Foreword to The Connected Family
from Nicholas Negroponte

Never before have we had so much to learn from kids, and we admit it. We all turned to children to program our VCRs, but that was a means to outsmart those nasty and heartless manufacturers who even made the buttons kid-sized. Twice a year, all homes in America have their digital time put forward or back, mostly by children, not because it is too hard for an adult, but because it is just not worth the effort to learn and remember how to change the oven clock. Plus we don't find it much fun.

Something very different is happening with computers and the Internet. Children are no longer just an adult's prosthetic tool to cope with electro-mechanical gadgetry. Instead, kids bring a new culture to the family landscape, a culture which has at its core the extremes of being simultaneously personal and global. Children understand computers because they can control them. They love them because they can make their own windows of interest. Remember sitting in class? If what the teacher said is too simple, you lost interest. And oh how tiny that window was.

Seymour shows the reader a different window one which opens as wide as you want. He argues that it cannot be left shut. In some sense, Seymour allows you to be an atheist, but not an agnostic. He is soft spoken and patient in real life, and between the lines as well. While he would never say it this way, he is telling children to beware of parents who try to colonialize the computer medium. He is telling parents to beware of some of their deepest feelings, even to pinch themselves now and again, when they fall back on drill and practice in the three R's. But wait, the three R's worked for me. Right?

Wrong. In today's world, most adults would do very badly as kids. There are many more complexities, ambiguities and differences. This is not because we have traffic jams, gutless politicians or racial tension, but because we have an information access which reaches across the planet. And now it is not only available to banks, airlines and media moguls, but to children as well. Kids can empower themselves and see new notions of work and play, society and self, teaching and learning -- concepts which no longer have those crisp lines separating one from the other.

I have known Seymour for over thirty years. More than anything, he taught me how to think. In 1965 he wrote the foreword to Warren McCulloch's Embodiments of Mind, which was the only part of the book I really understood. About that time we became friends. We cooked together, we traveled together and we even got ourselves in trouble once in a while. I wondered if I would ever be able to write a foreword for somebody as great. Now I got my chance. This is a man who makes remarks like, "You can't think about thinking unless you think about thinking about something." That keeps you thinking.

When I first read this book I heard Seymour's voice and recognized his expressions. Then I realized that my reaction was not so personal: Others will hear the same voice of intelligence, experience and passion. They will understand immediately that these are not thoughts of somebody who bought a PC ten years ago, but of somebody deeply involved in the issues raised here, from his childhood days in South Africa to his studies in England, from his work with mentor Jean Piaget to his partner Marvin Minsky to his recent decade at the M.I. T. Media Lab, where I have had the honor to work with him.

Seymour is the emancipated child.

Nicholas Negroponte, August 1996

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