP: The Computer DELUSION


Dave,


I thought the Oppenheimer article was terrible as it was all straw men.
Oppenheimer also failed to deal with the issue of teacher training schools
and certification requirements.  Further, he does not discuss the
miss-match between paper based information delivery, with its 12 year life
cycle for text books,  and the current information doubling rate of 4 or 5
years.


 Most importantly, the article failed to discuss how computers enable us to
see things we could not previously see.


As my wife , the art historian, says:  If you change what people see, you
change what they can imagine and think.  Thus you change how they act.


If computers can do this, then they are a significant educational device.
Oppenheimer seems to blame the tool and not the skill or knowledge of the
users.


Of course new tools are used poorly at first.  And of course we should
careful in our adoption practises.  This is common sense.  And to the
extent we have been careless, Oppenheimer does a service to remind us that
computers are only tools and not magic solutions.


Regards,


Jock


AND


Date: Tue, 15 Jul 1997 17:18:15 -0700
To: farber () cis upenn edu, ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com
From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic () well com>
Subject: Re: IP: The Computer DELUSION
Cc: cliff () well com




This criticism -- that computers are being installed in the schools with
little justification and at the expense of things that matter much more --
was articulated quite well a couple of years in Cliff Stoll's book SILICON
SNAKE OIL, which is widely and mistakenly viewed as a neo-Luddite tract.


Cliff was onto something, and deserves some credit for being ahead of the
curve here.




--Mike