Waldemar Kornewald wrote:
Hi,
On Nov 26, 2007 3:13 AM, Steven H. Rogers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I think the VPRI teaching goals are only indirectly related to the FONC
project. The latter seems to be a reexamination of the programming
process with the goal of developing a unified programming model that
works for OS kernels, device drivers, web servers, distributed
databases, office applications, econometrics models, air traffic control
system, gene sequencing, etc. [...]*snip*
Yes, that's probably the obvious part of it because they explicitly
mention a cool programming environment and Alan writes about teaching
kids, but I think there is more. One of the other projects is
"powerful ideas content and how to represent it". That's very
interesting, but this part hasn't been clarified, yet. It seems to
target not only children, but also adults. How far will this go? Is it
only about knowledge in the sense of Wikipedia or is it about any kind
of information (e.g., project management data)? Could this be
important for companies (knowledge management)? The goals aren't
clearly stated, so I don't know where it stops. The front page makes
the goals sound very open-ended. It starts with teaching children and
later it mentions "computer revolution" (though, learning always seems
to have the focus).
The VPRI goals are certainly open ended and will need to gain focus to
show useful results, but just as lack of focus can dilute efforts, too
much focus too early in a research project can channel the work into
non-productive areas. My impression of their overall focus is to make
computers better tools for knowledge discovery, whether that is via
finding 'facts' a la Google or Wikipedia, analyzing a body of data, or
building models. The teaching and learning and fundamentals of new
computing quadrants are the most clearly defined at this point and it
wouldn't surprise me to see them woven together in a successor to the
OLPC XO.
Regards,
Steve
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