2016年8月1日 星期一

Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

Seymour Papert (1928-2016)

關於太陽花的一些回憶。

近10日的學運,才讓我知道向日葵又叫太陽花。想想很有道理,英文叫sunflower。

我們台中人都知道有個太陽堂,太陽餅很有名。少數的人知道它設立時請了名家在璧上弄"向日葵"濕壁畫?,因為被國民黨政府壓迫有通共匪之嫌,將壁畫土塵數十年,解嚴之後才真面目https://www.google.com.tw**

走過106年風華的台中老字號「太陽堂」餅店,驚傳今(13)天開始將「停止營業」,太陽堂是太陽餅的發源店,店內有一幅已故畫家顏水龍創作的向日葵馬賽克壁畫,然而這幅壁畫曾在戒嚴時期被封住25年。

太陽堂餅店沒有華麗的裝潢,但靠著店內這幅向日葵馬賽克壁畫,讓太陽堂成功打響名號。該店第一代創辦人林紹崧與林何秀眉夫婦,當時委託好友顏水龍設計店面和外盒包裝,因此留下了這幅向日葵馬賽克壁畫。

但在戒嚴期間,這幅向日葵壁畫被懷疑有「為匪宣傳」的嫌疑,因外傳中國將向日葵選為國花,太陽堂因此招來警備總部等情治單位的關切。老闆林紹崧為避免警察經常登門騷擾,只好用木板將壁畫封住,一封就是25年,直到解嚴,這幅壁畫才得以重見天日。


半夜,沒有背景音樂。我在想佔領國會內外場的那群年輕人,不知道怎樣表達我的敬意和謝意。
我就說一則太陽花的故事,供大家參考。....
今天郝明義先生似乎也到內場去為你們加油。
我的故事由他的出版社1997年出版的一本書說起:

WWW.新家庭 : 開創網路時代的親子學習文化
The connected family : bridging the digital generation gap
作者: 西摩.帕博/著
原文作者:Seymour Papert
譯者:李鐏龍,賴慈芸,周文萍
出版社:大塊文化
出版日期:1997
作者是一位任教於MIT的老師。他其實是個數學天才。60-80年代關於認知發展心裡學的著作Mindstorm等很有名。
1997年,台灣的網路業也開始發達,我公司因有一位臺大四年級同學的幫忙,很快就有自己的網站。

我開始介紹MIT的媒體實驗室以及Seymour Papert 所創的第一個網路兒童雜誌The connected family.....

我印象最深刻的是,Papert 的網路連結識是在一大朵太陽花上頭(一般像Facebook等是採用線性的,上下排列的;他的那朵太陽花也是用數學演算出來的。 (由於作者在世紀之交,在越南河內發生很嚴重的車禍,可能只保住一命而已......

我要說的是,希望我們下回看太陽花時,不只想到藝術中的,也可以想到數學中的,以及你們這一場轟轟烈烈的革命。

驚!台中太陽堂餅店明起歇業 【2012/5/12 21:00】


台中市自由路二段23號太陽堂餅店,將於明起歇業,店內知名、由大師顏水龍製作的向日葵馬賽克壁畫,也將走入歷史。(擷取自維基百科)

台中市自由路二段曾經是台中市太陽餅業者林立的地段。(本報資料照,記者林良哲攝)

百年老店歇業,讓許多民眾相當錯愕。(擷取自OTOP台灣地方特色網)


*****
http://news.mit.edu/2016/seymour-papert-pioneer-of-constructionist-learning-dies-0801


  • The LEGO company named its Mindstorms robotics kits in recognition of Seymour Papert’s seminal book,
    The LEGO company named its Mindstorms robotics kits in recognition of Seymour Papert’s seminal book, "Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas."
    Photo: SPA Magazine
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  • Seymour Papert engages with a student at the Hennigan School in Boston, where Papert was involved in an early 1990s Media Lab project introducing computers into daily classes.
    Seymour Papert engages with a student at the Hennigan School in Boston, where Papert was involved in an early 1990s Media Lab project introducing computers into daily classes.
    Photo: L. Barry Hetherington
    FULL SCREEN
  • Seymour Papert at the Learning and Common Sense Society of Minds Symposium in 1988.
    Seymour Papert at the Learning and Common Sense Society of Minds Symposium in 1988.
    Photo: L. Barry Hetherington
    FULL SCREEN
  • Seymour Papert was a founding faculty member of the MIT Media Lab.
    Seymour Papert was a founding faculty member of the MIT Media Lab.
    Photo: Lou Jones
    FULL SCREEN
  • Seymour Papert invented this small mobile robot, called the
    Seymour Papert invented this small mobile robot, called the "Logo Turtle," for children’s play and problem-solving.
    Photo: Cynthia Solomon
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  • Marvin Minsky (left) and Seymour Papert in 1971
    Marvin Minsky (left) and Seymour Papert in 1971
    Photo: Cynthia Solomon
    FULL SCREEN

Professor Emeritus Seymour Papert, pioneer of constructionist learning, dies at 88
World-renowned mathematician, learning theorist, and educational-technology visionary was a founding faculty member of the MIT Media Lab.Watch Video


Seymour Papert, whose ideas and inventions transformed how millions of children around the world create and learn, died Sunday at his home in East Blue Hill, Maine. He was 88. 
Papert’s career traversed a trio of influential movements: child development, artificial intelligence, and educational technologies. Based on his insights into children’s thinking and learning, Papert recognized that computers could be used not just to deliver information and instruction, but also to empower children to experiment, explore, and express themselves. The central tenet of his Constructionist theory of learning is that people build knowledge most effectively when they are actively engaged in constructing things in the world. As early as 1968, Papert introduced the idea that computer programming and debugging can provide children a way to think about their own thinking and learn about their own learning.
“With a mind of extraordinary range and creativity, Seymour Papert helped revolutionize at least three fields, from the study of how children make sense of the world, to the development of artificial intelligence, to the rich intersection of technology and learning,” says MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “The stamp he left on MIT is profound. Today, as MIT continues to expand its reach and deepen its work in digital learning, I am particularly grateful for Seymour’s groundbreaking vision, and we hope to build on his ideas to open doors to learners of all ages, around the world.”
Papert’s life straddled several continents. He was born in 1928 in Pretoria, South Africa, and went on to study at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, where he earned a BA in philosophy in 1949, followed by a PhD in mathematics three years later. He was a leading anti-apartheid activist throughout his university years.
Papert’s studies then took him overseas – first to Cambridge University in England from 1954-1958, where he focused on math research, earning his second PhD, then to the University of Geneva, where he worked with Swiss philosopher and psychologist Jean Piaget, whose theories about the ways children make sense of the world changed Papert’s view of children and learning.
From Switzerland, Papert came to the U.S., joining MIT as a research associate in 1963. Four years later, he became a professor of applied mathematics, and shortly after was appointed co-director of the Artificial Intelligence Lab (which later evolved into the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or CSAIL) by its founding director Professor Marvin Minsky. Together, they wrote the 1969 book, “Perceptrons,” which marked a turning point in the field of artificial intelligence.
In 1985, Papert and Minsky joined former MIT President Jerome Wiesner and MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte to become founding faculty members of the MIT Media Lab, where Papert led the Epistemology and Learning research group.
“Seymour often talked poetically, sometimes in riddles, like his famed phrase, ‘you cannot think about thinking without thinking about thinking about something,’” says Negroponte, the Media Lab’s co-founder and first director. “He did not follow rules or run by anybody else’s clock. I would say, in Papertian style, Seymour never needed to do what he said because when he said what he did, it was better.” 
Seymour Papert, in a 1986 video, discusses computers in schools of the future.
Video: MIT Media Lab
Papert was among the first to recognize the revolutionary potential of computers in education. In the late 1960s, at a time when computers still cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, Papert came up with the idea for Logo, the first programming language for children. Children used Logo to program the movements of a “turtle” — either in the form of a small mechanical robot or a graphic object on the computer screen. In his seminal book “Mindstorms: Children, Computers and Powerful Ideas” (1980), Papert argued against “the computer being used to program the child.” He presented an alternative approach in which “the child programs the computer and, in doing so, both acquires a sense of mastery over a piece of the most modern and powerful technology and establishes an intimate contact with some of the deepest ideas from science, from mathematics, and from the art of intellectual model building.”
In collaboration with Sherry Turkle, the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT, Papert explored how childhood objects have a deep influence on how and what children learn. In “Mindstorms,” Papert explained how he “fell in love with gears” as a child, and how he hoped to “turn computers into instruments flexible enough so that many children can each create for themselves something like what the gears were for me.”
Papert was the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Education at MIT from 1974-1981. In 1985, he began a long and productive collaboration with the LEGO company, one of the first and largest corporate sponsors of the Media Lab. Papert’s ideas served as an inspiration for the LEGO Mindstorms robotics kit, which was named after his 1980 book. In 1989, the LEGO company endowed a chair at the Media Lab, and Papert became the first LEGO Professor of Learning Research. In 1998, after Papert became professor emeritus, the name of the professorship was modified, in his honor, to the LEGO Papert Professorship of Learning Research. The professorship was passed on to Papert’s former student and long-time collaborator, Mitchel Resnick, who continues to hold the chair today.
“For so many of us, Seymour fundamentally changed the way we think about learning, the way we think about children, and the way we think about technology,” says Resnick, who heads the Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten research group.
In the late 1990s, Papert moved to Maine and continued his work with young people there, establishing the Learning Barn and the Seymour Papert Institute in 1999. He also set up aLearning Lab at the Maine Youth Center, where he worked to engage and inspire troubled youths who had received little support at home or school, and were grappling with drugs, alcohol, anger, or psychological problems. He was also integral to a Maine initiative requiring laptops for all 7th and 8th graders. Following the Maine initiative, Papert joined Negroponte and Alan Kay in 2004 to create the non-profit One Laptop per Child (OLPC), which produced and distributed low-cost, low-power, rugged laptops to the world’s poorest children. The organization produced more than 3 million laptops, reaching children in more than 40 countries. “Each of the laptops has Seymour inside,” says Negroponte.
Papert’s work inspired generations of educators and researchers around the world. He received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship in 1980, a Marconi International fellowship in 1981, and the Smithsonian Award from Computerworld in 1997. In 2001, Newsweek named him “one of the nation’s 10 top innovators in education.”
“Papert made everyone around him smarter — from children to colleagues — by encouraging people to focus on the big picture and zero in on the powerful ideas,” says CSAIL’s Patrick Winston, who took over as director of the AI Lab in 1972.
In addition to “Mindstorms,” Papert was the author of “The Children’s Machine” (1993) and “The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap” (1996). As an emeritus professor, Papert continued to write many articles and advise governments around the world on technology-based education. In 2006, while in Vietnam for a conference on mathematics education, he suffered a serious brain injury when struck by a motor scooter in Hanoi.
Papert is survived by his wife of 24 years, Suzanne Massie, a Russia scholar with whom he collaborated on the Learning Barn and many international projects; his daughter, Artemis Papert; three stepchildren, Robert Massie IV, Susanna Massie Thomas, and Elizabeth Massie; and two siblings, Alan Papert and Joan Papert. He was previously married to Dona Strauss, Androula Christofides Henriques, and Sherry Turkle.
The Media Lab will host a celebration of the life and work of Seymour Papert in the coming months.

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