Tracing the Dynabook: A Dissertation

Hi, everybody,

For the past few years, I have been working on a historical study on  
the Dynabook vision as conceived in the early 1970s as well as how  
the idea and its various incarnations have played out in the  
intervening three-and-a-half decades. This has been part of my PhD  
work in education at the University of BC -- as such, I am working  
from an educational perspective, rather than a compsci one.

As of November 2006 I finally finished the thing, and successfully  
defended it. I hereby unleash it on this community, in the hopes that  
it will provoke discussion on the Squeak-oriented mailing lists and  
beyond. Squeak-dev and Squeakland have been major resources to me all  
the while, and I'd like to thank everyone on these lists for  
providing such a rich ongoing commentary.

The entire work is roughly 300 pages. This link is to a PDF just  
under 2 megabytes. At some point, if I have some time, I want to  
break this out into some more granular web pages, but I'm already  
late in releasing it, so here it is in its entirety. You can find it  
(along with a brief abstract and ToC) at:

   http://thinkubator.ccsp.sfu.ca/Dynabook/dissertation

I'm very interested in any comments you might have.


  - John Maxwell
    Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing
    Simon Fraser University
    [hidden email]

Can't wait to read it. Congratulations on the defense.

John Maxwell wrote:

--
brad fuller
www.bradfuller.com

John Maxwell wrote:
> I'm very interested in any comments you might have.

It looks very interesting and I look forward to reading this weekend. If
you haven't seen this already then you might find it somewhat related to
your own work:

http://www.mprove.de/diplom/referencesKay.html

-- Jecel

Nice. I haven't read all of it yet but the latter third seems pretty  
good. It's so nice to read something with a decent level of  
vocabulary. Not to mention proper spelling :-)

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
World Ends at Ten! Pictures at 11 on Fox News!

Hi John,

I'm still in the introduction contemplating your argument and thought
I'd ask: don't you mean "northern" California" on p18? I understand that
you are discussing the (potentially) slanted "popular" view of "how'd we
get here." But, what went on in southern CA (from the popular collective)?


--
brad fuller
www.bradfuller.com

On 18-Jan-07, at 6:00 PM, Brad Fuller wrote:

> Hi John,
>
> I'm still in the introduction contemplating your argument and thought
> I'd ask: don't you mean "northern" California" on p18? I understand  
> that
> you are discussing the (potentially) slanted "popular" view of  
> "how'd we
> get here." But, what went on in southern CA (from the popular  
> collective)?
:-
I always distinguish the two as
- -Silicon Valley is in north/mid California and is where silicon  
based hardware and associated software comes from.
  - Silicone Valley is in southern California and has an economy  
based on the silicone implant and associated technologies.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Oxymorons: Government organization

tim Rowledge wrote:
ah... that clears it up. Thanks, Tim.


--
brad fuller
www.bradfuller.com

Tim Rowledge>I always distinguish the two as
>  - -Silicon Valley is in north/mid California and is where silicon based
hardware and associated software comes from.
>  - Silicone Valley is in southern California and has an economy based on
the silicone implant and associated technologies.

Heh.

So, "Monolithic Memory" in the north, "Monlithic Mammaries" in the south?

Just trying to milk this for all it's worth :-)

--Alan

Am Jan 19, 2007 um 1:33  schrieb John Maxwell:

Sounds very interesting :) I of course searched the PDF for  
"OLPC" (being one of the guys who puts Etoys onto the OLPC machine),  
but it only has a brief mention. I'd be interested in your take on that.

 From my perspective, the hardware is surely there and pretty much  
could account for the "book" in "dynabook". The question is, from  
today's perspective, what software could fulfill the "dyna" part of it?

Maybe you even have some thoughts on the reality of a dynabook in  
your thesis, going to read it asap :)

- Bert -

Bert Freudenberg wrote: Traces of OLPC in (alternative) future :) is also in
Earthweb by Marc Stiegler written in 1999

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Earthweb-Marc-Stiegler/dp/067157809X/sr=8-1/qid=1169210141/ref=sr_1_1/203-8113942-1334354?ie=UTF8&s=books

OLPC were part of the struggle. The plot is not complex but there are
interesting points about technology (capabilities, e-commerce,
*castpoints*, idea-futures, identities and trust in the distributed
world, how helping others can be more effective way of getting rich then
cheating them, and of course laptops).
--
Matej Kosik

Hi,
Great work !

Probably a little out of topic but on the same track is toontalk
http://toontalk.com

Toontalk is not open source and free, but cheap and the beta version can be used freely if you give feed back.
With tootalk we get an  interaction when an object is droped on an other.

This way programing is recording these interactions while training a robot to do things.

Programmation is no more lexical but procedural.

Many kids which have difficulties at school, have problems with langage but have the thinking of action,can do but can not explain with words.

When I discover Squeak , they easily  pass to Squeak and find similarities like:

Book associated to an object with toontalk are the same as wiewer from blue eye with  Squeak.


In this way, I have writen a project for building geometric figures with Etoys, using the interface gadget for the variable of type player to designate objects used as parameter.

This concern not programming but building by doing versus describing.

See the project on the swiki of the french community.

http://ofset.org:8000/super/210

How to start:

Clic on objects in the green area to get a copy.

For instanc get two copies of ellipses(points) then a coy of a straight line.

Click on each yellow square and show a point.
Clic on go to active scripts.

You have built a straight line passing by two points.

Help ballon explain what thing to show for a gadget. Sorry in french. But using red halo menu debug/edit ballon help anybody can change it for any language).

Be carrefull

Hitting just publish will save the project back on the server. hit alt/dot to abort saving in this case!

The right way:
Stay on publish and choose 'publish on another server' to save the project  in your computer.

Best regards


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-------- Message d'origine--------
De: [hidden email] de la part de Bert Freudenberg
Date: ven. 19/01/2007 11:09
À: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
Cc: [hidden email]
Objet : Re: [Squeakland] Tracing the Dynabook: A Dissertation
 
Am Jan 19, 2007 um 1:33  schrieb John Maxwell:

Sounds very interesting :) I of course searched the PDF for  
"OLPC" (being one of the guys who puts Etoys onto the OLPC machine),  
but it only has a brief mention. I'd be interested in your take on that.

 From my perspective, the hardware is surely there and pretty much  
could account for the "book" in "dynabook". The question is, from  
today's perspective, what software could fulfill the "dyna" part of it?

Maybe you even have some thoughts on the reality of a dynabook in  
your thesis, going to read it asap :)

- Bert -


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