Personal Dynamic Media

Personal Dynamic Media

Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg

The Dynabook began as a concept for device that would bring a medium for creative thought to children. It was a revolutionary concept because up until that point most computing was done on mainframe terminals, using a time-share system. This would simply not do for kids who needed something that was not only portable but also had the computing power to run interactive programs which put them in control.It's ironic that the personal desktops and especially laptops that are ubiquitous today for grown-ups, wererooted in a concept mostly geared for children. The Dynabook was the original concept used by a Xerox working group in Palo Alto to create what would be the first "desk top" computer to use a graphical user interface. Apple Computer used this GUI concept to build its first model and Microsoft copied that to create its dominant Windows operating system. Multi billion dollar computer businesses of today were built upon the concept that "Their (children's) attention span is measured in hours rather than minutes."

One nobel multi year project being undertaken now, that mirrors somewhat the initial spirit of the Dynabook is the "One Laptop Per-Child Program." The stated mission of the group is 

"To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning."

This is the fabled $100 laptop. Everything that is positive about connectivity and new media is to be contained in this machine. It is meant to help bridge the digital divide in the developing world and help bring these children into the fold of the connected world. The possibilities for such a device seem endless. You only have to look at the last blog post centered around Ted Nelson's concept for new media learning, which is basically user driven and internet focused. Without a central mediator for learning I see these children perceiving the world for what it is (online) and formulating their own view independently. Maybe that's good, or maybe they need outside help. But it's also true that they will bring their own perspective to the project independent of the laptop or the world outside their communities. We'll see in the next post how Kwabena Boahen took a different perspective of computing technology because of his developing world background. He immediately saw that the linear nature of the computer's hardware function was not in anyway natural and therefore not optimal. He would later describe the idea function in a TED conference where the processing power is more network-like similar to the human brain. Wherever the program goes and however the reality aligns with the original intentions I'm sure the users will put their own spin on it and make it their own.

The program is being headed by Nicholas Negroponte, head of the Architecture Machine Group at MIT, author of "Soft Architecture Machines", and founder of Wired Magazine.