>>>>> "Alan" == Alan Kay <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org> writes:

    [ snip .exe files ]

    Alan> space penalty.  (I, personally, don't care at all about the
    Alan> latter goal just because one of the charms of Squeak -- to
    Alan> me anyway -- is that it is a rich environment with powerful
    Alan> authoring at many levels. So, e.g., I do not like the Adobe
    Alan> PDF reader that will not allow me to make comments,
    Alan> annotations, etc. And I think Squeak media that don't allow
    Alan> the "reader" to also be an author are really just throwbacks
    Alan> to simple minded consumerism and computerism.)

I would like to use squeak in the next few years as a shifty strategy
of tricking my friends into programming.  The idea is to start
gradually, with an activity that unites us over the internet and is
viscerally fun and rewarding, and then slowly formalize the process to
be more and more precise, until programming is the natural next step.

I've chosen the path of online communities, and I think the
progression I'd like to foster is something like discussion -> lincoln
douglas debate -> resolutions -> collective action (say sending a
collective letter to congress) -> design of democratic community
structure -> collective programming

where at the end they are programming the rules which will govern
our online interaction (maximum posts per day, maximum bytes per
debate round, how to induct new members/kick out abusive ones, collect
dues, spend money, etc).  I'm hoping that each step will naturally
create enough tension that the next step will be required to resolve
that tension and everyone will just think "of course we need that
formalism."

Since I won't be physically present to explain to my friends how to
install squeak, i think that .exe capability will be important.  Once
they are motivated to progress, I would like to introduce the
authoring environment to them, maybe through something like etoys.

-Lyn