Newsgroups: bit.listserv.ethics-l
Date:         Tue, 17 Nov 1992 21:41:42 PST
From:         Woody Weaver <woody@STMARYS-CA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Computers at elementary levels
Comments: To: ETHICS-L@uga.cc.uga.edu

[This is a very long post.  It seems fitting to borrow from the famous
french philospher Blaise Pascal: "I have only made this [letter] longer
because I have not had the time to make it shorter.]

vwsetzer@IME.USP.BR, in "Computers at elementary levels" writes

>The first spet is to examine what a computer is. From the educational point
>of view, the most important aspect is that it is an abstract machine.  This
>applies to such uses as text editing, simulation or programming.

I do not understand what you are focusing on here.  To me, an abstract
machine conjures images of Turing machines and tapes, i.e. a mathematical
construct.  Computers are actual rather than virtual.

Perhaps you mean that it is a device capable of processing and displaying
information in a great number of ways, i.e. abstract as flexible?

In the classroom, my experience has been that the most important uses are as
tools for information search, retrieval, and manipulation (from the lowly
grep up to symbolic manipulators) and as tool for communication.  The former
is not likely to be as important to children as the latter, although I would
certainly have loved to browse a hypertext encyclopaedia when I was
younger.  (I was stuck with the encylopaedia brittanica, and read to fill a
void rather than out of joy of discovery.)

>Another type of educational use does not deserve any dicussion:  automated
>programmed instruction. Experts in education have already pointed out that
>PI is not a good educational tool, because it does not give the student the
>necessary freedom, it is more like animal conditioning (remember that its
>founder was Skinner...), etc.

First of all, I am an animal, and there are times that I want to do
conditioning.  I see nothing wrong with training reflexes.  The idealist
perspective that we are not animals may well be consistent but I think is
neither desirable nor effective in the classroom.  In particular, repetitive
learning can help develop useful attitudes toward mental, physical, and
emotional discipline, which (although a little goes a long way) is important
for even toddlers to learn.  In third and fourth grade I was given lessons
in typing.  Up to then, my handwriting was horrible: like most male eight
year olds, the neural pathways are not well set up, and I could not control
small motions well.  The repetitious training of "when you see this letter
use this finger to hit this key" helped me gain control over my physical
nature, and it was overall a very good thing.

Also, I think precision of language is appropriate here.  You state that it
"is not a good educational tool".  I disagree.  A good tool is one that does
what is intended to do.  A hammer that shatters when driving a nail is a bad
hammer.  A computer program that correctly delivers programmed instruction
is a good program.  Perhaps you are trying to deliver a moral lesson?
Programmed instruction is inherently evil?  All instruction should provide
maximum freedom?  Perhaps, but you do not offer sufficient justification,
IMHO, for such an extreme perspective.

Life does not offer maximum freedom.  There are a million things that one
can do, but there are a million things that one can not do.  Children need
to run and play in mud, to the consternation of their parents clothing bill,
but need also to learn not to grab every bauble that catches their
interest.  They need to learn to express feelings of joy and pain, but not
to do it by tossing cereal boxes and screaming on the floor of a grocery.
Discipline is not inherently a bad thing.

>Let us take one of the extremes in terms of abstraction: that of learning
>how to develop computer programms[...] Computer programs are mathematical
>abstractions, expressed in a formal language and are completely devoid of
>any "real" content.

Sputter, gasp!  Elizabethan iambic pentameter is a literary abstraction
expressed in a formal language.  Is it devoid of "real" content?  What in
the world do you consider "real"?

Computer programs *do* things.  They do them poorly, or well.  There is an
esthetic sense -- a sense of art, of play, of elegance, and of strength.
They elicit emotional responses.  If you truely feel that programs are
formal mental exercises, I can only say that my experience both personal and
in the classroom, does not lead me to that conclusion.

[For what its worth, I just recieved a mail message from a group of students
who are writing up "Scissors, Paper, Rock" in an introductory programming
class.  I walked into the lab, and their first comment to me was "this
program is driving me crazy".  My response was "but a program is a formal
expression of a mathematical concept" and they burst into laughter.  I
understand what you are saying about the abstractions of programming, but
that is not the whole picture.  Programming is a human endeavor, and an art
form.  It is not a mere mathematical abstraction.]

>they express exact cause-and-effect situations which do not occur anywhere
>else. Notice that any machine which is not a digital computer works under
>approximate conditions, never exact ones, that is, it is nondeterministic,

This is an artificial distinction, and not a valuable one.  First of all,
digital computers also work under approximate conditions; the science of
them is such that they fail once in a while.  When computers first were put
into use, the mean time between failure was on the order of 15 minutes --
which is why we have such delights as Hamming codes: we had to have someway
of surviving failures in processing.  Now the mean time to failure of the
processor is very much larger than the mean time between failure of the
peripherals.  Your statement is correct: any machine which is not a digital
computer is non-deterministic.  However, digital computers are also
non-deterministic.

>opposed to the computer's deterministic behaviour. Even if one uses a
>random-number generator, the situation is completely different from other
>machines, because all the computer's behaviour may be calculated in advance
>for every outcome of the generator.

This is, however, incorrect.  Because hardware is based in reality, in the
extreme philosophical sense the behaviour of a computer is non-deterministic.
However, you were probably trying to argue that "for all practical purposes
behavior is deterministic", in that the mean time to failure for our
processors are on the order of 10^9 hours.  However, the practical truth is
that no non-trivial program has a mean time to failure that high.

I've been using computers for two decades, and am pretty comfortable in my
environment.  Yet the environment I'm typing in right now will not remain up
for more than a week: Windows 3.1, and the peculiar interactions of the
programs I run cause failures.  I know of no person who has skills with
computing that considers his environment calculable in advance.  This is a
fault of mine own, rather than the fault of mathematics: if I were able to
do so, it is theoretically possible to read the code of all the executables,
and predict in advance every outcome.  Under the Newtonian model of the
universe, it is theoretically possible to determine the position, velocity,
and acceleration quantities of all particles in the universe, and so predict
in advance every outcome.  In neither situation is it practicable to do so.

>When developing and testing a program, the programmer has to limit his
>thinking to an extremely restriced and poor, formal space.

Sputter gasp choke hack!  Definately not!  The first thing that I teach
students is that when programming, ones thinking should not be limited --
one develops strategies in ones own languages, and then translates those
strategies into code.  There is a need to change ones sense of time from
pluperfect and imperfect to present perfect, but this is a minor change.
The serious thinking can not be done in code: we are human beings, not
machines, and so think as humans, not as machines.

Viewing development and testing of programs as formal and restricted is not
a viewpoint that I have any experience to justify, and much experience to
which I can provide counter-examples.

>Now one has to examine the child. He is born with no mental abilities
>whatsoever. [...Self conciousness important...] The human being requires
>also mental, emotional and willing capacities, controlled by his
>consciousness. The acquisition of these capacities and control is one of the
>key reasons for education, be it at home or in the school.

Very well stated.  In your previous sentences you commented on how self
conciousness and self awareness is also important -- and you asserted that a
human spends 1/3 to 1/4 of their life achieving this.  Our poets assert that
it takes much longer, but in any case I was surprised you left it off your
list.

>[...The argument for the proper age to learn things...]  That is the reason
>why, during this period, the Waldorf Education method uses artistic teaching
>in every subject, even mathematics. [...]  R.Steiner gave an
>interesting formulation to these 3 7-year periods: in the 1st, the child
>should looking for and should be put in contact with what is good; in the
>2nd, with what is beautiful, and in the 3rd, with what is true.

This is the crux of your argument: that the computer does not contain
elements of "good" or "beautiful", merely "true".  Clearly my experience is
not equal to yours in this point.  In particular, it is not clear to me what
good means in this context, except possibly that for the teaching of ethics
we develop a moral sense in children by teaching by example.  However, I
certainly do feel that there is much beauty in computing.

>[...children slowly develop their own individuality and strength of
>personality...]  Now let's combine these considerations: if the computer is a
>pure abstract machine, forcing abstract thinking, it should only be used
>when the young person has reached the proper age.

Logically correct, but as I view the predicate as false, the conclusion is
irrelevant.  "if 4 is prime then God exists" is logically correct, but not
helpful.

>[...] Well, certaily computers do exert a strong attraction upon small
>children, but one should wait until the child can understand what he is
>doing, and have enough isolation and self-consciousness to dominate himself.
>A small child will be simply dominated by the machine.

Here I think you are absolutely correct.  I have seen children lost into
video games, and young adults lost into the 'Net.  There are even several
animated childrens programs that promote this self absorbtion.

I would even hazard a guess that much of the perspective of "hacker" comes
from this dominance.  The child is dominated by the machine, and eventually
when they come into their own self-domination the forces involved shape the
personality far more than are healthy.  They end up poorly socialized, and
hence not members of their local societies.  I also think that there are
some people for whom the machine becomes a means toward self-conciousness,
as in any other art form.  These individuals are the exception, and
computing should be controlled to protect children against machine
domination.

>He will be obliged do think as an adult should sometimes. He will be forced
>to use a formal, dead language which is not proper to a being who is full of
>life, feeling himself as a unity with his environment.

Dr. Setzer, here you are simply incorrect in your perspective.  You have not
kept up with modern computing.  I have seen poetry in Pascal, full of wit
and humor, and would imagine someone like e.e.cummings would have loved it.
Because it is a language with the rhythms of natural languages, it can be
filled with double entendre and song.  Because I think a little humor is
helpful in the classroom, when first describing a non-deterministic loop
with a test after execution of the loop body, there is always an example

const
  HellFreezesOver = false;
...
  repeat
    {main loop body}
  until HellFreezesOver;
...

and the students seem to enjoy it.  How can a being at one with the modern
environment not attempt to address computing?  I have three or four students
each year who want to embrace the social structure of programmers and the
'net.  To be at one with modern life requires exposure to these issues, not
hiding from them.

[.. natural and evolutionary models suggest early specialization is bad..]

>If one examines a human body, one does not find its specialization, because
>humans are specialized in a non-physical activity: thinking. And this high
>capacity is being distorted during education when it is forced to think like
>a machine.

I'm not sure where you stand on specialization, since you seemed to imply
earlier that specialization, physical or mental, is a bad thing for
children.  Here you seem to argue that specialization is good, although
forcing children to think like machines is bad.  I can agree that forcing
children to do anything is probably bad.  I would also agree that the adult
personality is likely to force children because of its age and experience,
so we need to be very careful what we ask of our children.  I would not ask
that a child write assembler code... but the discipline of speaking clearly
and coherently, which at some appropriate level is what programming is
really about, is not an unreasonable request.

>My most tragical conjecture of what is going to happen with these poor
>children is the following: they will not have the sensitivity to distinguish
>human beings from machines.

My perceptions are that students, after completing a course in computing,
are better able to distinguish what is real and what is unreal when it comes
to computing.  When you have some insight into computers, the box becomes
less magical, and more real.  It is only naivete that would let a user think
a computer is human -- that, or perhaps the loneliness of the socially
outcast hacker.

>They will find it most natural that machines take the place of humans in
>social decisions (a nice metaphor of the possible consequences, albeit too
>hollywoodistic is the film "War Games").

I would suggest a second viewing of the film.  The fault lie not within the
computer, but in the military industrial complexes desires.  The film opens
with a test of the USA launch systems, and the military discovered that the
human element was unwilling to institute the death of millions upon a
computer command.  *The*military*chose*to*take*the*human*out*of*the*loop*.
Computers were not making social decisions, but merely carrying out the
orders of the appropriate body.  The risk here was that such systems are
inherently faulty, and the system as designed did not provide safe failure
modes.  It failed in a launch mode, and nearly ended in disaster.

>There has never been such a strog metaphor implying that Man is a machine
>such as the computer's.

Huh?  Do you mean that because we humans are one trick ponies, we can make
rational decisions and little else, and that computers can follow logical
steps, that this implies humans are machines?  I think there is a wonderful
argument that has come out of computer science that says that humans are so
much more than machines -- look at what little a machine can do, and
computers are at the top of the machine hierarchy.  But I don't think this
is relevant to computing in education.

>And, the contrary, that machines have human characteristics.  Can you
>imagine what consequences this will have in the future? Nazism will be a toy
>compared with what is being prepared for the future generations.

I fail to see how "machines have human characteristics" implies the spectre
of extreme fascism.  This is not to say that what can happen isn't scary: I
find Singapore's adoption of wholescale Information Technology to track and
control its citizens, economy, and etc frightening.  But this has nothing to
do with human characteristics.

>Science is just helping to materialize this step: scientists have created
>fields such as "Artificial Intelligence" (it was probably a lack of real,
>deep human intelligence that led these people to use such a misleading name),
>"Machine Learning", "Computer Decision Making"

Sigh.  Perhaps it is merely because you are not a native speaker of English
that these verbal misunderstandings come up.  The American Heritage
Dictionary lists 4 meanings of intelligence:

>intelligence  n.  1.  a. The capacity to acquire and apply knowledge. b.
>The faculty of thought and reason. c. Superior powers of mind. 2.  a. An
>intelligent, incorporeal being, esp. an angel. b. Intelligence   Christian
>Science. The primal, eternal quality of God. 3. Received information; news.
>4.  a. Secret information, esp. about an actual or potential enemy. b. An
>agency, staff, or office employed in gathering such information.

Clearly meaning 1 is meant, and not the others (although 2a is interesting)
and in particular meaning 1a.  AI deals with techniques to automate the
acquisition and application of knowledge; in the synonym list for knowledge
we find

>Knowledge includes both empirical material and that derived by inference or
>interpretation. Information is usually construed as narrower in scope and
>implies a random collection of material rather than orderly synthesis.

What AI is trying to do is expand beyond simple tabulation of fact to
acquisition of information and application of an informational base to solve
problems.  It is not about sentience, or self-awareness, or even
understanding.  It is merely about developing insight into the nature of
acquisition of knowledge, and means toward automating that process.

> - maybe it would be interesting to mention Warnier's book "Computers and
>Human Intelligence", where he says that computers don't take decisions, they
>perform logical choices.

This is why the "Computer Decision Making" you feel strongly about above is
a perfectly sensible description of the field: it is a collection of
techniques for gathering data and processing that information so you can
instruct the computer to perform the computations needed to make your
decisions.  When in the distant past magicians performed auguries, I don't
think anyone felt the ox whose entrails they examined was a significant
force in the process -- why do you focus on the computer here?

> Exactly, that is the big difference, but to feel this difference one
>should probably be free from the influence of computers until an age where
>one may regard them objectively, understand their logical functioning, and
>understand how they may be unethically used, such as in education at
>elementary levels.

It would seem that you have presented an argument precisely to the contrary:
because _you_did_not_grow_up_with_computers_ you have an unrealistic
perspective of what they are and what they can do, leading to a morbid fear.
I think much of your argument has merit, and based upon what you have said
would not encourage the use of computers before age seven.  However, at that
point, the beauty of computers can be introduced; and the joys and wonders
of computers are many, and accessible to children.  When I was in elementary
school, I went to museums, attended concerts, and visited zoos.  (Well, zoo,
anyway.  But I went more than once.  :-) ) I could not regard the paintings
I saw objectively: I did not have the training for it.  I distinctly recall
seeing one painting of small yellow circles surrounded by red squares and
other splashes of color, and the docent asking me what I was feeling.  I
answered "uncomfortable.  oppressed." the way an eleven year old does when he
doesn't understand oppression.  The title of the piece was indeed,
"Oppression", although I did not understand logically why it was so.  I also
viewed a collection of Nazi art, and felt happy and uplifted by it, even
though I did not understand I was being unethically used.  But that is part
of life!

In short, I would argue that to prevent the use of computers until one is
twenty-one would be crippling in the way that never visiting an art gallery
would be crippling.  Computers and telecommunication technology can be one
of the more enobling aspects of our society: they can show you your place in
the world, and connect you with insight.  They are dangerous -- no question
about that -- far more dangerous than pen and crayon.  But they are tools to
a life, and one I would not deny children.

>Valdemar W. Setzer
>Dept. of Computer Science
>University of Sao Paulo

Robert Weaver                         office: 510-631-4416
Department of Mathematical Sciences     home: 510-680-1986
St. Mary's College of California         fax: 510-376-4027
Moraga, CA 94575                        data: 510-376-1554
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