Bret Victor - April 4, 2013, MIT Media Lab
Particular kind of media - Media for thinking in
Particular kind of thinking - understanding systems
You’ve got some systems out around the world such as planets going around the sun. You want to understand whats going on there. So you take some measurements, you look for patterns, you build theoretical models - that kind of thinking is called Science.
💡 System(solar system) ——- Science ————> Theory
💡 Theory ———- Engineering ———→ System(Space craft that take you to a planet)
In both cases, understanding the system is really at the heart of what you are doing.
Media matter - because media are thinking tools. The representations that we use of the system are how we think about it. Our representations are how we understand the system and what we understand about it. So if we want powerful new ways of understanding complex systems or if we want to build powerful new systems, we need powerful new representations. And we need powerful new medium in which we can create and work with those representations. So much of the way we work with the systems today is derived from pencil and paper medium.
Even when we work on the computer, we are still thinking in pencil and paper. So it’s an incredible opportunity to rethink how we think about systems.