Children & Computers: Iconic Work through Symbolic Play

Norm Friesen,
Thompson Rivers University

Children and computers have long been seen as sharing a special relationship. As soon as children were brought into contact with computers though technologies such as the personal computer, computer games, and programming languages like LOGO, commentators have been foretelling the emergence of new generations of accelerated learners, with abilities clearly exceeding those that have gone before. Many speak of this in terms of a new literacy or generational ability --one that is unique or even revolutionary when compared to established literacies of print or television. Some would argue that this special relationship does not arise by accident: With the concrete-kinesthetic orientation of windows and mouse, personal computers have been deliberately designed to be accessible through the kind of playful exploration in which children excel. As a result of this and other factors, computers have the effect of blurring the boundaries between adulthood and childhood. They make children into premature adult experts, placing them in apparent control of a world in which adults can find themselves reduced to the status of helpless children.

But what are we to make of this? Do computers indeed speak the "cognitive language" of preoperational children, giving them a much more direct relationship with this technology? What is the significance of the relationship between computers and children for education? Looking these questions in the context of cognitive theories underlying graphical computer interfaces, this paper will examine a number of informal descriptions of children's computer use, and consider some of the pedagogical aspects of the relationship between children and computers.

Across the world there is a passionate love affair between children and computers. I have worked with children and computers in Africa and Asia and America, in cities, in suburbs, on farms and in jungles... Everywhere, with few exceptions, I have seen the same gleam in their eyes, the same desire to appropriate this thing. And more than wanting it, they seem to know that in a deep way it already belongs to them. They know that they can master it more easily than their parents. They know they are the computer generation. (1996)

Papert sees this "passionate love affair between children and computers" as being exemplified not through violent video games, Web surfing or online chatting. Instead, he points to LOGO, a "simplified" or "friendly" computer language or "learning environment." It is used most often to formulate mathematical statements and "geometric commands. . . to draw objects on the [computer] screen" (Jonassen & Reeves, 1996, p. 699). In Papert's own words, LOGO is a language "designed to provide very early and easy entry routes into programming for beginners with no prior mathematical knowledge" (Papert, 1980, p. 217). Papert claims that with "gentle approaches" to programming like LOGO, "children [can] take to programming like ducks to water" (1996, p. 12).

Educational specialists and consultants such as Marc Prensky and James Gee see a similarly "natural" and "passionate" relationship arising between kids and computer games in particular. They give special emphasis to the specifically educational potential of these games. Prensky, for example, speaks of a current "games generation", claiming that it is capable of learning a significant number of valuable lessons even from violent and potentially anti-social games:

Whenever one plays a game, and whatever game one plays, learning happens constantly, whether the players want it to, and are aware of it, or not. And the players are learning "about life," which is one of the great positive consequences of all game playing. This learning takes place, continuously, and simultaneously in every game, every time one plays. One need not even pay much attention (2002).

Such "learning-through-play," Prensky further asserts, includes lessons in "how to take in many sources of information at once," and the enhancement of the player's ability to make "value-based and moral decisions," and to "handle cultural relativity, and to deal with different people and roles." On a slightly different note, James Paul Gee emphasizes very specifically the ability of these games to provide "visualizations" with almost unprecedented "pictorial dynamism and sophistication,"

These visualizations, best referred to as immersive worlds, can bring a student into and through any environment that can be imagined.   Instead of learning about a subject by listening to a lecture or by processing paper-based alphanumerics (i.e. reading), students can enter and explore a screen-based simulated world that is the next-best thing to reality. (2003, p. 14)

Turkle herself provides a broadly similar characterization of the relationship between a new generation of children and the computer. She provides this engaging account of a child playing a game very similar to the one described above --one called SimLife rather than SimCity. As a kind of paralell to the account of Alex and SimCity provided above, I cite Turkle's description here at some length:

"Your orgot is being eaten up," flashes the message on the screen. It is a rainy Sunday afternoon and I am with Tim, 13. We are playing SimLife, Tim's favorite computer game, which sets its users the task of creating a functioning ecosystem. "What's an orgot?" I ask Tim. He doesn't know. "I just ignore that," he says confidently. "You don't need to know that kind of stuff to play." I suppose I look unhappy, haunted by a lifetime habit of not proceeding to step two before I understand step one, because Tim tries to appease me by coming up with a working definition of orgot. "I think it is sort of like an organism. I never read that, but just from playing, I would say that's what it is."

Tim's approach to SimLife is highly functional. He says he learned his style of play from video games: "Even though SimLife's not a video game, you can play it like one." By this he means that in SimLife, like video games, one learns from the process of play (1997).

Children "learn" simply "from the process of play" with the computer. A child's approach to the computer is "highly functional" or even "intuitive," allowing him or her to undertake activities as complex as programming "like ducks take to water," in the words of Papert. Children seem to already know "in a deep way" that this technology "belongs to them." With the computer, in other words, learning becomes "child's play."

Kinaesthetic, Iconic, Symbolic

Papert explains the reasons for this simultaneously ludic and educational relationship between the child and the computer as follows:

Children seem to be innately gifted learners, acquiring long before they go to school a vast quantity of knowledge by a process I call "Piagetian learning," or "learning without being taught." For example, children learn to speak, learn the intuitive geometry needed to get around in space, and learn enough of logic and rhetorics to get around their parents --all this without being "taught." We must ask why some learning takes place so early and spontaneously while some is delayed many years or does not happen at all without deliberately imposed formal instruction (1980, p. 7).

© WGBH Television

The dominance of the visual in pre-operational children is exemplified in this video (8 Mb Quicktime) of  Piaget's famous "conservation experiment."

Why indeed? Why do some forms of learning occur spontaneously, easily, even playfully, while others are formally imposed? And what is the role that the computer can play in these different forms of learning? One of the keys to Papert's question lies in the work of his colleague and mentor, Jean Piaget. As is well known, Piaget's "genetic epistemology" understands childhood development as passing through four stages, the "sensorimotor" (ages 0 to 2), the "preoperational" (age 2 to age 6 or 7), the "concrete-operational" (age 7 to ages 11 or 12), and finally the "formal operational" stage (age 12-adulthood).

But Papert and others have come to understand these stages in terms slightly different than those used by Piaget. They define these phases more broadly; and more importantly, they see the child's passage through them as subject to acceleration though the benevolent influence of external factors. Papert himself explains that

in many cases where Piaget would explain the slower development of a particular concept by its greater complexity or formality, I see the critical factor as the relative poverty of the culture in those materials that would make the concept simple and concrete. In yet other cases the culture may provide materials but block their use (1980, pp. 7-8).

And it is the computer that is for Papert one of the most important artifacts or materials that can make a "concept simple and concrete." It is the computer whose use by children should not be blocked by the culture, and whose use can accelerate the development of the child.

This computer-assisted acceleration happens specifically in the child's transition from the concrete-operational to the formal-operational stages. "Papert...believes that computers can speed up the process of cognitive development, shifting the boundary between concrete and formal and allowing children to make the passage to adult thinking at a much earlier age than was previously considered possible" (Armstrong & Casement, 1997; 54). Papert explains in his own words:

Stated most simply, my conjecture is that the computer can concretize (and personalize) the formal. Seen in this light, it is not just another powerful educational tool. It is unique in providing us with the means for addressing what Piaget and many others see as the obstacle which is overcome from child to adult thinking. (Papert, 1980, 21)

The computer presents the formal and abstract as something visible and concrete. It takes mathematical formulations written in LOGO (or other computer languages), and represents them as geometrical figures; it takes other formulae and sets of rules, and allows for their manipulation and interaction in the form of a simulated cityscape or ecosystem complete with traffic and weather, or with orgots and other hypothetical entities. The computer, in other words, takes something that is confusing and opaque to the uninitiated, and often not easy to learn --complex alphanumeric codes of various kinds-- and presents them in an accessible form, open to manipulation and exploration by practically anyone.

Doing with Images makes Symbols

Significantly, this fundamental principle --the power of computers to make concrete and accessible what is otherwise abstract and symbolic-- has played a central role in the development of the Macintosh and Windows interfaces that are familiar to any computer user today.   Alan Kay, a computer pioneer to whom the term "personal computer" is frequently attributed, is also credited as an "architect" of the modern graphical computer interface (Wikipedia, 2005).   Kay "introduced the idea of iconic, graphical representations of computing functions --the folders, menus, and overlapping windows found on the desktop" of any personal computer today (Packer & Jordan, 2003; p. 122).   And Kay did all of this during the early 1970's at the Xerox PARC research center, at least a decade before the actual introduction of the popular Macintosh or Windows interfaces as consumer products.   Kay accomplished all of this at a time, moreover, when the reigning computer technology was still that of the main-frame, with instructions submitted via emphatically textual "command-line" interfaces or via cryptically encoded punch-cards.

Given such a situation, Kay reasoned that the only way that the computer could become a popular medium accessible to "millions of potential users" was if "the user interface [itself became] a learning environment" (source).   Such an interface would have to be a place where the uninitiated could teach themselves by exploring and doing, rather than by receiving formal instruction in abstract sets of codes and commands.   As Kay puts it, the computer needs to present users with a "learning-rich environment" (Kay, 1989; 126) "in which learning can have the character of play" (Kay, 2005).  

Kay recalls that his approach to "interface design was strongly influenced by the multiple mentality ideas of Jerome Bruner" (1993) which in turn were adapted from the thinking of Piaget (Kay, 1990).   However, unlike the four developmental cognitive stages of Piaget, Bruner posits three modes of intelligence or "mentalia:" the enactive, the iconic and the symbolic.   As Kay himself explains it, the "'middle' mentality, the iconic one, [is] the bridge between infancy and adolescence" (Kay, 1993).   It bridges the primary "enactive" or "doing" mentality with the mentality that is more advanced, abstract and "symbolic" in nature (Kay, 1993; Bruner, 1966).   Kay saw his computer interface as "integrating" these, using the visual or iconic mentality to lead the user from the first, concrete intelligence, to the third, symbolic mentality.   Simply put, the interface of windows and icons that Kay developed allows users to do things visually in order to gain mastery in the realm of the abstract and symbolic: "Out of all this came the main slogan I coined to express this goal: Doing with Images makes Symbols " (Kay, 1990; emphasis in original).   This slogan, as well as the corresponding interface components, mentalities and competencies, is illustrated by Kay in a simple table:

The central role of images or of the iconic in Kay's thinking leads to the conclusion that is actually through Bruner and Piaget by way of Kay that the term "icon" found its way into common computer parlance.   The prominence of this term in Kay's thinking and in computer interfaces to the present day is also certainly a palpable reminder of the visual orientation of computer interfaces, and also of how doing something with an image (e.g. clicking, dragging and dropping) simultaneously allows us to achieve things on the symbolic realm via visual-kinaesthetic means.   This is well illustrated by the "program item" or icon "properties" dialog box or window in the Windows 3 operating system or interface (see figure 2).  

Figure 2: Windows 3 Program Item Properties Dialogue.

This dialogue box shows that a clickable icon (in this case, for Netscape Navigator) corresponds to a very specific textual or symbolic "command line" that can also be entered through a text-based interface to activate the program.   In this case, "doing with the image" (clicking on the Netscape icon) activates or "makes" the symbols represented in the command line.

Kay's goal of creating a computer interface accessible to unspecialized users has been successful to a degree and in ways that would have been impossible to predict in the early 1970's.  There is perhaps no greater evidence of this than the ubiquity of the interfaces consisting of windows, icons and menus, and the degree to which their use is integrated into everyday life in many societies and economies:   "Today, we have windowed interfaces everywhere," as Kay himself says (1993).

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the notion of the generation of children that have grown up teaching themselves the use of the "icons and windows" interface has been conceptualized as the "computer generation." This generational definition, and the kind of accelerated development that is associated with it has even influenced common understandings of childhood, and what it means to be a child itself. In After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media, David Buckingham explains that computer and other media are understood as changing our conceptions of the child --often spelling the end or figurative "death" of old and often romantic ways of understanding childhood. In the age of the computer generation, Buckingham explains,

Children are seen...to possess a powerful form of 'media literacy,' a spontaneous natural wisdom that is somehow denied to adults... Far from destroying 'natural' human relationships and forms of learning, digital technology...liberate[s] children's innate spontaneity and imagination. (pp. 41, 44)

And it is precisely this innate spontaneity and imagination that provides children with ways of exploring and learning about the personal computer that seem much less readily available to adult users. Ironically, these seemingly innate characteristics of children have the effect of robbing them of some other aspects of their childhood: They become premature adult experts, and are placed in apparent control of a world in which adults can find themselves reduced to the status of helpless children. In some extreme cases, these children can earn a healthy income from this expertise, becoming entrepreneurs in charge of their own businesses, for example. As Donald Tapscott writes in Growing up Digital: the Rise of the Net Generation: "For the first time ever, children are an authority on a central innovation facing society." The conclusion to which he is led is simply that "Kids" just "aren't kids" anymore (Tapscott, 1998, 1-2).

Megachange or Immobility?

At the same time, some thirty years or more have passed since Alan Kay first developed the windows and icons interface.   During this time, there have occurred exponential increases in computing power and remarkable changes in the ways computers are used:   The popular advent of the personal computer, the rise of the Internet as a commonplace technology, the invention and integration of the World Wide Web into everyday life, are perhaps the most obvious examples.  Moreover, there have been exponential increases in processing power and storage capacity --with both doubling every 18 to 23 months.   These and other extraordinary changes have radically reshaped the way computers are used from the days of the mainframe, and even from the days of the early personal computer.  

The same can be said for the windows and icon-based interfaces.   Despite the fact that radical or revolutionary change is commonly seen as intrinsic to the culture and technology of computers, the interfaces with which we interact with these rapidly evolving devices have been remarkably resistant to change.   They have been subject only to the smallest of incremental revisions, touch-ups or "tweaks."   A look at common folders and icons in the earliest (1984) and latest (2004) versions of the Macintosh interface, for example, shows that the most conspicuous change has been in the resolution and color depth with which interface elements are rendered.

Figures 2 & 3: Windows and icons in MacIntosh, circa 1984 and 2005.

The more recent output of pioneering figures like Kay and Papert is also instructive in this regard. Kay's recent keynote addresses and interviews register a clear sense of unrealized potential for change. Their titles refer, for example, to a "revolution" that has still not "yet happened," that is "unfinished," or for which we are presumably still "waiting."   As Kay himself states "...I thought we would be way beyond where we are now. I was dissatisfied with what we did [in the 1970's]. The irony is that today it looks pretty good" (Steinberg, 2003).

Papert's output seems to mark a similar trajectory. He began in the early 1980's by boldly predicting that "there won't be schools in the future. ...I think the computer will blow up the school" (as quoted in Cuban, 1984; see also 1980, p. 9). In 1993, he writes more vaguely of "megachange" that is awaiting school teachers and administrators, but that is facing considerable and effective resistance.  By 1996, Papert writes, perhaps more philosophically of technological change and the school as a case of an "irresistible force" meeting "the immovable object" (Papert, 1996). Thinking perhaps of his own bold predictions, Papert also writes in this text that

Despite frequent predictions that a technological revolution in education is imminent, School [sic] remains in essential respects very much what is has always been, and what changes have occurred (for better or for worse) cannot be attributed to technology. (p. 153)

But the power of this force for changing learning is itself in question, for the widespread use of Papert's own LOGO technology in schools has not at all had the results Papert himself predicted: "...despite the almost religious fervor with which it has been embraced in some circles" the results of Papert's approach "have been much less spectacular than promised" (Jonassen & Reeves, 1996; 702).

All of this stalled development, disappointment and disenchantment invites us to return to or revisit some of the basic presuppositions and ideas underlying the work of the likes of Papert and Kay. This leads, in other words to the fundamental question: Does "doing with images" actually "make symbols?"  Can the "concretizing" power of the computer actually accelerate or ease the transition from iconic to symbolic?  Can kids learn more naturally or effortlessly through play with computers and computer games?

Images and Symbols

Thinking about Alex's interaction with SimCity described at the outset of this paper might help to lead to answers to some of these questions. Alex is described as playing with a simulated city of Tokyo, exploring the effects of various virtual disasters. His final response --"Did you know that you can put out the fires with the rain from the hurricanes?"-- points to a kind of relation between child and computer that initially might confirm the way it is characterized by Papert and others: an engagement with the computer which is exploratory, creative and in some ways "highly functional:" By clicking and dragging, pulling down menus and selecting options, Alex is engaged in an active, kinaesthetic manner, manipulating the display and images of the game's interface.  In this manner, he can be said to be exploring the rules and logic embedded in the symbolic code underlying the simulation.

However, it is also clear that Alex's engagement is not the kind which is in keeping with the ostensible purpose or goals of SimCity. This purpose or goal is outlined in the material accompanying the program --and reinforced by myself from an adult perspective-- is as follows: "SimCity makes you Mayor and City Planner, and dares you to design and build the city of your dreams..." (as cited in Friedman, 1999). But instead of working towards such an outcome, Alex's use of the game can be said to work against or undermine it.  He is not using SimCity in the way intended, in a way that would allow for learning and exploration about the dynamic growth of urban environments. 

© FOX Broadcasting

See another example (3 Mb Quicktime) of "play" --à la Bart Simpson-- that ends up as an exploration of the limits and artifice of the computer technology.

Something similar is suggested in other incidents described in the literature, and in examples that pop up in popular accounts and anecdotes. Turkle (1984), for example, describes children's discovery of a programming bug in "Speak 'n Spell," a dictation toy with a keyboard  from the late '70's. This bug would appear when the toy was in "Say it" mode, causing it to dictate 10 words in succession, not allowing for any interruption:

When Paul, seven, discovers the "Say it" bug, he is startled, but doesn't say anything. His first reaction is to put Speak and Spell down on the ground. Then, kneeling above the toy but keeping some distance, he presses "Say it" again. This time, Paul presses all of its buttons in turn and then uses the palms of his hands, trying to press all of its buttons at the same time, trying to make it stop. The toy remains unobedient, but when its ten words have come to an end it stops unexpectedly. Paul puts the Speak and Spell in "Say it" mode again, but this time, just as it is demanding its fourth word, Paul turns it over, opens its back cover, and removes its batteries. Paul has found the way to "pull the plug." (pp. 36-37)

Both this and the incident with Alex show a different way of playing: one that does not work so much with the game, but that instead recognizes its artifice, and explores its limitations.  But Paul and Alex can hardly be faulted for not "playing" correctly. Theirs does not represent so much a lesser form of "play" or interaction with the game. It can be seen to be more in keeping with basic understandings of play than the task of building a delicately balanced urban environment. In his book-length study of the phenomenon of play, Homo Ludens, (1971) Johan Huizinga stresses "the absolute independence of the play concept," and provides the following summary:

Summing up the formal characteristics of play, we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside "ordinary" life as being "not serious," but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. (32)

If, for example, Alex's engagement with the computer via Sim City is unstructured, informal, and indeed playful, then, according to the very definition of play, it is also not bound by the ostensible goals and structures imposed by the Sim City creators and advertisers. In fact, to really be exploratory and "Piagetian" in the sense used by Papert, it would have to "play" with these borders and boundaries and didactic structures set up by its creators. Instead of following them, play goes against these rules, and involves the exploration of new combinations and possibilities.

As such, this physical-kineasthetic involvement with the images of the city and its control are qualitatively different than direct engagement the rules and formulae underlying the city's growth (or decline). These rules and formulae, of course, are a part of the symbolic realm, encoded as they are in the strict and unambiguous syntax of programming commands, parameter definitions, and other alphanumeric formulations. (Some computer games, perhaps most famously, Doom, Quake and more recently, "Second Life," are well known as allowing for modification on this level. They enable users access to the "symbolic" dimension of game play, and allow them to modify parameter values and programming code.) However, Alex's involvement in Sim City follows a logic and motivation that differs from the rule-bound and even goal-oriented orientation embedded in its underlying code, and made explicit in in the alphanumeric articulations of the game's manual, or in more adult understandings of its purpose. Play is play precisely insofar as it remains "disinterested" in such ulterior and controlling motives and concerns.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Play also has other characteristics that are important in considering the educational potential of computer games. Play is often described as involving a kind of meaning making, a creative process in which one thing represents another, and in which rules can be declared arbitrarily: "Last one in the water is a rotten egg!" This is described by the likes of Huizinga and Piaget as the "symbolic," or more broadly, the "meaningful" character of play: "All play means something" --it is simultaneously and paradoxically "'pointless but significant'" (Guardini, as cited in Huizinga, 19). Piaget speaks of the "representational element" in play, specifically describing the "schemas" into which "ludic symbols" can be organized. The phenomenologist Langeveld refers to the symbolic or meaningful aspect of play with the words "open sense-making," and explains this phrase using terms that closely parallel Huinzinga's:

This form of meaning creation is not "bound" to the physical world, and yet it is not structureless. … Through play we see how the things in this world need not have fixed meanings. That which in the "open sense-making" is a pencil now suddenly is a bridge, a road block, a soldier, or a house. (Langeveld, 1984, p. 216).

This structured "sense making" can readily be seen as occurring in earlier generations of computer games. For example, in what is perhaps the first popular videogame, "Pong," blocks on the screen are turned, like Langeveld's pencil, into players (or "paddles"), a ball, and a figurative "net" running down the middle. However, given the "pictorial dynamism and sophistication" (Foreman) of many current computer games, this sense-making function of play seems to change: Much less than using language to give instructions to create geometric figures (as in Papert's LOGO), even the use of language to designate and describe figures or elements in a game is discouraged. Instead of using language to either invoke, control or just to identify a player, ball or net, these entities are concretely and irrefutably manifest. Video tennis games, for example, have acquired an almost photographic level of visual realism, allowing players to select among a variety of playing surfaces and "internationally ranked" tennis players (virtual tennis). These and other newer computer games immerse the player in virtual realities which are visually and kinaesthetically so immediate that they can be characterized using Jaron Lanier's suggestive term, "post-symbolic:" they present to the player "objective sensory objects" that can be manipulated and customized directly, rather than by "using symbols to refer to the things that they can't directly create and do" (Lanier, 1993). This increased "pictorial dynamism and sophistication," of course, is seen by advocates of games in education as positive. Presumably referring to this increased realism, Gee says: "The games get better and more sophisticated all the time and at a rapid pace. Much of what I have to say here [in my book-length study of the subject] will simply get 'truer' as the games get even better."

The way that this relatively recent and perhaps radical development in computer games changes play itself finds dramatic illustration in a Harper's magazine article appearing in 2000 entitled "The Museum of Me." Written by software engineer and writer Ellen Ullman, it describes an interesting incident involving young video game players, and is quoted here at some length (or listen to the same segment here --source unknown):

Around Christmas in 1990, I was at a friend's house where her 9 year old son and his friend were playing a video game that was the state of the art at the time, Sonic the Hedgehog. They jumped around in front of the TV and gave off the sort of rude noises boys tend to make when they're shooting at things in a video game, and after about half an hour they stopped and tried to talk about what they'd just been doing. The dialogue went something like this:

"I wiped out at that part with the ladders."
"Ladders? What ladders?"
"You know, after the rooms."
"Oh, you mean the stairs?"
"No, I think they were ladders. I remember, because I died there twice."
"I never killed you around any ladders. I killed you where you jump down off this wall."
"Wall? You mean by the gates of the city?"
"Are there gates around the city? I always called it the castle."

The boys muddled along for several more minutes, making themselves more confused as they went. Finally they gave up trying to talk about their time with Sonic the Hedgehog. They just looked at each other and shrugged. (Harper's 30-31).

The increased "pictorial dynamism and sophistication" of Sonic the Hedgehog, then, did not lead these two boys from kinaesthetic and iconic engagement into symbolic accomplishment.  As Ullman herself concludes, the actual experience of the both of the boys "resisted description," leaving "each in [his] own electronic world." There is no need, in the context of the game itself, to designate the items encountered (such as stairs, ladders and walls), because they gain their significance from their manifest appearance and from the world of the game itself.   In sense, Lanier's term "post-symbolic" (1993) seems most a propos for characterizing such objects and such a world. It is beyond outside or superseding the world of language; it renders language pointless or superfluous. Instead of gaining its significance from linguistic designations that exist outside it, it gains its significance through reference to other "post-symbolic" representations or realities presented within the game.   As Ullman describes it, it is "a world full of little wordless pictograms, [of] trails [leading] of in all directions."   Such an experience, she continues, is by its very nature "intensely private, charged with immanent meaning for the person inside the experience, but often confusing or irrelevant to someone else."   Ultimately, the very sophistication and realism of the game seems to suppress the possibility of symbolization, rather than enabling and encouraging it.

It is precisely the nature of the iconic to signify through image, through visual resemblance and representation without recourse to language.  Language, on the other hand, refers to things via arbitrary symbols that bear no necessary resemblance to the things they describe.  For Kay and Papert, however, the effectiveness and power that computers can achieve through the iconic is supposed to lead into the symbolic. But experiences of immersion in and 'symbolic representation' of computer worlds seems to reveal something else. Acts of "doing with images" do not seem to be carried into the more abstract symbolic realm --allowing for accomplishments in the symbolic for the uninitiated and unread.  Instead, there may be a certain kind of tension, resistance or separation that exists between these two worlds or realms. 

If through disinterested play with the limits and borders of the iconic world of the computer, children are learning anything, then it is perhaps that they are learning about the computer or the software itself:  That it needs batteries to run or to behave consistently, that the software will simulate multiple disasters in such a way that they work against one another, that sonic tends to get killed by the ladders.  But in each case what is certain is that no learning is happening regarding the ostensible subject matter of the game at hand, as defined and reinforced through its explcit objectives and goals. It is clear that there is no certain connection to a code and its decoding, to significant achievements in the realm of the symbolic.

Far from leading these children to greater facility with the symbolic, kinesthetic engagement with the iconic, visual representations --"little wordless pictograms"-- of the computer interface, seems to have left the children with few means of describing them.  This world is one, then, which tends towards the solipsistic --or perhaps even autistic-- providing their users with a powerful experience that can be charged with meaning, but that is difficult to communicate and share verbally.

Conclusion

Instead of a smooth progression from "doing things with images" to "making symbols," such games trap their players in a world of wordless pictograms. It is a realm that instantiates a tautological circularity in which "doing with images" leads simply to more "doing with images." Alan Kay himself says of the interface of icons and windows that it only provides "the user [with] the illusion of freedom" (1993, emphasis added). In reality, as Kay explains, "the windows and other devices of the overlapping window interface" actually "serve to restrict context" and to limit the user's choices (1993).   As is the case with the original meaning of the word "icon" --religious representations of the pre-modern era-- computer icons have as their purpose not enlightenment and empowerment, but the denial of individual access to the realm of symbols and knowledge. Both are figuratively rendered, as Stefan Heidenriech argues hyperbolically, "idiots:"

The so-called user can quite drastically, but with historical accuracy, be described as a modern type of idiot.   The parallel is thoroughly clear, because users, like idiots, cannot either write or read the underlying codes declared either by a software program or a God.   As was customary before, such idiots are still subjected to the deceit of the icon. (Heidenreich, 1997)

And, in a world where reading and literacy are still undeniably associated with earning power and quality of life, the continuing importance of textual literacy --unlike "new" media literacies (e.g. Gee, 2003)-- is difficult to overestimate.   This fact, combined with tenuous relation of the themes of many computer games to the concerns and projects of the everyday world, casts further doubt on their educational potential.   As the cartoon provided at the outset of this paper illustrates with such economy, the so-called "new" literacies associated with computer games leave the play with little that is of real value after the game is switched off.

References

Bruner, J.S. (1966). Toward a Theory of Instruction . Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University

Cassell, J. & Jenkins, H. (2000). From Barbie® to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Cuban, L. (1986). Teachers and machines: the classroom use of technology since 1920 . New York: Teachers College Press.

Dede, C. Gee, J.P. & Prensky, M. (2003). Issue: What Can Education Learn from the Video Game Industry? IAETE Soapbox. http://www.iaete.org/soapbox/summary.cfm

Dourish, P. (2001). Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Friedman, T. (1999). The Semiotics of Sim City. First Monday.4(4). Online at: http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_4/friedman/

Foreman, J. (2003). Next-Generation: Educational Technology versus the Lecture. Educause Review . 38 (4). http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0340.pdf .

Gee, J.P. (2003). What Video Games have to Teach us about Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave McMillan.

Gros, B. (2003). The Impact of Digital Games in Education. First Monday .   http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue8_7/xyzgros/

Huizinga, J. (1971). Homo Ludens. Boston: Beacon Press

Heidenreich, S. (1997). Icons: Bilder für User und Idioten. in Icons. Klanten, R. (Ed.) Berlin: Verlag Die Gestalten. Online: http:// www .khm.de/~sh/texte/icons.html

Jonassen, D. H., & Reeves, T.C. (1996). Learning with technology: using computers as cognitive tools. In D. H. Jonassen (Ed.), Handbook of research for educational communications and technology. New York: Macmillan.

Kay, A. (2003). The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet; Grand Challenge: Make It Happen In The Best Possible Way In iCRA Conference on "Grand Research Challenges" n Computer Science and Engineering. http://www.cra.org/Activities/grand.challenges/kay.pdf Video of talk with the same title, given the same year, is available at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2950949730059754521 

Kay, A. (2002). "The Dynabook Revisited: an Interview with Alan Kay." The Book and the Computer. 2002. Online at: http://www.honco.net/os/kay.html

Kay, A. (1999). Dr. Alan Kay, December 10, 1999. Community Live Events . http://disney.go.com/disneylearning/teachercenter/community/kayarchive.html .

Kay, A. (1993). "Foreword" in Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration. Allan Cypher (ed.) Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kay, A. (1993). "User Interface: a Personal View." Multimedia from Wagner to virtual reality. Packer, R. & Jordan, K. (Eds.). New York & London: WW Norton & Company.

Langeveld, M. (1984). How does the child experience the world of things? Phenomenology + Pedagogy, 2(3), 215-223.

Lanier, J. (1993). Reality Check with Jaron Lanier. Mavericks of the Mind . http://www.mavericksofthemind.com/jar-int.htm

Larson, G. (1991). A Far Side Collection - Unnatural Selections. Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel.

Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas . New York: Basic Books.

Papert, S. (1996). The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap. Atlanta: Longstreet Press.

Papert, S. (1998). Does Easy Do It? Children, Games, and Learning. Game Developerp. June. p.88. http://www.papert.org/articles/Doeseasydoit.html

Prensky, M. (2002). Digital Game-Based Learning . New York: McGraw-Hill.

Steinberg, D.H. (2003). Daddy, Are We There Yet? A Discussion with Alan Kay. Open P2P. http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2003/04/03/alan_kay.html

Turkle, S. (1984) The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit New York: Simon & Schuster.

Ullman, E. (2000). "The Museum of Me ." Harper's Magazine. 300, 30–33.

Weizenbaum, J. (1976). Computer power and human reason: from judgement to calculation . San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.