history, technology and education of theoretical math/cs concepts
There is a topic that has interested me, but I have been unable to make much headway in past years since I am not sure where to look. Consider that Kathy, an 8th grade student, knows more about how to use a computer than her parents, who may know more than her grandparents. When learning to use digital technology artifacts such as “menu”, education is imparted on Kathy. She learns something about tree structures, and possibly finite state machines (FSMs). This is done invisibly because she did not have to learn discrete mathematics and automata theory to use the computer. One hypothesis that all technology is this way. We use technology and technology uses us (by invisibly transferring new mental models). The introduction of the mechanical clock changed how we conceptualize time. Fast forwarding to digital technology, Kathy must have conceptualized trees and FSMs as mental models even though this theory was not made explicit. My searches have taken me to psychology (where the dominant discourse is about dysfunction where technology is concerned), history of technology as well as the history of science. This relates to math and computer science education too—teaching FSMs to people through implicit means. Learning something without knowing that your learning it. If anyone on this list has a good place for me to dive, let me know. -paul Paul Fishwick, PhD Distinguished University Chair of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Media: medium.com/@metaphorz Modeling: digest.sigsim.org Twitter: @PaulFishwick ONLINE: Webex,Collaborate, TEAMS, Zoom, Skype, Hangout
Hi Paul, One starting place might be Morgan Ames’ book The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child. Lots in there about how folks learn to compute post-GUIs. Best, Fred Turner On Oct 8, 2020, at 11:56 AM, Paul Fishwick <metaphorz@gmail.com<mailto:metaphorz@gmail.com>> wrote: There is a topic that has interested me, but I have been unable to make much headway in past years since I am not sure where to look. Consider that Kathy, an 8th grade student, knows more about how to use a computer than her parents, who may know more than her grandparents. When learning to use digital technology artifacts such as “menu”, education is imparted on Kathy. She learns something about tree structures, and possibly finite state machines (FSMs). This is done invisibly because she did not have to learn discrete mathematics and automata theory to use the computer. One hypothesis that all technology is this way. We use technology and technology uses us (by invisibly transferring new mental models). The introduction of the mechanical clock changed how we conceptualize time. Fast forwarding to digital technology, Kathy must have conceptualized trees and FSMs as mental models even though this theory was not made explicit. My searches have taken me to psychology (where the dominant discourse is about dysfunction where technology is concerned), history of technology as well as the history of science. This relates to math and computer science education too—teaching FSMs to people through implicit means. Learning something without knowing that your learning it. If anyone on this list has a good place for me to dive, let me know. -paul Paul Fishwick, PhD Distinguished University Chair of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick<http://utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick> Media: medium.com/@metaphorz<http://medium.com/@metaphorz> Modeling: digest.sigsim.org<http://digest.sigsim.org/> Twitter: @PaulFishwick ONLINE: Webex,Collaborate, TEAMS, Zoom, Skype, Hangout _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org<http://sigcis.org/>, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
Hi Paul, I second Morgan Ames's book and articles. For pre-GUI, here are some historical and cultural studies about figures like Andrey Ershov (second literacy) and Seymour Papert (LOGO) that might be helpful: Afinogenov, Gregory. “Andrei Ershov and the Soviet Information Age.” *Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History* 14 (June 1, 2013): 561–84. https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2013.0046. Agalianos, Angelos S. “A Cultural Studies Analysis of Logo in Education.,” 1997. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10018887/7/Agalianos%2C%20Angelos%20S.pdf. Lachney, Michael, and Ellen K. Foster. “Historicizing Making and Doing: Seymour Papert, Sherry Turkle, and Epistemological Foundations of the Maker Movement.” *History and Technology* 36, no. 1 (January 2, 2020): 54–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2020.1759302. Margarita Boenig-Liptsin. “Making Citizens of the Information Age: A Comparative Study of the First Computer Literacy Programs for Children in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union, 1970-1990.” Accessed August 14, 2020. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/23845438/BOENIG-LIPTSIN-DISSERTA... . Tatarchenko, Ksenia. “Thinking AlgorithmicallyFrom Cold War Computer Science to the Socialist Information Culture.” *Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences* 49, no. 2 (April 1, 2019): 194–225. https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2019.49.2.194. Best, Bo An On Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 9:08 PM Fred Turner <fturner@stanford.edu> wrote:
Hi Paul,
One starting place might be Morgan Ames’ book The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child. Lots in there about how folks learn to compute post-GUIs.
Best, Fred Turner
On Oct 8, 2020, at 11:56 AM, Paul Fishwick <metaphorz@gmail.com> wrote:
There is a topic that has interested me, but I have been unable to make much headway in past years since I am not sure where to look.
Consider that Kathy, an 8th grade student, knows more about how to use a computer than her parents, who may know more than her grandparents. When learning to use digital technology artifacts such as “menu”, education is imparted on Kathy. She learns something about tree structures, and possibly finite state machines (FSMs). This is done invisibly because she did not have to learn discrete mathematics and automata theory to use the computer.
One hypothesis that all technology is this way. We use technology and technology uses us (by invisibly transferring new mental models). The introduction of the mechanical clock changed how we conceptualize time. Fast forwarding to digital technology, Kathy must have conceptualized trees and FSMs as mental models even though this theory was not made explicit.
My searches have taken me to psychology (where the dominant discourse is about dysfunction where technology is concerned), history of technology as well as the history of science. This relates to math and computer science education too—teaching FSMs to people through implicit means. Learning something without knowing that your learning it.
If anyone on this list has a good place for me to dive, let me know.
-paul
Paul Fishwick, PhD Distinguished University Chair of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Media: medium.com/@metaphorz Modeling: digest.sigsim.org Twitter: @PaulFishwick ONLINE: Webex,Collaborate, TEAMS, Zoom, Skype, Hangout
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
Hi Paul, In addition to the excellent links others have provided, I would also recommend the following two: 1. Alan Kay's "Doing with Images Makes Symbols <https://youtu.be/p2LZLYcu_JY?t=4031>" talk (the link is at a timestamp in the talk that addresses what you are thinking about, but the whole thing is worth watching) 2. Andrea diSessa's book "Changing Minds: Computers, Learning, and Literacy <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/changing-minds>" Though not directly related, I'll also recommend Walter Ong's "Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/164515.Orality_and_Literacy>". While this doesn't deal with computing directly, it *does* grapple with the earlier and perhaps more general idea of a medium enabling new kinds of thought that would have been previously "unthinkable" (or at the very least extremely difficult) without it. In this case the medium/technology is reading and writing. But, as perhaps Papert, Kay, and diSessa might have argued, this same principle could extend into computing, particularly when it comes to internalizing difficult concepts we associate with math. On Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 3:51 PM Bo An <bo.an@yale.edu> wrote:
Hi Paul,
I second Morgan Ames's book and articles. For pre-GUI, here are some historical and cultural studies about figures like Andrey Ershov (second literacy) and Seymour Papert (LOGO) that might be helpful:
Afinogenov, Gregory. “Andrei Ershov and the Soviet Information Age.” *Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History* 14 (June 1, 2013): 561–84. https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2013.0046.
Agalianos, Angelos S. “A Cultural Studies Analysis of Logo in Education.,” 1997. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10018887/7/Agalianos%2C%20Angelos%20S.pdf .
Lachney, Michael, and Ellen K. Foster. “Historicizing Making and Doing: Seymour Papert, Sherry Turkle, and Epistemological Foundations of the Maker Movement.” *History and Technology* 36, no. 1 (January 2, 2020): 54–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2020.1759302.
Margarita Boenig-Liptsin. “Making Citizens of the Information Age: A Comparative Study of the First Computer Literacy Programs for Children in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union, 1970-1990.” Accessed August 14, 2020. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/23845438/BOENIG-LIPTSIN-DISSERTA... .
Tatarchenko, Ksenia. “Thinking AlgorithmicallyFrom Cold War Computer Science to the Socialist Information Culture.” *Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences* 49, no. 2 (April 1, 2019): 194–225. https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2019.49.2.194.
Best, Bo An
On Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 9:08 PM Fred Turner <fturner@stanford.edu> wrote:
Hi Paul,
One starting place might be Morgan Ames’ book The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child. Lots in there about how folks learn to compute post-GUIs.
Best, Fred Turner
On Oct 8, 2020, at 11:56 AM, Paul Fishwick <metaphorz@gmail.com> wrote:
There is a topic that has interested me, but I have been unable to make much headway in past years since I am not sure where to look.
Consider that Kathy, an 8th grade student, knows more about how to use a computer than her parents, who may know more than her grandparents. When learning to use digital technology artifacts such as “menu”, education is imparted on Kathy. She learns something about tree structures, and possibly finite state machines (FSMs). This is done invisibly because she did not have to learn discrete mathematics and automata theory to use the computer.
One hypothesis that all technology is this way. We use technology and technology uses us (by invisibly transferring new mental models). The introduction of the mechanical clock changed how we conceptualize time. Fast forwarding to digital technology, Kathy must have conceptualized trees and FSMs as mental models even though this theory was not made explicit.
My searches have taken me to psychology (where the dominant discourse is about dysfunction where technology is concerned), history of technology as well as the history of science. This relates to math and computer science education too—teaching FSMs to people through implicit means. Learning something without knowing that your learning it.
If anyone on this list has a good place for me to dive, let me know.
-paul
Paul Fishwick, PhD Distinguished University Chair of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Media: medium.com/@metaphorz Modeling: digest.sigsim.org Twitter: @PaulFishwick ONLINE: Webex,Collaborate, TEAMS, Zoom, Skype, Hangout
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-- Eric
I just wanted to make explicit one earlier contribution to the already recommended nice ones: one article by Sherry Turkle and Seymour Papert in 1990, based on which One of articles Bo An referred to (Lachney & Foster 2020) were written, as its title revealed. Turkle, Sherry, and Seymour Papert. "Epistemological pluralism: Styles and voices within the computer culture." *Signs: Journal of women in culture and society *16, no. 1 (1990): 128-157. https://doi.org/10.1086/494648 Best regards, Yoehan On Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 4:07 PM Eric Gade <eric.gade@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Paul,
In addition to the excellent links others have provided, I would also recommend the following two:
1. Alan Kay's "Doing with Images Makes Symbols <https://youtu.be/p2LZLYcu_JY?t=4031>" talk (the link is at a timestamp in the talk that addresses what you are thinking about, but the whole thing is worth watching) 2. Andrea diSessa's book "Changing Minds: Computers, Learning, and Literacy <https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/changing-minds>"
Though not directly related, I'll also recommend Walter Ong's "Orality and Literacy: the Technologizing of the Word <https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/164515.Orality_and_Literacy>". While this doesn't deal with computing directly, it *does* grapple with the earlier and perhaps more general idea of a medium enabling new kinds of thought that would have been previously "unthinkable" (or at the very least extremely difficult) without it. In this case the medium/technology is reading and writing. But, as perhaps Papert, Kay, and diSessa might have argued, this same principle could extend into computing, particularly when it comes to internalizing difficult concepts we associate with math.
On Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 3:51 PM Bo An <bo.an@yale.edu> wrote:
Hi Paul,
I second Morgan Ames's book and articles. For pre-GUI, here are some historical and cultural studies about figures like Andrey Ershov (second literacy) and Seymour Papert (LOGO) that might be helpful:
Afinogenov, Gregory. “Andrei Ershov and the Soviet Information Age.” *Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History* 14 (June 1, 2013): 561–84. https://doi.org/10.1353/kri.2013.0046.
Agalianos, Angelos S. “A Cultural Studies Analysis of Logo in Education.,” 1997. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10018887/7/Agalianos%2C%20Angelos%20S.pdf.
Lachney, Michael, and Ellen K. Foster. “Historicizing Making and Doing: Seymour Papert, Sherry Turkle, and Epistemological Foundations of the Maker Movement.” *History and Technology* 36, no. 1 (January 2, 2020): 54–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512.2020.1759302.
Margarita Boenig-Liptsin. “Making Citizens of the Information Age: A Comparative Study of the First Computer Literacy Programs for Children in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union, 1970-1990.” Accessed August 14, 2020. https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/23845438/BOENIG-LIPTSIN-DISSERTA... .
Tatarchenko, Ksenia. “Thinking AlgorithmicallyFrom Cold War Computer Science to the Socialist Information Culture.” *Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences* 49, no. 2 (April 1, 2019): 194–225. https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2019.49.2.194.
Best, Bo An
On Thu, Oct 8, 2020 at 9:08 PM Fred Turner <fturner@stanford.edu> wrote:
Hi Paul,
One starting place might be Morgan Ames’ book The Charisma Machine: The Life, Death, and Legacy of One Laptop Per Child. Lots in there about how folks learn to compute post-GUIs.
Best, Fred Turner
On Oct 8, 2020, at 11:56 AM, Paul Fishwick <metaphorz@gmail.com> wrote:
There is a topic that has interested me, but I have been unable to make much headway in past years since I am not sure where to look.
Consider that Kathy, an 8th grade student, knows more about how to use a computer than her parents, who may know more than her grandparents. When learning to use digital technology artifacts such as “menu”, education is imparted on Kathy. She learns something about tree structures, and possibly finite state machines (FSMs). This is done invisibly because she did not have to learn discrete mathematics and automata theory to use the computer.
One hypothesis that all technology is this way. We use technology and technology uses us (by invisibly transferring new mental models). The introduction of the mechanical clock changed how we conceptualize time. Fast forwarding to digital technology, Kathy must have conceptualized trees and FSMs as mental models even though this theory was not made explicit.
My searches have taken me to psychology (where the dominant discourse is about dysfunction where technology is concerned), history of technology as well as the history of science. This relates to math and computer science education too—teaching FSMs to people through implicit means. Learning something without knowing that your learning it.
If anyone on this list has a good place for me to dive, let me know.
-paul
Paul Fishwick, PhD Distinguished University Chair of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication Professor of Computer Science Director, Creative Automata Laboratory The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology 800 West Campbell Road, AT10 Richardson, TX 75080-3021 Home: utdallas.edu/atec/fishwick Media: medium.com/@metaphorz Modeling: digest.sigsim.org Twitter: @PaulFishwick ONLINE: Webex,Collaborate, TEAMS, Zoom, Skype, Hangout
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-- Eric _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
-- Yoehan Oh Ph.D. Student Department of Science and Technology Studies Rensselaer Polytechnic institute 110 8th Street Troy, NY 12180 USA https://info.rpi.edu/people/yoehan-oh e-mail: ohy@rpi.edu ; yoehan.oh@gmail.com phone: (518) 368-1257 pronoun: he/him
participants (5)
-
Bo An -
Eric Gade -
Fred Turner -
Paul Fishwick -
Yoehan Oh