Masthead CMC Magazine October 1, 1995 / Page 12


BOOK EXCERPT

An Education in Abstraction

From The Future Does Not Compute, page 159:

"Only the illuminated screen itself--along with the mouse, keyboard, and other physical apparatus--is an immediate reality for the student. Papert repeatedly celebrates the concrete presence of the apparatus, and the student's active involvement with it. No one will deny him this. But the virtue of immediacy possessed by the technical device as such is not a virtue of the content mediated by that device. The difficulty so many have in making this distinction--or in finding it significant--is remarkable, and suggests that the computer's greatest danger may lie in its power to alienate us from the world, unawares."
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