Personal essays
Skating to where you tell me
Spring Break
Forty years ago Rachel Fagerburg and I came in over spring break to set up half a dozen Apple II computers that Laurel School had bought for a new computer lab.
I was twenty-three and excited at the prospects of these new machines. Rachel was thirty years older than me and was cautious but always willing to try something new if it would help us teach mathematics better.
Until then, the only computer in the department was a tiny Amiga that we wheeled into the classroom on a giant cart that held a large television set that we used as the display and audio output.
Our department chair was from the History department. He taught one course in math and thought he knew more about our subject and the teaching of it than any of us. He was a self-described renaissance man.
Rachel had five adult daughters. The eldest four each played stringed instruments in prestigious symphonies.
Although polite and timid, Rachel would snort behind our chairs back, “Renaissance man. I’m a mathematician who raised a string quartet.”
Apps
Anyway, I think I remember that there was some apple scent when we opened the machines. At least that’s what we thought it was.
I definitely remember that we tested each machine by playing Brick Out which shipped with the machine.
The other thing I remember is installing Talking Eliza and playing with it.
“Daniel,” you ask, “did you play online or on the machine.”
There was no online then.
“Damn, you’re old.”
Other apps I remember were a primitive word processor and Logo.
Logo was the very cool turtle graphics language where you could tell the turtle to turn left or right, and walk forward or back with the pen up or down.
It was a way to teach students logic and programming and we still see versions of it today.
Other than that, most of the apps the school bought were drill and quiz programs. Either students could use them to practice something over and over again or teachers could sit students in front of them to take self grading quizes and tests.
In other words, the computers were mainly being used to do things we could do before there were computers.
Skeumorphism
Yesterday my friend Bill was bemoaning that we aren’t further along with our use of technology.
Part of the problem may be that Bill lives in the future and knows some of what hasn’t shipped yet - but some of it is that we are still using computers to do things we did fine before computers.
I worry in the opposite direction - that when we use computers to do things we did fine without them, there are often unintended consequences - but that’s a discussion for another day.
In the early days of the iPhone, many of our iPhone and Mac apps mimicked the physical worlds they meant to replace.
The contacts app had stitched leather to suggest a contacts book, the calendar’s monthly view looked like a classic desk calendar, Books (then iBooks) had page turning where the corner of the pages turned down like a real book.
I wrote the official book for the online Stanford programming class and in my meetings with the man in charge of the project, he was excited to show me a preview of iTunes University because he wanted to show me that the bookshelves on which these courses would appear used a different wood than the bookshelves in the standard iBookstore.
We were so rooted in the past that it kept us from moving to the future.
The future
I was at dinner with Bill when I saw my first app on the iPhone that told me I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
Bill and I were teaching an iPhone programming class in Colorado organized by Mike and Nicole. At dinner Nicole and Bill started talking about this game they loved named Flight Control.
I downloaded it during dinner - we had the internet by then - and my relationship to my phone changed.
Planes appeared at the edges of the screen and you drew their flight path to the runways they needed to land on. They followed the exact path you drew. Many apps could draw a straight line from the beginning of your gesture to the end but this app followed your exact path even if it had a loop in the middle.
Plenty of copy cat apps appeared - but more importantly the app showed what was possible.
ChatGPT currently doesn’t bring us any new ideas. It might. For now it feels like taking what we already had and presenting it online with nice looking faux leather.
Even though ChatGPT certainly knows Gretzky’s quote, it doesn’t skate to where the puck will be.
It also doesn’t skate to where the puck is - though as fast as it is it could likely get there while the puck is still within reach.
It looks at all the places the puck has been and chooses a point to skate to based on that.
But technologies train those of us who use them.
I don’t ask Siri to set the time for 50 minutes because Siri always says back, “15 minutes, starting now.”
I’ve learned to ask for 45 minutes or 51.
That’s one of my other fear with these technologies. We’ll no longer ask the questions we want to ask, we’ll ask the questions we know they can answer.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 152. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe