We, the passive Web

Wired's "We are the Web" sort of gets what's going on but really misses the mark. Visionaries like Ted Nelson and Alan Kay were thinking about how to harness emergent computing power for the common man/child (in the 60's -- about 40 years ago). They didn't predict all the things we have now, but their ideas laid the ground work for them. (The article misses the mark in otherways but I'll save it for later.)

I particularly love the vision which Kay had/has: computers should be easy to use and program by children. And it would be all shared via network. Unfortunate thing about the web today is that it is very passive: people mostly write passive text rather than active code. (The ones being written are viruses and worms and trojan horses: not productive use of internet and coding.) Kay is trying to make Squeak (Smalltalk) sort of be that way but isn't so obvious: most people have never heard of Kay or Squeak. Java and JavaScript are well heard of since 1995, but Smalltalk never got traction even though the latter has been around since the 1970's.

I believe that Smalltalk/Squeak still has the potential but the first step seems too hard: trying it out and see it work. I downloaded Stagecast for my sons and after going through the tutorial of about half a day, they were able to write simple games. Stagecast's free version has limits which they quickly reached. So, I wanted to get them to real programming with Squeak but I haven't been able to find such tutorial so I need to search more intensely or write my own.

I don't know how to make programming successful yet but I hope to make time to teach my sons and do some trial and error with them. Unfortunately we are busy trying to downsize our home (we have a contract for our current home and are looking for next home) and I was unemployed the whole month of Sept (will start a contract job next week).