April 26, 2011

“Information technology is the wrong name, and leads to its misuse. The fact that you can get a lot of information out of the Net is NOT merely what it’s about.

Most digital technologies — processors and chips, for example — are not about information at all. They are constructional medium…we make things from them.

Another application of “digital technology” is a representational medium. How to show a familiar object in a new context. That’s not about information either.

Education also has three aspects: learning as information exchange: learning as doing; learning as a representational environment. And the information exchange side (like in digital technology) is easier to conceptualize. That’s why it trends that way.

By over emphasizing the information side in the context of the Internet, it is actually causing a greater resistance to change. We fail more and more to see the larger context of education.”

Moore, A. (1998) Seymour Papert quoted in archived article, Targets Hit, Targets Missed — Seymour Papert, chronicling his speech at the October 1998 Camden Technology Conference (now PopTech). The actual video of the event has been lost to the Web.

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