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I just read this book last week and as a one-time FIRST student a few years ago, I re-registered on this board to see what people were saying about it. Im surprised theres not more discussion.
The chapter on FIRST is very good but somewhat critical. It traces Woodie's history and tells the story in his past that is responsible for his vocal distaste of all forms of violence in our culture. Then it moves into Dean's story and the reasons he had for starting FIRST. Seems he was feeling bad about his other charitable effort, a science museum in New Hampshire. The two joined forces and started FIRST. They had two goals: 1) inspiring kids with the correct values, and 2) getting robot competition onto TV to begin to change the cultural priorities of the nation (science not baseball, football etcetera).
As the FIRST movement grows, however, it becomes clear that the two goals conflict each other. The more they concentrate on driving home "the right values", the less appealing it is for television. One of the most interesting revelations of the whole book, in my opinion, was how several tv producers visited FIRST in the late 90s and had their eyes opened to the possibility of broadcasting robot competitions. But each came to the same conclusion, that the FIRST games were too complicated to show to a mass audience. So they went off and put other events on TV. This is apparently how both Robot Wars and the show Robotica got on TV. How ironic is that? its a sad commentary on our society in a sense.
Anyway i think the book is worth picking up, and it answers alot of the questions i always had about FIRST. Its a bit critical of Dean in the end and whether thats fair or not should be open to discussion.
TL
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