Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!mit-eddie!mintaka!oliveb!orc!decwrl!limbo!taylor
From: zwicky@itstd.sri.com (Elizabeth Zwicky)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Student Writing: Can the Machine Maim the Message?
Message-ID: <1023@limbo.Intuitive.Com>
Date: 20 Jul 90 23:43:14 GMT
Sender: taylor@limbo.Intuitive.Com
Organization: SRI International, Menlo Park, CA 94025
Lines: 49
Approved: taylor@Limbo.Intuitive.Com

Jesse W. Asher writes:

> It is also obvious that those that use Macs are greatly offended 
> and not willing to look at the article very objectively.

Actually, my objections to the article have very little to do with a fondness
for Macintoshes - if the arguments were the same, but the machine names
were switched, I'd find it equally offensive.

I have two primary complaints:

1) The effects attributed to the computers are extremely sweeping (in
fact, they boil down to "brain rot"). While I am willing to believe
that user interfaces make a difference in writing, I find it appalling
that anyone could take seriously the idea that the user interface
could completely change the topics the students chose. This is not
just a much stronger effect than one would expect; it's completely the
wrong kind of effect, and it is *precisely* the kind of effect one
expects from differences in the population. The author is attributing immense
power to the computer.

2) The fundamental claim is moral, and not about computers at all. The
author attributes the perceived effect to a difference between "fun"
computers and "serious" computers, going so far as to call it the
"play effect". Ignoring the computer content, the basic point is that
being amused interferes with your ability to learn things and think
clearly.  I find this attitude deeply offensive, particularly in
teachers; it is a recipe for scaring students away from serious
thought. Good researchers in most fields are deeply frivolous people,
who do science because they find it the most pleasing thing they can
do. 

(Take Feynman, for instance, a man who certainly never took himself
too seriously. Or take the houseful of linguists who decided that
*some* time ought to be devoted to non-linguistic topics, and
instituted the rule that during dinner you could only discuss
linguistics if you did so in a funny voice. I know several
distinguished linguists who gained from this rule an ability to
discuss deep theoretical concepts in linguistics, completely
seriously, while one talked like Yoda and the other like Inspector
Clouseau, and all innocent bystanders laughed hysterically. It does
not seem to have effected their ground-breaking work in the field.)

In short, the article seems to reveal two fundamental, common, and
horrible misconceptions; computers are all-powerful, and work
shouldn't be fun. If I had the ability, I would gild this paragraph
by inserting a full-colour Mr. Yuk face here...

Elizabeth Zwicky