We should think about what we mean by literacy. If you say, "He's a very literate person," what you really mean is that he knows a lot, thinks a lot, has a certain frame of mind that comes through reading and knowing about various subjects.The major route open to literacy has been through reading and writing text. But we're seeing new media offer richer ways to explore knowledge and communicate, through sound and pictures.

A programming language is like a natural, human language in that it favors certain methaphors, images, and ways of thinking.

What the gears cannot do the computer might. The computer is the Proteus of machines. Its essence is its universality, its power to simulate

Similarly, computer literacy courses tend to produce computer people who know a lot about computers or a piece of software but they don't help people become fluent with the machine.

It's not what you know about the computer that's important, but your ability to do things with it. By studying French in an academic setting, you get to know a lot about it, but typically, you can't express yourself well or have an interesting conversation with it.

I was really looking at computers as a way to understand the mind. But at M.I.T., my mind was blown by having a whole computer to yourself as long as you liked.I felt a surge of intellectual power through access to this computer, and I started thinking about what this could mean for kids and the way they learn. That's when we developed the computer programming language for kids, Logo.

Parents can learn that parental authority doesn't depend on knowing everything. The more you pretend, the more risk that it'll be traumatic and damaging to the kids and their relationship with you when they find out the truth.