Seymour Papert
INNOVATOR
Seymour Papert, a mathematician and cofounder of MIT’s artificial-intelligence lab, began studying how children learn with computers in the 1960s.
       
Seymour Papert thinks written language may be obsolete someday...

“The terrorist attack is dramatic proof of why people need more knowledge than in the past and the ability to acquire it faster, more effectively and with greater independence. The key is giving every kid some sort of personal, portable and connected computing device. It should be an extension of your hand, eye or brain. We are seeing a shift from static, paper-based media to dynamic, electronic media. But the real transformation will occur when we have new ways of organizing people and knowledge. Instead of fragmenting knowledge into ‘subjects’ and segregating children by age, we will see groups formed around common interests. I see children using computers for making music, movies, robots—whatever evokes their passion. The assumptions we made as to why writing was superior to speaking no longer hold up in many ways. Voice recognition makes possible the recording and indexing of spoken language in new ways. In the very, very long run, maybe we’ll just give up reading. Mathematics will break out of this box we’ve put it in—this very abstract, pure manipulation of symbols. If we look imaginatively at technology, new directions are open.

(NewsWeek 10/29/01)