a bicycle for your mind

2024-09-13 10:40

Using the logic of current day education, we could say that since students are going to be drivers as adults, at age two we should put them in a little motorized vehicle and they will just stay there and learn how to be much better drivers. Now, we would think that was pretty horrible. But what if we gave the same person a bike? … [The bike is] one of the great force amplifiers of all time because it doesn’t detract from us–it takes everything we’ve got and amplifies it. Most computers today are sold like cars, where as many things as possible are done for you. You don’t have to understand how it works and, in fact, you don’t have to understand how to think because the most popular stuff is prepackaged solutions for this and that. When you put a person into a car, their muscles wither. You put a person into an information car, and their thinking ability withers. I wouldn’t put a person within 15 yards of a computer unless I was absolutely sure that it was a kind of a bike for them.

Alan Kay (emphasis mine), 1994 (source, further reading)