20 Feb
2006
20 Feb
'06
11:38 p.m.
Marvin Johnston wrote:
Fascinating project, and it looks like your thrust is
youth education.
Looking at the PDF of "Computer Demolition", this quote really caught my
eye:
?Will American kids be Inventors in 10 years, or just operate appliances
designed elsewhere?? and, by the way, ?Whatever happened to the Kid who
took Alarm Clocks apart to discover how they worked??
Part of the answer to your quote is that those people are right here :)!
I was never a hardware tinkerer, but even as a kid I was always
fascinating by programming. I'm still "tinkering" with 8088 assembler
decades later because it is a finite goal.
All is not lost: I got my 6-yr-old to sit down and play Rocky's Boots
with me, and Great Lincoln's Mullet he took to it like a fish to water.
He can now describe AND, OR, and NOT gates, and also CLOCKS and DELAYS
(although he may not use all of the correct terms, but hey, he's six).
I'm going to try to get my 9-yr-old to do the same :-)
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/