Configuring a Dynabook (was: Off topic)

Alan Kay alank at wdi.disney.com
Fri Dec 11 19:37:40 UTC 1998


Ian --

You are right on target. Many of the seminal theories about how pidgins
move to creoles are from the work of Denis Bickerton (as you probably
already know -- but for those who don't know about Denis' work, I highly
recommend it).

There's a catch, though. The creoles that the children come up with are
real languages, but not in the extended sense of mathematics. Math doesn't
seem to be as built in as mundane uses of language, and that's likely why
math (and its big brother, science) had to be invented. In order to
bootstrap human thought, we have to do as much invention of math and
science cum computer for children as possible, and not rely on them to just
get it right from our fragments ...

Cheers,

Alan

-----

At 5:11 PM -0000 12/11/98, Ian Bicking wrote:
>Alan Kay writes:
>> Another of the many Dynabook goals has to do with another analogy to
>> language: that children learning English are also learning the language of
>> Shakespeare and Bertrand Russell. The difference is in years of experience
>> about the world and its ideas, and in the architectural structuring of
>> English to handle powerful ideas as well as mundane ones. If e.g. Squeak
>> can show a continuity from authoring environments that 5 year-olds can use
>> up to those that Dan Ingalls wants to use without changing language (but
>> perhaps with different scopes and safeguards), then part of the Dynabook
>> vision will have been realized. (i.e. Adults are pretty hopeless, and real
>> changes come when children are introduced to new paradigms early in life.)
>> Another "i.e." is that things work best when they can be used for both
>> mundane and serious purposes (imagine only being able to use language when
>> you had something important you wanted to talk about -- JIT doesn't work
>> for ideas!)
>
>This paragraph made me think of the move from a pidgin language to a
>creole.
>
>
>When you put adults together that have different languagse you'll
>generally get some pidgin form -- a very primitive language formed
>from various words in the different languages.  It lacks a clear
>grammar and can't be used to express complicated ideas.
>
>However, if this pidgin language is fairly predominant the children
>who grow up learning this language will make it into something much
>more complete (a creole language).  Almost magically, they take a
>language their parents can barely manage and make it into something
>that can express the true depth of their thoughts.  They bridge the
>gap between the original lanuages.
>
>All of this is done informally, without acts of genius or any
>well-structured program to make it happen.
>
>The parallel I see here is the attempt to bridge the gap between
>natural language and machine language.  Computer languages as they
>currently stand seem something like a pidgin -- a mixture of
>mathematics, CPU instructions, and English.  They are mixed, but they
>aren't yet unified.
>
>And maybe all we in this generation can really do is make better forms
>of pidgin languages, waiting for the next generation to turn it into
>something complete... sigh.  At least I'll still be around to
>watch :-)
>
>
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>< Ian Bicking                 |  bickiia at earlham.edu                >
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