> On Mon, 21 Oct 2002, Karen Watters Cole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >Personally, I'd like to see Game Boys and Nintendo outlawed for everyone
> >under 16 or perhaps medically restricted to 2 hours a week as a hazard to
> >mental and physical health.
[snip]
I think trying to *outlaw* video games is
like trying to outlaw heart transplants.
The only temptations people can "just say no" to
are illegal drugs, as we well know.
I think the solution to the social problems of
video games and heart transplants (technologies that
are too expensive for all who want them to have
but which create a social expectation that everybody
who needs them should have them...) --
the solution to these problems
is for the things to not come into being in the first place.
[this is similar to the "Pandora's box" problem vis-a-vis
Al Qaeda.]
Medical research needs to be redirected toward
epidemiology instead of Gee-whiz surgical interventions.
Computer programming needs to be redirected toward
empowering applicsations instead of video games.
Seymour Papert's "Logo" computer programming
language for children was one example. In the
mid 80s, I worked in IBM on a project that was much
more empowering: a multimedia production language
for children. One of the applications was for
older children to write programs in this
language to teach younger children things. "Social
learning" was an integral part of this project which
inserted the computer as a "decentered" component
into the social situation.
A guiding principle of this project was:
tHE COMPUTER SHOULD NOT KNOW WHAT THE CHILD
CAN DO WITH IT
--
But let us not overlook the role of adults in
all this -- including the gross obliviousness even
if not the treason of the clerks:
We need to reorient our intellectual world
around the discourse ethics of Jurgen Habermas
and Karl-Otto Apel (et al.), instead of the
wilful fatuity of postmodernism and "artificial
intelligence". The world is part of discourse.
"Discourse is part of the world" is *only*
one part of that discourse. Apparently
our culture can no longer get by on implicitly
living off this "spiritual capital" rather
than proactively cultivating it.
"Yours in discourse...."(sic)
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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