Mindstorms by Seymour Papert
Published 1980 · 304 pages · 55,000 words · about 4 hours at an average pace · Education & Reference, Media & Technology, Nonfiction, Psychology
How hard is Mindstorms to read?
Mindstorms scores 31 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 30 out of 100
- Mathematical and computational concepts explained accessibly.
- Sentence structure: 30 out of 100
- Abstraction: 42 out of 100
- Epistemological arguments about how children construct knowledge.
- Information density: 48 out of 100
- Dense with ideas. Every chapter introduces a new theoretical framework.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Thesis-driven with illustrative examples from Logo classrooms.
- Symbolic density: 18 out of 100
- The turtle as embodiment of body-syntonic learning.
- Ironic distance: 80 out of 100
- Earnest and visionary throughout.
- Resolution withholding: 12 out of 100
- Papert's vision remains largely unrealized in mainstream education.
- Structural complexity: 25 out of 100
- Thematic chapters building a theory of learning with computers.
How Mindstorms is regarded
Mindstorms holds a literary regard score of 61 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.