Alan Kay: Doing with Images Makes Symbols (Full Version)

I was going to mention Growing a Language, but since it's already been posted, here is Alan Kay's "Doing with Images Makes Symbols": ▶ this video .

in “Ask HN: What is your favourite tech talk?” · View on HN

So many things I could say about this, but I"ll let Alan Kay speak for me - ▶ this video Alan talks about how ideas in Calculus could be manifested from an early age and a richness in understanding built up as they aged up: - at very young ages, kids really respond well through "doing" / the enactive channel. When asked to draw a circle, kids in Papert's group would first emulate what a LOGO turtle would do by rotating their body in a circle (making tiny increments in x and y). - as they got a bit older, the visual / iconic channel was more developed and they could understand the abstraction of a circle on pencil/paper and how the concepts carried over there - closer to early teens, symbols were much easier to grasp and relate to, etc. With this context in mind, there have been some cool efforts to mix the second and third channels I just mentioned to communicate advanced math concepts. Vi Hart and Grant Sanderson's youtube channels come to mind. Here are my favorite videos by Grant: - "What does it feel like to invent math": [link] - On the visual intuition behind a hard problem on the Putnam exam - "The hardest problem on the hardest test": [link] - From vectors to matrices to vector spaces to higher-level ideas like the link between linear algebra and calculus: "Essence of linear algebra" series: [link] What I especially like about Grant's videos, is that he often walks through what a mathematician would do, the questions she would ask, etc.

in “Communicating Advanced Mathematics to Kids” · View on HN

You can find a higher quality version of this beginning around the 24:20 mark of the video at the link below. ▶ this video

in “Alan Kay shows the Rand tablet [video]” · View on HN

That was probably around 1982-1984, when Alan Kay was Chief Scientist at Atari, and set up Atari Cambridge Research Lab. Atari Cambridge Research- part 1 - Cynthia Solomon: [link] >This is a demonstration of some of the works in progress from July 1982 to April, 1984. From learning Logo, a look at our work at introducing people to computers, to music with some of our futuristic instruments. We'll take you on a tour of our lab. Director or Research, Cynthia Solomon. >I'm Cynthia Solomon. You're about to see some of the research that has been going on at the Atari Cambridge Research Laboratory. I've been its director since we started in 1982. The staff consisted of 22 full time research and support people, as well as 10 consultants. >Our research has been motivated by our past experiences in the Logo Group at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where we worked with Seymour Papert and Marvin Minsky. >We wanted to get Logo out of the laboratory and into the world. We wanted to share it, and share its potential as a powerful too for thinking. And so before we joined Atari, many of us were part of the development team at Logo Computer Systems, where we designed, implemented, and documented Apple Logo. >When we finished Apple Logo, I left Logo Computer Systems. I wanted to get back to doing research. I contacted Alan Kay, who was Chief Scientist at Atari, and it turned out he was interested in setting up a research laboratory in Cambridge, near MIT. >He was familiar with our

in “Alan Kay at UCLA (2016) [video]” · View on HN