Mindstorms at Forty — Why Papert Still Matters
Seymour Papert's Mindstorms (1980) reimagined the computer as a tool for children to think with. Four decades later, here is why constructionism, Logo, and the turtle still matter.
Read essayA resource on powerful ideas
Computers are the most extraordinary things to think with.
Mindstorms is a living resource on the great ideas of programming and computing — Seymour Papert and constructionism, Alan Kay and Smalltalk, the history and future of programming, and computing as a tool for thinking.
Named for Seymour Papert's Mindstorms (1980) — and the long line of dreamers who saw the computer not as a machine for answers, but as a medium for ideas.
Six ways into the conversation
The same big questions, approached from different doors. Pick one and wander.
MindstormsPapert & ConstructionismSeymour Papert, the Logo turtle, and the radical idea that we learn best by building things we care about.The DynabookAlan Kay & SmalltalkPersonal computing as a medium, objects all the way down, and the still-unfinished revolution of Smalltalk.OriginsHistory of ProgrammingFrom Lovelace and Turing to Lisp, Sketchpad, and the Mother of All Demos — where our ideas actually came from.What's nextFuture of ProgrammingLive coding, end-user programming, direct manipulation, and the question Bret Victor keeps asking: is this really it?Tools for thoughtComputing as a Tool for ThinkingBush, Licklider, Engelbart, Nelson, and Iverson — the dream of machines that augment the human intellect.LanguagesLanguages & ParadigmsLisp, APL, Forth, Prolog, Smalltalk — the languages that each carry a whole way of seeing computation.
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
Alan Kay
Latest essays
Long-form pieces on the ideas that made — and could remake — computing.
The Future of Programming Was Yesterday
Bret Victor's talks Inventing on Principle and The Future of Programming argue that programming took a wrong turn, and that the most dangerous idea is believing we know how it must be done. An essay.
Read essaySmalltalk and the Big Idea of Messaging
Smalltalk gave us object-oriented programming — but in its original sense, the big idea was messaging and late binding, not classes and inheritance. An essay on what we kept and what we lost.
Read essayThe Mother of All Demos
In 1968 Douglas Engelbart demonstrated the mouse, hypertext, screen editing, windows, and live collaboration in a single ninety-minute session — the Mother of All Demos. An essay on what he showed and why.
Read essayFrom the idea encyclopedia
Short, linkable definitions of the concepts that keep coming up.
Augmenting human intellectDouglas Engelbart's program for using computers to raise humanity's collective ability to solve hard problems.A bicycle for the mindSteve Jobs's metaphor for the computer as a tool that multiplies a basic human ability — here, thinking.BootstrappingEngelbart's strategy of using your tools to build better tools, in an accelerating loop of self-improvement.Code as dataThe Lisp insight that programs and the data they manipulate can be the very same kind of thing.ConstructionismSeymour Papert's theory that we build knowledge most effectively while building things in the world.Direct manipulationInterfaces where you act on visible objects continuously and see the results instantly — drag, don't command.
Follow the thread
New essays and ideas, no algorithm in between. Subscribe with any RSS reader, or explore the timeline of computing ideas.