This new version of the Fisher-Price Record Player is heartbreaking. I learned so much from trying to understand how it worked. Concepts like stored energy: experimenting with trying to over-wind, under-wide, a few turns, many turns, slowly adding pressure to the winding knob until it would start playing and try to maintain just enough pressure to play. Physically slowing and speeding up the turntable to change to the tempo. Trying to intentionally misaligning the head to play out of tune. Turning it on it's side, upside down, trying to peek at the teeth on the head and manually play individual notes. All at an age before I could read. That toy was indestructible, because if it weren't I would have torn it down to individual components (just like my very expensive 6 million dollar man action figure, to the great chagrin of my parents). It wouldn't be until much later I'd have to tools to dissemble one, and by then I was taking apart real record plays.
This toy is a good analog for a real record player and with grooves that move a needle and play sound encoded on the disk. Leading to understanding of sound waves.
This new toy is a mix of new and old tech. How can a per-literate child be expected to decipher binary encodings and how they map to individual songs? What deeper understanding of how things work are within the grasp of a child that cannot yet use a screwdriver, wire cutters, and a volt meter?
This new toy is boring. Once you learn how to turn it on, it can have no appeal to a child exposed to much better music players all around them: cell phones, iPads, computers, tvs. This is just a piece of plastic and e-waste destined for the landfill, purchased by some sentimental old timer who has fond memories of the original F-P record player.
Yup. I'm pissed by this. And I never even owned a toy like that.
The new toy is just fucking up with kids' development. It literally boils down to a 10-button panel for selecting which song to play. All the things that make it look like a turntable are nonfunctional lies. There's no direct relationship between what disk you have in it, and whether it's turning, because the music isn't even encoded on it in the first place. The disk is just representing two possible states, and the turning is for show.
How did they imagine a kid will process such a toy? How much disappointment will a child feel when they realize, after trying to physically play with the turning disks, that it's just a dummy?
They could've made this toy with a single disk with a motor under it, and 10 buttons to pick songs, and it would be better because it wouldn't lie. It would look like a record player, not pretend to be one. Or perhaps I'm just angry because the old model was an actual record player, so we have a clear example of them having a superior design available (and most likely cheaper to produce), and then choosing to make it worse for re-release.
Anyway, there's a software analogy in here, but I'm not in a mood to be able to write a coherent and short summary of it. Suffice it to say: the continuous dumbing down of software all across the board is sometimes called "Fisher-Pricing the UI". Never before have I felt this term is so apt as I feel now.
> How much disappointment will a child feel when they realize, after trying to physically play with the turning disks, that it's just a dummy?
Absolutely nothing, since they don’t know what to expect. My son has a similar music player from a different brand (more like a diskman) and just accepts that putting in the disk is enough, no need for spinning or anything.
Of course the machine screams “Open!” and “Lets play!” When you open or close the disk cover respectively, so it’s orders of magnitude more satisfying than the fisher price thing (you can try playing with cover open, or rapidly open/close it to see what happens).
> Absolutely nothing, since they don’t know what to expect.
Exactly. This is the problem though. Look back at the threads when Sir Clive Sinclair died. The number of people (like me) who have a career due to just having something you can experiment with. Now, it's all "press this allowed button and the allowed action will happen". A company like Fisher Price, with their deserved reputation for producing quality learning toys, should be embarrassed by this.
>so we have a clear example of them having a superior design available (and most likely cheaper to produce)
This is probably not the case. The blob chip is probably in the pennies. And while I didn't look at the pictures extremely deeply I bet they did part and assembly reduction using the following methodology.
I honestly don't see these explicitly-teach-your-kids-STEM products solving the problem. They're unaffordable for most parents, they're narrow in scope, and there's a good chance your kid won't even like them.
It reminds me a bit of Oliver's, a fast food chain in Australia. They set up shop at roadhouses along major highways, and market themselves as a healthy alternative to McDonalds or KFC. You look at the menu, though, and it consists of organic acai berries, quinoa, antioxidant-rich kale smoothies and the like. They've hyper-optimised their brand's goal/mission to the point where the product is unapproachable and unaffordable for most consumers.
All we want is chicken and rice, but our choice is between a double bacon cheeseburger or an overpriced organic bliss bowl.
The Spintronics video mentions the simulation of resistors, capacitors, batteries...but not logic gates. It doesn't seem to teach the magic of boolean logic at all, which is a bit disappointing. (but not as disappointing as the Fisher Price music player!)
The iPhone is a personal device but it's not a computer. It merely has a computer inside it. What sets it apart from a real computer is the fact it only does what manufacturer designed it to do. They're the ones programming the computer, not the users. So the iPhone is just a device that does cool things. Like one of those nice electronic watches with a ton of cool functions but you get to download new features from Apple's store.
It's not about being a personal computer. An iPhone may be personal, but it's hardly a computer.
I mean, technically it is, but then so is the microwave timer controller.
In terms of user interaction, an iPhone does its best to be an appliance, not a general-purpose computer. So do Android smartphones - lest one thing it's an Apple problem, it's not. It's a modern computing problem.
At least you get to run arbitrary software on them as a standard feature. And on many, the bootloader is unlockable, so you could root the thing and/or tinker with the OS.
The modern computing problem isn't this particular thing, it lies higher. It's presuming that the user is stupid and can't possibly be trusted with figuring stuff out and making their own informed decisions. Won't be surprised if people who design software like this consider every setting a liability.
> The modern computing problem isn't this particular thing, it lies higher. It's presuming that the user is stupid and can't possibly be trusted with figuring stuff out and making their own informed decisions.
I agree with that. It's pretty much an unquestioned axiom in the industry. You can see it mentioned in almost every article or book about writing software, doing UI design or UX work. The user is stupid. They're incapable of thinking for themselves, figuring things out, having their own goals. They have to be carefully guided so they follow the exact path the software prescribes for them, and incentivized along the way with "engagement patterns", lest they get bored mid way.
> Won't be surprised if people who design software like this consider every setting a liability.
Which is funny, because the first thing every single piece of software on this planet does, is disclaiming any and all liability for anything.
So the kind of liability they feel, I believe, is just that of getting bad press over some reviewers deciding something is too confusing, leading to reduced sales.
> It's presuming that the user is stupid and can't possibly be trusted with figuring stuff out and making their own informed decisions.
It's even more malicious than that. The corporations and governments are hostile towards users. They lock the computer down so we can't do anything that harms business and government interests. Can't copy or share files. Can't use strong cryptography the government can't crack.
These people believe computers are too subversive to allow the masses unrestricted access to them. They would rather we have nothing but restricted appliances that obey them instead of us. The computer doesn't serve us, it serves them as a tool to control us.
An Android phone is primarily a device for media consumption and the collection of your personal data, but it can be tricked into being more than that. Without rooting it you can install a terminal and use it to learn some perl or python. There's no reason why you couldn't do that with an iphone except Apple not wanting you to. The capabilities are there, but it's not what those devices are for any more than a toaster is a gaming PC just because you can hack it enough to get Doom to run. If someone is going to develop creativity and tech skills using a smartphone it'll be despite their device not because of it.
Though unlocking the bootloader isn't what I would call hacking. It's a feature deliberately built into many devices. Jailbreaking iOS, on the other hand, is hacking, because it inevitably involves exploiting a vulnerability to take over the system.
As well, the beautiful vulnerability and realness, the imperfections, the notes sometimes slightly flat or sharp because of mechanical aberrations — they were wonderful to observe. The humming sounds of the windings, the realness of it. The tactile dots, the understanding of how they related to musical notes. What a thing it was to behold, an authenticity that the child in us could always appreciate and be impressed and moved by.
We're still in the wave of digital purity (and the VR/meta chapter won't help). Come back in 50 years for a reappreciation of analog, complex, fragile and non linear. By this time digital computing will probably be chaotic too.
Tangential to this thread, I listened to Carmacks keynote[0] for the Facebook Connect event, and it’s very refreshing to hear him push back, in ways that just make sense , instead of towing some corporate line that’s part fantasy and snake oil. See his comments on “social metaverse” and “3D vs flat screens”.
Digital computing at the server scale is already chaotic, since "complex systems operate in a degraded state". Personally I prefer deterministic systems over mysterious race conditions in concurrent code, so I mainly work in closed systems (desktop rather than cloud) with closed-form correctness criteria, and find and exterminate race conditions and unintended nondeterminism with prejudice (since I think heisenbugs are complex, fragile, nonlinear, and bad). And complexity and fragility is the enemy of self driving cars, and if you build systems that handle it inadequately, people die.
Aside from the practical reasons, I think unknowable unresolvable problems make me psychologically distressed.
> Aside from the practical reasons, I think unknowable unresolvable problems make me psychologically distressed.
I too, I'm wired to enjoy closed / defined systems. Yet, the few I've read about old EE books, is that the guys managed to analyse and comprehend noisy, irregular systems. Today mainstream computing is still about digital/clean/closed but one day I assume the analog/noisy/chaotic will become a thing in a normal curriculum. It's an easy/shallow prediction but still.
I mean some people are already getting nostalgic about CRTs for being so analog. And it's been what, only ~15 years since LCDs and other types of digital flat-panel displays started becoming cheap and widespread?
I'm part of that group (I ever regretted breaking my beloved mitsu diamondtron[0]) but still the mainstream is massively about digital purity, beyond biological retina sampling and displaying .. in that era good luck talking about the "value" of imperfect media, it's like fighting a tsunami to me.
[0] to cope, I scavenged a few portable TVs from the 90s to toy with the small tubes.
This toy is a good analog for a real record player and with grooves that move a needle and play sound encoded on the disk. Leading to understanding of sound waves.
This new toy is a mix of new and old tech. How can a per-literate child be expected to decipher binary encodings and how they map to individual songs? What deeper understanding of how things work are within the grasp of a child that cannot yet use a screwdriver, wire cutters, and a volt meter?
This new toy is boring. Once you learn how to turn it on, it can have no appeal to a child exposed to much better music players all around them: cell phones, iPads, computers, tvs. This is just a piece of plastic and e-waste destined for the landfill, purchased by some sentimental old timer who has fond memories of the original F-P record player.