Configuring a Dynabook (was: Off topic)

Ian Bicking bickiia at earlham.edu
Fri Dec 11 17:11:12 UTC 1998


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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