Objects Embody Ideas

Falling in love with Science:

Imagination is sparked by Objects. They are the gateways to knowledge and deep understanding.. we fall in love with them and this passion drives our pursuit of science.

One problem this work of memoir addresses:
-We are entering a time of crisis in the sciences and mathematics - with a decline in American students being invested in the Sciences.. Why?

(Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat")
Thomas Friedman believes that to fight the quiet crisis of a flattening world, the United States work force should keep updating its work skills. Making the work force more adaptable, Friedman argues, will keep it more employable. He also suggests that the government should make it easier to switch jobs by making retirement benefits and health insurance less dependent on one's employer and by providing insurance that would partly cover a possible drop in income when changing jobs. Friedman also believes there should be more inspiration for youth to be scientists, engineers, and mathematicians due to a decrease in the percentage of these professionals being American.

Is this really a quiet crisis? I think this represents an opportunity for less privileged sectors of the workforce around the world to participate in knowledge creation and management. It just means that the playing field is leveling.

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"One reason we don't pay enough attention to our things is that we are distracted by our digital dreams" - another is a stigma against talking about passions in science.

Things reveal the mystery of the inner workings of the world - this is what we mean by transparency... knowing how something works.

The 90's saw a movement away from this - new opacity cast as transparency: you can make something work without knowing how it works.

Eventually this can translate into trying to understand how the human mind - and body work - understanding the self as we do the external objects that embody ideas.

Programming gives us a metaphorical understanding of the mechanism behind the magic.

Objects are the paths into scientific creativity - we realize something about the self and something about science - to realize is to understand, to understand is to build. (it's like Mitch's wheel: The creative thinking spiral: Imagine - Create - Play - Share - Reflect..... This comes from a basis in having a fascination with how things work and a lover for the beauty of design.

Today children grow up in many worlds: Digital (virtual), the physical (analogue), and nature. Do we differentiate between them or are they blended into each other. To me they all work together, one weaves into the other, but this has only come after many years of being fascinated with all three.

Objects give us a "experiential" understanding - a feel for how things go together... Children build their theories based on the objects the meet in the world.

In Paperts Constructivist Model - Children make their minds through actual building. The ideas extend from an experiential engagement with the material objects.

Mastering a Microworld is comforting (psychologically). It's a world where you have some control unlike more uncertain real world challenges.

And our intimacy with objects allows us to forget ourselves - we become larger in our focus and this is pleasurable.

Our connection with objects is somewhat transitional - they are a part of ourselves - Sherry claims that later in life those moments when we feel at one with the universe draw their power from our earlier experiences with transitional objects..

I am skeptical - in some ways it does - but in many ways its about transcending the self through seeing the self as small - in the presence of the sublime, or something much larger than the self - rather than extending the notion of self or projecting the self into the objects.

body syntonic learning - is where one thinks through physical exploration of the materials. (she discovers that suppleness is the precursor to what is ultimate most secure (structurally).

Worlds of objects are worlds of mystery and control unlike worlds of people - which are unpredictable. In these worlds failing, or debugging can be viewed as a positive activity.

Lego: serious play. we become designers.

Analogue and Digital: Natural and Simulated -- with digital objects one is freed to build strait from the mind but the mechanics behind it are opaque, the ideas behind the object are traded for flexibility and freedom, but it's a "simulated" kind of freedom.

We learn through bodily understanding (Logo and the Turtle example) Kindergarden allows this through play.. experimentation...

Star Logo - demonstrates that through a decentralized process, structure emerges - teaching fundamental principles about evolutionary theory and how the world works.

Digital Worlds make everything possible, but constrain "experience" - a trade off apparent in most science classes where virtual science is employed. Things are made to work out!

In a program there is a certain craving for the unpredictable, once you figure out the program you lose interest - unless somehow there is person on the other end, responding to your behaviors (AI example from ARS)

Kay indicates that we learn from both physical and digital worlds - but we should not loose track of those things in the physical world that are worth fighting for... (What are these? The objects and the body right? The action of engaging with the tactility of the objects)

Sherry argues that we need to fall in love with science through objects - and accept those passions to revitalize science. This also involves embodying the simulated in the physical - and making technology more transparent - right?

Objects are points of entry into larger transformative experiences of understanding, sociality, confidence - when they are shared...

Conclusion: through scientific memoir, we can revitalize science education - we will understand that scientists are made through falling in love with how something works.... or how understanding it expands their view of what is possible.





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