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[Thom Kevin Gillespie]

> From: Alan Kay <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org>
> Subject: Reply

> Thom --

> One of the necessary parts of "literacy" is fluency. So it's not 
> enough to read a little, or do math a little or program a little. 
> There are important thresholds that have to be crossed. As with the 
> older thresholds of reading and writing, most children haven't 
> crossed the ones that would allow them to be literate.

Agreed.

> The other consideration is that one can get fluent in lots of things 
> that don't confer much benefit: television watching, videogames, pop 
> culture, etc.

Not sure if this is actually fluency in a language-like sense. Again the
reading writing problem. I have a real interesting response from John S on
the Squeak list, actually about 3 good responses from John and a good one
from Michael Rosenblum from NYU who really blasts the illusion that
watching TV makes anyone literate and the fact that we would never
tolerate the lack of writing literacy in books that we tolerate in TV.
Also a bunch of good stuff from Howard  Gardner, a bunch of his grad
students and Chris Crawford who as usual comes in so far from left field
that he changes the game completely but in a very interesting way.

> Taking both of these together, nothing really interesting has 
> happened yet, but the technological parts of the new literacy are 
> pretty close to being what is needed.

The phrase I keep coming back to is 'mediajazz'  Since this stuff shifts
constantly and shows no sign of not shifting  it makes a lot of sense to
look at it in a jazz/improv frame and just add on the fact that it is
media which is jazzing. Going back to John S I think you just shift the
focus to the aesthetics and away from the differences among Squeak, html,
Flash, Director, iShell, Blender, etc. 

Big question seems to be that there are so few people equipped to deal with
this combination of technologies and this combination of arts (2d, 3d,
storytelling, video, animation, sound, music and flat out spacial design.)

--Thanks, Thom