When I look around me today and think “what’s the closest thing we have to Alan Kay’s vision of the Dynabook today?”
the answer I stumble upon surprises me — Tiktok.
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There is probably no platform/technology out there that excels more in learning about the inner lives, the whims & desires of young people more accurately than Tiktok, almost unrivaled in its downstream ability to capture their attention.
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I definitely hesitate to say Tiktok should be considered doing a good job of “modeling the world of the child” (but maybe at least just a part of it) and it does this the fastest compared to any other technology/platform that has reached mass adoption
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Technically, the child can “train Tiktok’s algorithm” & align it to their tastes at the time, but Tiktok is not a great place for the child to “construct” their own world — it does not give them agency to the extent of what Kay envisions with the Dynabook
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Really enjoyed this thread, Connie—thank you! Sharing some notes in a similar vein in case they're of interest:
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fascinating! it's true the primer very much directs Nell's journey but i feel it's intended to be a grand tour of various "roles"she can assume (princess, warrior, programmer etc) & each role by nature comes with its own constraints & agencies (im reminded of this pt from Kay)
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i think hackworth's design is a bit more advanced than the kitschy "this is all just make-believe" kind of storytelling because the its driven by the arcs of archetypal folk tales (powerful on their own, since stories that stick around are the ones that contain powerful truths)
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...but made even more powerful by the primer which juxtaposes those narratives with events in her life — ultimately showing her how the lessons of those stories can be applied IRL...
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nell initially does treat the grand adventures in the primer as escapism from her impoverished upbringing
but she takes the lessons she learns inside of it & apply them to her IRL decisions — where then she has the agency to decide how & when she should wield those powers.
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Nell's primer allowed her to "try on" different archetypal identities, sampling their respective constraints/responsibilities/agencies
— perhaps by feeling the ropes of each is how she came to more intentionally approach the question "so who do i want to become?"
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Replying to
(Sorry for belated reply—have been off Twitter the past two weeks!)
I find your re-framing pretty compelling. Maybe pluralism defuses authoritarianism. I'll ponder this more next time I swing back to this topic in my writing!
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Replying to @TylerAlterman
How does metasystemacity differ from model agnosticism?
webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/ModelAgno