So if you're joining us today, you are probably
looking for those, you know, those really great
aha moments without getting totally bogged down
in jargon. Right, absolutely. And today we are
doing a deep dive into a really fascinating piece
of history. We're looking at this January 2024
article by educator Gary Ackerman. Yeah, from
his site, hackscience .education. Exactly. It's
called Computers Arrive in Schools. And our mission
today is to essentially explore this crazy chaotic
window in the early 1980s when technology first
hit the classroom. It was a massive paradigm
shift. It totally was. And we want to look at
how our most educated predictions about the future,
like the things the experts swore would happen
were just completely flipped upside down. Yeah.
The hubris of that era is just fascinating. We
actually dig into the historical record. Right.
Because to understand the shock of it all, we
kind of had to look at the landscape just before
that flip happened. Exactly. So. Throughout the
1970s, computing was strictly for hobbyists.
I mean, it required highly specialized knowledge,
a really high pain tolerance for like soldering
your own components and deep pockets. These machines
were completely marginalized. They weren't in
normal homes. But then 1981 fundamentally altered
the trajectory. 1981, that was the magic here.
It really was. because that was the year personal
computers finally dropped below the $1 ,000 mark.
Which is huge. I mean, that economic barrier
breaking completely changes the psychology of
the machine. Absolutely. It wasn't just some,
you know, corporate asset hidden away in a university
basement anymore. It suddenly became a household
appliance. Right. The hardware was suddenly just
sitting on desks in teenagers' bedrooms. It's
right there next to their posters and comic books.
Yeah. And so you have these amateur enthusiasts
and specifically children. getting their hands
on the technology. And they were just diving
in. They were. They were writing their own programs
purely to satisfy their own curiosities, just
just seeing what the machine could be forced
to do. Which is such a shift. The tech was still
viewed as a fringe element by society at large,
but the access had basically democratized overnight.
Exactly. So we have this land state in 1981.
The machines are arriving in homes. Kids are
tinkering for hours on end. And the educational
establishment is. They're watching this happen.
And trying to figure out how to harness it for
schools. Right. And Ackerman highlights this
one guy, a statistician at Stanford University
named Joseph Deacon. Yeah, Deacon is a really
interesting figure in all of this. He is. Because
he got his first computer training way back in
1964. So he had been around these machines since
they literally took up entire rooms. Right. He
had this really deep historical understanding
of computing's potential. And Deakin became this
major advocate for using computers in schools.
He was heavily predicting that the coming decades
would see individualized, decentralized teaching.
Delivered entirely through IT. And he wrote this
book in 1981 called The Electronic Cottage. And
there's this quote that is just it's mind bending
to read today. It really is. He was visualizing
this decentralized future of learning. And he
wrote, How much better to be free to roam about
at will and speak the language with teachers
as natives to assist you. What's fascinating
here is how incredibly jarring. that terminology
is to a modern ear. Oh, completely backward.
Right, because Deacon explicitly called the teachers
the natives. Which is wild. It is. For decades
now, we've used the term digital native exclusively
to describe the younger generation. Yeah, the
kids who grew up with iPads. Right. And we use
digital immigrant to describe the older generation
who are, you know, just trying to adapt to these
tools later in life. But in 1981, Deacon assumed
the exact opposite. You really did. OK, let's
unpack this because this is a profound cognitive
blind spot on a societal level. Why would a Stanford
statistician assume the adults would naturally
master an entirely new technology first? Well,
because up until that specific moment in history,
adults were the undeniable masters of the dominant
information technology, which was Brent. Exactly.
Print. Teachers had spent their entire lives
navigating textbooks, encyclopedias, physical
archives, card catalogs. Oh, that's dope. Yeah.
And the widespread assumption was that the intellectual
ability to process complex information in a print
format would just automatically map onto the
ability to write code. Or navigate a digital
interface. Right. They thought the skills were
perfectly transferable. That is just, it's like
assuming an adult who is a world -class classical
composer would automatically be a genius at jazz
improvisation just because, well, they both involve
music. Oh, that's a perfect analogy. Right, because
classical music is all about reading the notes
on a page and executing a pre -written linear
structure perfectly. Very structured. But jazz
is about responding in real time. It's experimenting,
breaking the rules, just seeing what sounds good
in the moment. And that distinction between structured
execution and real -time experimentation gets
right to the heart of the cognitive friction
that happened in the 80s. Because print is the
classical music in this scenario. Exactly. Print
is linear, it's passive, and it is permanent.
You start at the top of the page, you read down
to the bottom, and you absolutely cannot alter
the text. That was what it is. But early computing
was nonlinear. It was highly interactive and
completely malleable. You type a command, the
machine reacts, you adjust. Right. It requires
an entirely different cognitive approach. So
the adults were basically flexing their print
muscles. They were sitting there trying to read
the manual from front to back. before they would
even dare touch the keyboard. Terrified of breaking
it. While the kids were just mashing buttons
to see what the screen would do, they were using
that experimental jazz muscle. And because of
that, they mastered the machines infinitely faster.
It's amazing. Ackerman actually identifies this
dynamic as the first true technology skill inversion
in human history. Wow, the first ever. Yeah,
think about the grand timeline of civilization
for a second. Agriculture. blacksmithing, the
printing press, the industrial revolution. The
elders always knew best. Exactly. In every single
previous era, expertise resided with the older
generation and it was systematically handed down
to the youth. But the personal computer inverted
that power dynamic entirely. Completely flipped
it. Younger generations became far more experienced
and far more confident with a dominant technology
than their elders. So just imagine the psychological
friction in an early 80s classroom. Oh, it must
have been intense. You're the teacher, right?
You are the ultimate authority in the room, the
native speaker of knowledge. And suddenly, some
12 -year -old is correcting your syntax on a
glowing green screen. Yeah, that had to hurt.
If the kids were running circles around the adults,
the adults must have completely panicked. Oh,
they did. So how did the adult world try to regain
control of a technology that they clearly didn't
fundamentally understand? Well, they desperately
sought out a translator. The adult world needed
someone to explain this new reality, and not
in technical terms, but in conceptual ones. They
needed it dumbed down, or at least translated.
Right. And the person they overwhelmingly turned
to was the novelist Michael Crichton. Wait, here's
where it gets really interesting. Michael Crichton.
Yes. Like, the Jurassic Park Michael Crichton.
The very same. In 1983, so long before he wrote
Jurassic Park or Westworld, he published a non
-fiction book called Electronic Life. Why on
Earth is a sci -fi novelist the go -to IT guy
for the 1980s? It's wild, right? Were the actual
engineers just so buried in jargon that they
couldn't explain their own creations to the general
public? Essentially, yes. Creighton actually
wrote the book because his friends and his acquaintances
were constantly pestering him for advice. Like,
hey, Michael, which computer should I buy? Exactly.
Yeah. They were asking for advice on buying and
setting up their machines. But they weren't asking
him how a motherboard functioned. No, they didn't
care about the hardware. Right, they were asking
him how to think about this alien object sitting
in their living room. OK, that makes sense, because
Creighton understood narrative. Yes, he knew
how to explain the architecture of complex systems
to lay people. He was translating the mindset
of computing. He was. He was introducing the
public to the vocabulary and the ideas that were
about to become completely embedded in everyday
life. So he wasn't giving them a schematic. He
was giving them a philosophy. That's a great
way to phrase it. And his fundamental philosophy
was that computers held just this boundless potential
for encouraging human creativity. Because it
was a blank slate. Exactly. He observed this
beautiful fleeting window of opportunity that
always accompanies the birth of a new medium.
Before the rules get locked in. Right. He actually
wrote, one of the great delights of any new technology
is that it is, for a while, free. Free! I love
that. Meaning there is no correct way to use
it yet. Exactly. It's that messy experimental
phase where the amateur enthusiasts and the kids
in their bedrooms are just thriving because they
aren't afraid of breaking the rules. But Creighton
also saw a massive societal backlash forming
against that exact freedom. Of course, the adults
striking back. Yes. He introduced this really
profound warning about a group he dubbed the
Computer Calvinists. Computer Calvinists, that
is such a vivid label. Isn't it? When I hear
Calvinism, I instantly think of like strict dogma,
predestination, no dancing. Right, no fun allowed.
Yeah, just this deeply rigid framework where
Stepping out of line is essentially a moral failing.
And Kraken intended every single ounce of that
metaphor. Wow. Even in these early days of public
computing, he warned that the Calvinists were
already hard at work trying to shut down the
unregulated space. What was their ultimate goal?
To ensure that computer use became highly standardized.
They wanted to impose strict manuals, rigid rules,
protocols. They were effectively taking a tool
of limitless creation and trapping it inside
a controlled framework. Because they were terrified
of the chaos of the free phase. Completely terrified.
So we basically have a massive collision course
set up here. We really do. On one side, you have
Joseph Deacon's vision of students just free
-roaming through information technology, totally
fueled by this new technology skill inversion.
The kids with the power. Right. And on the other
side, you have Creighton's computer Calvinists,
the adults who desperately want to put a fence
around the whole property just to regain control.
To make it behave like print. Exactly. So when
those two forces actually meet in the hallways
of the American school system, what happens?
Well, Creighton issued a really poignant plea
about that exact intersection. OK. He wrote,
personally, I hope that for once in the 20th
century, a technology stays free, because the
rules makers always manage to kill the essence
while tidying up the details. Wow. Kill the essence
while tidying up the details. Yeah. And he finished
by saying, dogma replaces direct experience,
and ritual becomes reality. Dogma replaces direct
experience. Man, we all know how this played
out, don't we? We do. Ackerman's article argues
that the computer Calvinists absolutely won the
war in schools. Hands down. They took this dynamic
nonlinear machine and they essentially forced
it to behave like a 19th century textbook. If
we connect this to the bigger picture, you see
that instead of that decentralized, highly creative
exploration led by the students' natural curiosities.
Which is what Deacon wanted. Right. Instead of
that, the educational bureaucracy did what bureaucracies
do. They standardized it. They standardized.
The historical record shows this incredibly rapid
deployment of the traditional computer lab. Oh,
man, the computer lab. Let's just picture that
1980s computer lab for a second. The beige boxes
everywhere. Exactly. It wasn't a hub of hacking
or coding or building virtual worlds. Not at
all. It was 30 kids sitting in front of 30 identical
monitors working through the exact same step
-by -step worksheet to format a Word document.
The instruction was literally, do not click file
until the teacher tells you to click file. It
was excruciating. They applied the linear passive
rules of print to a completely non -linear dynamic
medium. They basically stripped away the direct
experience of trial and error. And they replaced
it with the sterile ritual of multiple -choice
quizzes about keyboard shortcuts. Oh, I remember
those quizzes. Right. They taught the software
the exact same way you would teach a rigid grammar
lesson. So what does this all mean? I kind of
have to push back on this narrative just a little
bit here. OK, go for it. Because we are painting
the Calvinists as these sort of villains who
actively crushed creativity. But wasn't that
standardization an absolute necessity? In what
sense? Well, think about the sheer logistics
of running a school system. You have a teacher
who is a digital immigrant tasked with managing
30 chaotic kids in a room with tens of thousands
of dollars worth of fragile, expensive equipment.
Very true. You can't just unleash them to free
roam. You need a rigid structure just to keep
the hardware from getting destroyed, right? Fair
point. And you need measurable outcomes to actually
give out grades at the end of the semester. The
logistical defense of the Calvinists is incredibly
robust. I mean, how else do you ensure a baseline
of digital literacy for every single student
rather than just catering to the few kids who
are naturally inclined to pinker? Exactly. The
school system is an industrial model, and it
is designed specifically for scale. And you cannot
scale chaos. No, you can't. The Calvinists would
absolutely argue that they saved the computer
from being a useless, expensive toy and turned
it into a functional utility for the masses.
But in scaling it, they killed the essence. They
did? They turned a blank canvas into a typewriter.
Yes. I mean, if the only way to make a technology
function at scale is to strip away the very thing
that makes it revolutionary in the first place,
maybe the 19th century industrial school model
was just fundamentally incompatible with the
21st century tool. That tension between scale
and essence is the core tragedy that Ackerman
highlights in his article. Because the adults
just couldn't see it. Right. Because of the technology
skill inversion, The adult educators lacked the
intuition to even realize what they were destroying.
Because they were looking at it through the lens
of print. Exactly. They genuinely believed that
teaching a student how to follow a rigid software
tutorial was computer literacy. They thought
they were doing the right thing. They didn't
realize they were teaching paint by numbers instead
of teaching actual art. Wow, which brings this
entire historical conflict right to your desk
today. It really does. I mean, think about your
own workplace habits for a second. When you are
handed a new piece of software, a new app or
a new digital tool at work, what is your immediate
instinct? Are you a Calvinist? Right. Do you
channel your inner computer Calvinist just frantically
searching for the official tutorial, terrified
of clicking the wrong button because you might
break the rules? Or do you allow yourself the
direct experience? Do you just start mashing
buttons? Do you explore the messy free phase
to discover what the tool can actually do before
the dogma sets in? It's a critical question for
how we adapt to change. And it leads to a pretty
staggering thought about our immediate future.
Yeah. This entire deep dive has been predicated
on the technology skill inversion of the PC era,
right? Where the youth had this massive cognitive
head start. The kids knew more than the adults.
Exactly. But look at the frontiers we are standing
on right now. Highly advanced generative artificial
intelligence. Oh yeah. Or near future brain computer
interfaces. These are tools that do not operate
on the logic of print. or even on the logic of
traditional software. Right, the mechanisms are
entirely different. So this raises an important
question. What happens to our schools, our institutions,
and our societal power dynamics when a paradigm
shift is so sudden and so alien that neither
generation has a head start? Oh, wow. We are
entering an era where the concept of a digital
native might just cease to exist. We are all
arriving on the shore at the exact same time.
Universally immigrants to a new world. Exactly.
Man, if the educational system fractured this
badly when the kids knew the rules better than
the adults. Imagine the whiplash when nobody
knows the rules. And the Calvinists haven't even
had time to draft a manual yet. We might just
be forced to survive the free phase together.
That is something to really chew on. Well, thank
you for joining us on this deep dive. Keep questioning
the structure around you. Give yourself permission
to explore the free phase of your own tools,
and we will catch you next time.