Acknowledge-To:  WHMurray@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ethics-l
Date:         Sat, 7 Nov 1992 21:17:00 EST
From:         WHMurray@DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL
Subject:      Children and Computers,
Comments: To: ETHICS-L%UGA.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU

>The tool has not only removed the drudgery
>from the task, it has also become too intimately bound to the task.  The
>student believes that multiplication is impossible when the batteries run
>out.  How can one check spelling without a spelling checker?

When I was in grammar school, the nuns thought that if I could write a
pretty hand, I would be guaranteed a living for life.  When I was in high
school, the Jesuits believed that it was essential that I know how to
calculate a square root.  While I satisfied their requirement, I found it
to be drudgery and have studiously avoided doing for half a century.

After getting my Sinclair ZX-80 to plot a circle, I proposed the problem
to my nephew.  He replied "that's trivial.  You just say CIRCLE, radius,
X and Y coordinates of the center and optionally COLOR."  When I complained
to my colleagues that the designers of his TRS Color computer had
deprived
him of a wonderful problem, they asked me to consider the problems that
he could solve in a world in which CIRCLE is built into the ROM.  I confess
to being excited by the idea.

When I read Valdemar Setzer's Luddite diatribe about children and
computers, I was reminded of my four year old Godson asking me to put
his name on "Friendly Ware 3" so that he could find it when he wanted to
play with the computer.  When he was five he asked me to come to his
school to be "computer monitor," the adult that watched half of the
kindergarten using "Writing to Read" while the teacher worked to with
the remainder.  The kids were so adept and competent that computer monitor
was the most boring assignment I ever had.

For my Godson, and most of his contemporaries, the computer is simply a
part of their environment.  It is one more item on the list of things to
master.  It is on the same list as the telephone, the television, the
VCR,
the bicycle, roller skates, and the automobile.  They like computers for
the same reason that they like those other artifacts; because they give
immediate feedback and a sense of control and mastery.  They like video
games for the same reason that they like comic books; because they have
high information content.

In 1967 I watched "2001."  I remember the scene in which the astronauts
were reviewing the diagnostics for the A10 antenna.  The frames were going
by so fast that they looked to me like noise.  Of course, I could have
no
idea that those astronauts had been trained on video games to accept
and integrate information at that speed.

Val can get on his high horse if he likes.  He can as well hold back the
tides as influence the relation between children and the computer.  As a
teacher, he is made anxious by his loss of control.  He feels as Socrates
felt about written language and the Church about the printing press.

I was taught ethical behavior with regard to books by a progenitor
generation that had used them.  They taught me not to break the spine,
turn down the corners, or make marks in them; nice people didn't do that.
They taught me not to use the ideas of others without attribution.  This
generation of children is without guidance about computers or the net;
their parents have not used them and there is little consensus as to
what constitutes right behavior.  Those of us who should set them an
example often set the wrong one.

Nonetheless, for every important technology, we finally get it nearly
right.  We will in this case too.

William Hugh Murray, Executive Consultant, Information System Security
21 Locust Avenue, Suite 2D, New Canaan, Connecticut 06840
203 966 4769, WHMurray at DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU