Pablo Picasso - "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
(click to see the ZKM video)
Picasso died in 1973.
It is unfortunate that he didn't see what became of computing after his death. Personal computing, graphic interfaces, the internet turned computing into something else than just answer-oriented number crunching. At that time, however, even his genius couldn't help him imagine computing's current possibilities or its pervasiveness, either.
More than number crunchers or gateways to information, computers are an excellent way to explore ideas, to get to know better what the problem that nags you really is.
One way of doing that is by simulation, i.e., using computers to simulate what you don't understand. The other way is just by diving into programming to get deeper into your problem. In the process you start questioning yourself more and more.
My friend Jordi Delgado keeps on saying at every single change he has that programming is another way of inquiring. Basically you can start programming with a fuzzy idea of what your problem, you set out from an ill-defined problem, and in the process you get a better understanding of it, not just a closed answer. Talking with Jordi I found nice connections of this way of learning and inquiring with the ways of craftsmen, who explore knowledge while building objects. This is an aspect of computing that Alan Kay has championed for at least 30 years. It is extensively described in Howard Rheingold's book "Tools for Thought". There he explored the goals and motivations of some not-so-well-known geniuses that anticipated in the 60s and 70s what Picasso couldn't see: Licklider, Engelbart and, again, Alan Kay.
Instead of giving answers, then, computers may help spark new questions.
So, it is important that when talking about "ICT Literacy" or "Computing Literacy" we think about this other way of looking at computers. These initiatives should be seen and devised as an effort to let people appropriate themselves of another big strategy for thinking and exploring creatively the problems they are concerned with.
However many people think otherwise, being as ignorant about computers as Picasso was in his time. They still look at computers as a means of getting asnwers either as a closed calculation or as the result of a search on the Internet. They even take pride in appearing as ignorant about computers as Picasso, but without the excuse of not having seen what Picasso wasn't able to see (for the simple reason that he died before big things in computing and communications become more evident).
Curiously enough Picasso also knew and practiced every single day of his life this other exploratory aspect. As he said:
I don't seek, I find.
Maybe he found more questions than answers when he did that. And started again from these new questions. One more time, his own words:
“Others have seen what is and asked why. (a side effect of a given answer?)
I have seen what could be and asked why not.”
Wouldn't be great to use computers to let ourselves keep asking "Why not?".
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