You aren't computer literate unless you can understand a computer language

I was watching a lecture by Alan Kay entitled "Doing with Images Makes Symbols: Communicating Wit h Computers". At one point Kay is talking about teaching children to program and the importance of computer literacy. For Kay, literacy isn't understanding computer jargon or being able to check your email. He defines three aspects of literacy: Access Literacy is reading. You must be able to understand the intent of others. Creative Literacy is writing. You should be able to express your intent. Literature gives us genres and different ways of understanding what you are reading or writing. Kay's ideal is that people should be able to make the computer do anything they can think of. If it doesn't already do something, you should simply be able to tell it how to do that new thing. Such a high level relationship requires communicating with your computer at a high level. The three basic mouse gestures (point, left-click, right-click) aren't practical for conveying such complex ideas*. That is where programming languages come in (Smalltalk was his answer to this). Although I think all languages fall short of this ideal, you have to hand it to him, it is a ambitious goal, and in trying to achieve it he has done some amazing things.

More to come on various languages that attempt to bring computer literacy to the masses. In the meantime check out the video. I'm talking about a small little part of what Alan talks about. His work on creating GUIs is fascinating.

Here is the video 1hr 36 mins:


*(Although gestures can be a medium for a powerful language, even for computers, the Wii proves that)