Programming: The New Literacy
Power will soon belong to those who can master a variety of expressive human-machine interactions.
“As the century goes on, those who don’t program — who can’t bend their increasingly sophisticated computers, machines, cars, and homes to their wills and needs — will, I predict, be increasingly left behind. Parents and teachers often disrespect today’s young people for being less than literate in the old reading-and-writing sense. But in turn, these young citizens of the future have no respect for adults who can’t program a DVD player, a mobile phone, a computer, or anything else. Today’s kids already see their parents and teachers as the illiterate ones.”Interesting, but on a theoretical level I find it deeply disturbing.
This posits a false (and dangerous) antinomy in attempting to situate modes of literacy in the language of parallax.
“Classical” and “twenty-first-century” literacy are not mutually exclusive. If that were the case we would have given up on art a long time ago.
I don’t think this is putting a value ordering on ‘modern’ vs ‘classical’ literacy, just highlighting the importance of technical literacy in and of itself, and capturing the very real feeling the techno-savvy have when observing those who are not.
Of course, I also believe that we can’t forge ahead without universally raising the usability-bar. If for nothing else, I’ve enjoyed web 2.0’s effect of having highlighted, for this generation, the importance of easy, understandable systems.
Your second point there says it all.
But seeing the mention of power and its purported “ownership” made me throw up a little bit in my mouth.
Seeing that mention framed in terms of potentially exclusive languages, literacies, and points of access made me throw up out of my mouth.
The entire architecture of the web has the spirit of multiplicities pulsing through all its tubes. The web is a club from which no one should be excluded.
Accessibility not exclusivity.
