Andy Matuschak

"Reading group" this Friday: examining Earth Primer as exemplar of simulations for understanding

Added 2025-06-23 03:54:16 +0000 UTC

Hi, all. Some other human-computer interaction researchers are trying to create a community for people thinking about dynamic abstractions. That is, interactive and computational representations. I think of that as things like CAD and digital audio workstations, Mathematica, etc.

One of the organizers asked me to host a session of their reading group. You're welcome to join if you'd like:

A key dream for computing pioneers like Alan Kay and Seymour Papert was that we'd replace inert textual or symbolic explanations with real-time interactive simulations. As a result, people would understand complex topics much more easily. How has this dream fared? We'll examine that broad question in general, and by way of one of the most elaborate exemplars, Earth Primer by Chaim Gingold (contributor to Will Wright's Spore, author of Building SimCity, and former member of Bret Victor's lab at HARC). We'll also discuss the debate in cognitive psychology about the role of these abstractions in understanding.

Reading: Earth Primer (focus on "Interior" and "Surface" chapters), Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work

Date & Time: 2025-06-27 (Fri) @ 12 pm EDT (9 am PDT)

Zoom Link: https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/85283871524

Bring your questions and observations! (But please do only join if you've done the reading.) I expect the discussion will be recorded.