[Edu-sig] Python & Smalltalk (was Re: OLPC related: pyGTK)

[Arthur]

Laura Creighton wrote:

>Have you read 'Fumbling the Future'?
>http://www.amazon.com/Fumbling-Future-Invented-Personal-Computer/dp/1583482660
>  
>
Another comment, I'm afraid.

No I have not read the book.  But I did go so the Amazon site where, 
among the reviews for the book, is one by someone who was at Xerox at 
the time - working on the "creative" side, and who does not hide his 
bitterness at the fumbling and lost opportunities.

It has, as a matter of fact, always seemed to me that Kay is someone 
fighting old battles. Probably, in some ways, this one. Very highs 
stakes.  Higher than anything I have been involved in, and certainly not 
talking about financial stakes in particular .And I suspect that he was 
probably very much on the right side of those battles.  It is also 
recounted that his academic career was impacted by a battle he chose to 
take-up regarding anti-Semitism on the campus he attended.

I like a good battle myself.

And my obsession with Kay is probably also some form of identification.

Which doesn't change a thing about the substance of what I think the 
current effect of his fighting his old battle has become.  The 
battleground itself has chnaged too drastically.

Art