“I noticed that a lot of the discussion of computers was dominated by questions like, just to take one example, when they do Logo kids get confused about whether “turn” in Logo means turning this way or turning that way. Yes, they do – but that’s a consequence of it being an incidental, of spending little time on it. I think that sort of research is important for now but irrelevant to the situation where the children don’t have just a few hours in a computer lab to do that, but from a very early age – from five or six – they are beginning to do that sort of thing in a simple way. So we would break out of this and almost all the questions about how hard it is to get into using computers, and which kind of software gives an easier entrance and so on. All that is, I suggest, about to become obsolete and we should – while we have got to continue doing it because it is highly relevant to today’s situation, if we are thinking into that future we have to go beyond it.”
Papert. S. (2006) Transcript of Seymour Papert’s Keynote Address at ICMI 17 Conference in Hanoi, Vietnam. December 4, 2006.
This speech was made right before Dr. Papert’s tragic accident in Hanoi in December, 2006 and represents his last public address.