I have been reading The Cult of Information by Theodore Roszak. And though the book is not perfect in its critique of the computer and all that it brings, it is a work with some merit. I believe it will temper my wiki and blog entries.
What does this all have to do with Simulations and Games... a couple of things: 1) I would like to know what others who have looked at this book think about it 2) The author brings up the old philosophical debate between rationalism and empiricism (roughly: which has primacy in forming thoughts, ideas or data.) I raise the argument that simulations embody the rationalist dictum applied to educational software: simulations encourage exploring concepts and the underlying ideas about things rather than emphasizing the learning of facts. I would hold this up as a strike against the book:the author implies that computers are inextricably bound-up with an empiricist epistemology (that ideas emerge from data.)
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