“Many children who grow up in our cities are surrounded by the artifacts of science but have good reason to see them as belonging to “the others”; in many case they are perceived as belonging to the social enemy. Still other obstacles are more abstract, though ultimately of the same nature. Most branches of the most sophisticated modern culture of Europe and the United States are so deeply “mathophobic” that many privileged children are as effectively (if more gently) kept from appropriating science as their own. In my vision, space-age objects, in the form of small computers, will cross these cultural barriers to enter the private worlds of children everywhere. They will do so not as mere physical objects. This book is about how computers can be carriers of powerful ideas and of the seeds of cultural change, how they can help people form new relationships with knowledge that cut across the traditional lines separating humanities from sciences and knowledge of the self from both of these.”
Papert, S. (1981) Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas. NY: Basic Books. (page 4)