On 26-Nov-07, at 8:17 AM, Alan Kay wrote:
I think the main thing in teaching "number" is...
...and so follows yet another amazingly eloquent, erudite lesson on the topic of the day, the likes of which we've seen for years on this mailing list and others. OK, I thought this most recent was a particularly good one.
As somebody who has spent considerable time trying to collect and interpret the works of Alan Kay, and who, on reading almost every one of these little e-mails, finds that here again is yet another gem, another insight, that I've missed... I find myself increasingly asking myself,
When is Alan Kay going to publish a book?
Seriously, considering the depth and (perhaps more crucially) breadth of accumulated thinking that is evident in Kay's various talks, lectures, the odd article, and these e-mails, it truly is shame that our primary means of accessing this body of thought is the laborious work of sifting through the hundreds of fragments laid down over the years.
Alan, I appeal to you and to the spirit of scholarship; your work is not done justice by the occasional articles and talks that appear, nor by these 'lessons' (and I mean that in the best possible sense) that appear sporadically on the mailing lists. Surely you've considered collecting it... I think the value of such a thing would be enormous.
Respectfully and sincerely(!),
- John Maxwell http://thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/Dynabook jmax@sfu.ca