muraPOI: November 11, 2011

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design: Brett Victor asks, “Why aim for anything less than a dynamic medium that we can see, feel, and manipulate?” As response to video that led to his post: Productivity Future Vision (2011).

(@david_codes, November 9, 2011)

Steve Jobs interview: One-on-one in 1995: Daniel Morrow’s interview from April 1995 with Steve Jobs. (Original interview.)

Role of computers in education:

“You need a person. Especially with computers the way they are now. Computers are very reactive but they’re not proactive; they are not agents, if you will. They are very reactive. What children need is something more proactive. They need a guide. They don’t need an assistant.”

On why California schools had so many Apple Computers (namely Apple IIc’s):

“In 1979, I thought if there was just one computer in every school, some of the kids would find it. It will change their life….

It turned out that there was a law already on the books, a national law that said that if you donated a piece of scientific instrumentation or computer to a university for educational and research purposes you can take an extra tax deduction. That basically means you don’t make any money, you lose some but you don’t lose too much. You lose about ten percent….

We thought that if we could apply that law, enhance it a little bit to extend it down to K through 8 and remove the research requirements so it was just educational, then we could give a hundred thousand computers away, one to each school in America and it would cost our company ten million dollars which was a lot of money to us at that time but it was less than a hundred million dollars if we didn’t have that. We decided that we were willing to do that….

We called it “the kids can’t wait bill.” Pete Stark introduced it in the House and Senator Danforth introduced it in the Senate and I refused to hire any lobbyists and I went back to Washington myself and I actually walked the halls of Congress for about two weeks, which was the most incredible thing. I met probably two-thirds of the House and over half of the Senate myself and sat down and talked with them….

What happened was it was in during Carter’s lame duck session and Bob Dole who was then Speaker of the House killed it. He would not bring it to the floor and we ran out of time. We would have had to have started the process over in the next year and I gave up.

However, fortunately something unique happened. California thought this was such a good idea they came to us and said “You don’t have to do a thing. We’re going to pass a bill that says ‘Since you operate in the State of California and pay California Tax, we’re going to pass this bill that says that if the federal bill doesn’t pass, then you get the tax break in California’. You can do it in California, which is ten thousand schools”. So we did. We gave away ten thousand computers in the State of California.”

Amazing. Really.

O’Reilly Radar, Four Short Links November 4, November 4, 2011)

California and Bust: “Michael Lewis digs into city and state finances, and the news ain’t good.” The article starts with a crazy interivew with Arnold Schwarzzenegger and a mad bike ride through Santa Monica. It delves into Arnold’s governorship, the problems with finance, the housing market and more importantly local governments.

(O’Reilly Radar Four Short Links November 7, November 7, 2011)

(RT @mitocw, November 5, 2011