HDLT (was Re: [olpc-software] age target?)

[Alan Kay]

There's nothing official about HDLT. I just use it to simplify typing. 
"$100 laptop" says a lot of what the gadget is, but it's awkward to type.

One Laptop Per Child says something about the project (the uninteresting 
part), but nothing much about the HW, and nothing at all as to the 
educational aims of the project. (So OLPC is not a good abbreviation for 
the "$100 laptop".)

A title of a paper I wrote in 1972 is "A personal computer for children of 
all ages", which described a future notebook computer for children (called 
the Dynabook), says part of it, but not enough about the big goal. Another 
paper I wrote in 1972 "A dynamic medium for creative thought" says quite a 
bit more about what we've been working on over the years.

And it might be more like the one sentence summary you are looking for.

More directly, the project I think I've been working on since the late 
sixties could be called "Helping children to grow up thinking better than 
most adults do today".

That to me is the essence of my interest. The computer aspect is only a 
part (but an important part) of this endeavor. An analogy would be to 
helping children become better musicians. They already have an instrument 
in their voice, but there are many good reasons to include musical 
instruments as a critical part of becoming a better musician.

Cheers,

Alan

At 12:22 PM 3/26/2006, Alan Horkan wrote:

>On Sun, 26 Mar 2006, Dean Johnson wrote:
>
> > Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2006 13:43:26 -0600
> > From: Dean Johnson <dtj at uberh4x0r.org>
> > To: Alan Horkan <horkana at maths.tcd.ie>
> > Cc: olpc-software at redhat.com
> > Subject: Re: HDLT (was Re: [olpc-software] age target?)
> >
> > Alan Horkan wrote:
> > > On Wed, 22 Mar 2006, Jim Gettys wrote:
> > >
> > >> Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 12:36:35 -0500
> > >> From: Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org>
> > >> To: Joshua N Pritikin <jpritikin at pobox.com>
> > >> Cc: olpc-software at redhat.com
> > >> Subject: Re: HDLT (was Re: [olpc-software] age target?)
> > >>
> > >> HDLT == Hundred Dollar Lap Top....
> > >
> > > Acronyms make the children cry.  Unnecessary jargon excludes people.
> > > Please could some marketing genius come up with a catchy one or two word
> > > phrase to describe this project, please!
>
> > I nominate "One Laptop Per Child". ;-)
>
>Unfortunately that phrase is too long and some people insist on shortenign
>it to an indecipherable acronym and not pronouncable enough to stand alone
>as a seperate word (like LASER, SCUBA, and RADAR all of which were
>originally acronyms or abbreviations).  Perhaps some people are not able
>to touch type, perhaps email software should be smarter and understand how
>to expand acronyms and shorthand into full words.  Who knows? The
>linguistic trickery employed by someone who really understands marketing
>is no less impressive than coding a complex algorithm. I hope Mr. Kay will
>reconsider his choice of trying to add another confusing acronym to mix.
>
>Sincerely
>
>Alan Horkan
>
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