Xref: utzoo comp.misc:3505 alt.cyberpunk:828
Path: utzoo!edhnic!becker!ziebmef!ncrcan!lsuc!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!ucsd!rutgers!bellcore!tness7!tness1!flatline!erict
From: erict@flatline.UUCP (j eric townsend)
Newsgroups: comp.misc,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: Another Leary thing
Summary: Hm..
Message-ID: <319@flatline.UUCP>
Date: 10 Sep 88 22:23:24 GMT
References: <14033@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Distribution: na
Organization: one bitchin' 3b1 in Tx.Houston.the-Montrose
Lines: 55

In article <14033@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, c60a-1bq@web-1f.berkeley.edu writes:
> I think I'm on some king of anti-Timothy Leary kick, so here goes:

I'm not a "defender", today, so no wars. :-)

> In the latest Verbum (I don't have it, too expensive) Leary praises
> the Amiga (much deserved, and I own an ST).  Then he goes on to praise
> it for its _low_price_, saying that a kid in the ghetto (yes, in the 
> ghetto) could get one, and plug into all that good computer stuff.
> I don't know about you, but since when is $600+ (a 500 with no monitor
> but some software) affordable?  I'm middle class, but a computer would
> end up a significant investment if I wanted to make it useful (sw, disks,
> time, and communication).


$600 is about what we paid for my first computer -- a C64, 1541 and printer;
when I was a upper-lower class kid living in the backwoods of
BFE, Leesville, Louisiana.  (Ft. Polk sux too. :-).  We weren't on
welfare, but we weren't rich either.  I think we saved about 9-12months
for the computer.  (Grandparents bought me a monitor a month later. What
a rescue. :-).  That computer made the difference between me being
a dual major CompSci/Journalism student in Houston instead of being
like my cousins:  2-4 kids, HS diploma at best, slow paying job, no future,
and living in BFE, Louisiana.

I think the "little kid in the gheto" was a bit of an exaggeration..
I think the price of a used C64 system, a used Atari800 or
any other 8bit micro, and the availability of cheap software make
possible a chance for a lot of kids to be educated and exposed to the
world in some small fasion.  Maybe they'll flip past "Loading Games
On Your Banana PC5000" to "Learning Basic".

Remember also that Leary's big kick now *is* computers -- I read
an interview where he said this is what he thought LSD-25 *would* be.
He states, and I have little reason to challenge him, that the average
5 year old now understands more about the world than Marco Polo did
at his death (*)-- thanks to TV.  What could our kids learn from computers?
Better yet, what could we *teach* our children with computers.  When I was
14 or 15, I played a stock-market/business simulator and learned more
than I ever did in an economics class in high school.  Likewise with a
"motion/physics display program" and basic physics.  Psychology and
self-exploration is wide open.  (Play "Mind Mirror" for an afternoon,
and see what you can learn as an adult.)

(*) -- not that the child has the *maturity* of Marco Polo, but that
they understand concepts like: the world is round, there is a country
far away where the people speak a different language and there
are animals called kangaroos; the Earth goes around the Sun in big
circles; the child can read and write on a limited level; the child
may be starting to be bilingual (especially here in Houston :-); etc.
I doubt that the child is more *intelligent* than Marco Polo, just more
*exposed* to the world.
-- 
Skate Unix.
J. Eric Townsend ->uunet!nuchat!flatline!erict smail:511Parker#2,Hstn,Tx,77007
             ..!bellcore!tness1!/