Pink Monkey Farm: The Blog

Software, Affordance, and our Collective Nature

Here is an interesting project .

Computers are introduced into the wild (a rather romantic notion). Slum kids (who?) in India are exposed to computers without the benefit of any further guidance. No adults. No instructions. In an experiment repeated several times now, they go through several predictable stages. Listen to the story for the details. Its a great project, and one I’d heard of long ago. Now, software is pure affordance. In software, whatever the hell we are can express itself most clearly. Honed by a thousand individual P/A systems, we can chart ourselves in the software. We learn that we need bookmarks. Marshall McLuhan would have loved this shit.