Comments on: Kit

By: türk sikiş

türk sikiş — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:52:13 +0000

Good to have bumped onto your blog and met you.

By: John Lilly

John Lilly — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 04:07:44 +0000

Actually, Tristan’s right. I had one before Timex bought them.

By: Al Jigen Billings

Al Jigen Billings — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 22:18:42 +0000

Or simply the “Timex Sinclair” as it was available in America? That was my first computer and I hand-typed BASIC programs into it as well.

By: Al Jigen Billings

Al Jigen Billings — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 22:15:18 +0000

And when jailbreaking is illegal (which Apple already argues it is)?

By: Glenn

Glenn — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 15:41:16 +0000

John…I’m a little late to this post but largely agree with your assessment. It made me wonder what other domains exist where tinkering is still a big part of the experience. One of my daughters friends is the son of a physician. His dad is in the process of building an airplane..actually a new wing design and the son invites Shannon over to work on electronic/science projects…so there are still tinkerers around. There also seems to be a cadre of high school students who tinker with robots and game/graphics software so there might be hope. As an aside, my dad was constantly working on steam boilers/pipe fitting for our flower growing nursery. I ended up building the family stereo system, some test equipment, and my amateur radio system…all from Heathkits. I didn’t become an engineer, just love to hang out with them

By: Daramarak

Daramarak — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 10:22:30 +0000

You are talking like closed system is equal to progress. I’d argue the opposite. Of course a hi-tech system will have limitations to how much you can tinker with the hardware. No one is arguing that, but I think the point of this article is that the IPhone, IPad and every other Iitem is unnecessary closed up, and that without any other reason than “protecting us” from meddling with things.

By: Tristan

Tristan — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:45:31 +0000

Hey John, great to see you discuss “hackability” and why it’s important. I’ve given a couple of talks in Europe about this and a series of blog posts is on its way.

See http://www.slideshare.net/nitot/hackability-what-it-means-why-its-important in the mean time.

–Tristan

Nitpick: “our first computer was a Sinclair Z-80″ I think you mean ZX80. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX80 (I had a ZX-81 for Christmas myself in… 1981)

By: joe f.

joe f. — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:18:14 +0000

I’m in an interesting situation in that I have a daughter who will, in a few years, hit that point at which they say girls drop out of science and math, while at the same time I work at a place that has a mission and spends a fair bit of money to encourage STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education. So I’m thinking this bit through on a different level and from the standpoint of someone who is sensitive to the problem, but is not an engineer.

I do what I can (a bit of woodworking in the house, having her “help” when I upgrade her computer, etc.) and we encourage her whenever she strays toward anything related to STEM, even if it’s only constructing her used-box cities in her room. But the earlier poster is right in that the direction of hardware isn’t helping. Apple didn’t start the trend toward magic boxes, it’s just a very good practitioner. Even if I were to let her at the kinds of things I took apart — a broken radio, for example — there’s not much to see in there anymore.

As full disclosure, I work at the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, and the program I mentioned is called eCYBERMISSION (https://www.ecybermission.com/). It’s only one of the things we do, and there are others in the Army involved as well (check out http://www.usaeop.com/). I’m in public affairs at RDECOM, though not in any capacity with those two programs. I got to your article via hacker news from my kitchen table.

And lastly: Go Rome. I’m a native who left at 17 and hasn’t lived there since, but it’s always nice to see it mentioned.

By: christian

christian — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 07:40:33 +0000

But if you don’t “vote” against the closed systems, the open might get fewer and fewer, or you think there are enough open?

By: John

John — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 04:23:18 +0000

That’s clearly not what I said or implied — what I’m trying to communicate is that there’s a growing attitude that “regular users” can’t or shouldn’t or won’t be bothered to understand how things work, and that we as technologists should keep them from being able to. That’s a condescending attitude, and I think it ultimately undermines the maker nature of our culture.

By: cak

cak — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 04:16:30 +0000

I know, why can’t things stay exactly the same as they did when I was kid? Or perhaps you would have preferred to live in your dad’s childhood times? No, I probably not.

It seems to me you are forgetting all the great advantages this new technology has bought us, and focusing on some

By: Ryan

Ryan — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 03:51:40 +0000

Its all part of the move to digital and miniaturization. Its a part of progress. In the old days, you could fix an electrical device by finding the broken resistors or some other part, and simply solder on the new device. Now, you toss out the whole device when it breaks. People also used to make their clothes and shoes. They may have had the same complaint when sears started selling stuff through catalogs.

By: John

John — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:57:57 +0000

Hey Robert — fair point — but I’m not against closed things in general, not at all. What I’m frustrated with is the increasing sense that normal people shouldn’t be allowed or trusted to muck about with tech. I think we need both open and closed systems, to tell you the truth.

By: Robert Kaiser

Robert Kaiser — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:18:07 +0000

Actually, as bad as it may sound, one of the important things to encourage people to innovate and tinker is to put your money where your mouth is – e.g. buy an N900 instead of an iPhone. Even if the more open device may cost a bit more and may not have the latest said-to-be-cool thing like multitouch (on a screen that hardly even fits two fingers reasonably).

If you buy an iPhone or an iPad, talking about how unfortunate it is that it’s not open doesn’t help much, as your own money finances the closed model you don’t want to have. bummer.

That said, I fully agree with the rest of what you say.

By: judson

judson — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:40:51 +0000

I to am a AF brat with a dad that built is own plane. I can remember he’d just hand me stuff and say ‘take this apart for me’.
It was the ‘for me’ that made me feel important. As an IT manager at a local h.s I look forward to the iPad and it’s un-screwupable design set. We don’t have the staff or budget to just open up all the tech to the students. We can open up some of it and do but I need a simple network device that let’s staff and kids use the internet reliably with little or no learning curve. They don’t need a file system to dive into and that I need to straighten out. Have you read “Shop Class as Soul Craft”? This book pretty much sums up my pov.

By: Dethe Elza

Dethe Elza — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:00:24 +0000

I share the view (with many others) that HTML + Javascript are the new Basic, and the iPad will be a GREAT platform for those tools, no developer license or permission from Apple needed.

But the same world that has “closed” platforms like the iPad has Arduino, Android, Scratch, Processing, Lego Mindstorms, Python, and much etc. It’s a tinkering cornucopia!

The only limit to what we (and our kids) can create is imagination.

By: Alex Faaborg

Alex Faaborg — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 17:38:59 +0000

Pretty awesome that your television had View Source

By: ukdavo

ukdavo — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 14:18:38 +0000

They’ll be other products that will target the target audience that you’re in. I wouldn’t get too hung up on it. The iPad will probably be jailbroken (is that a word?) anyway.

By: l.m.orchard

l.m.orchard — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:43:57 +0000

The earliest things I can remember always seem to involve my dad [1], electrical tape, wires, and Phillips-head screwdrivers. And then, there’s this I wrote a few years ago about my start in computing [2].

In other words, in response to all the above: Me too. I know Apple’s marketing department would disagree, but I think that sense of technology as something rational and comprehensible—rather than magic—is an essential thing.

Whether you and I are “normal people” or not, this concept of Open is worth pushing and defending.

[1]: http://decafbad.com/blog/2007/09/25/dad#When:1:46:28PM
[2]: http://decafbad.com/blog/2003/06/13/newly-digital

By: John

John — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:35:15 +0000

yes, exactly — I think in a lot of ways, View Source is the modern day equivalent of Heathkit. It’s the UI affordance that invites experiments, questions, making. We need more of them.