There’s a quite interesting piece on TED from Mitch Resnick. Aside from the droning delivery, that is – not everyone’s a zing-zing presenter, but the message is solid.
At first blush, this seems to be about coding. My eyes started bleeding straight away – bear with it, it gets better. The important bit is where he speaks on how learning things needs context to make it important, and that literacy leads to improved skills.
I can’t remember the last time at work I actually had the cycles to do something for education. I don’t remember a time outside of physics at school where learning was applied learning. Heck, I’d bet many of my skills have become stunted, crippled versions of what they used to be.
No one wants to be a cripple. Can we save ourselves? Get our inner children to the metaphorical gym, start bulking them up against the onslaught of the G-men?
I don’t want to code anything – Mitch and I don’t see quite eye to eye on this. But! If I’m getting Mitch’s fundamental message, this is about learning new stuff. Applying it. And probably – if we stretch a bit – being awesome.
A good friend’s said to me that life’s about interesting stuff. This three month slice of life? I’m just doing interesting stuff. Whether the book I write is awesome or not – well, of course it’ll be awesome. But at the end of it, I’ll have finished writing a book.
I’ve said it before: it’s cool.