[Sigia-l] Computers not complex enough?

[Listera]

It's the weekend and my everlasting quest to understand the British psyche
:-) leads me to this gem from the Guardian:

"Sure, most of us can use computers these days. We know how to send email,
surf the web or write a letter in Word. But would you know what to do if all
those pretty little icons in your browser disappeared and, instead of
Windows, you were left staring at lines of letters and numbers of HTML, the
language in which web pages are written? If, like Neo in The Matrix, you
could see the code behind the graphics?

If your answer is "no", then you are in the majority - one of the many
millions of peasants in the technological middle ages. Like most humans in
The Matrix, who believe they are living a normal life when in fact their
bodies lie inert in a vast complex of pods, you are asleep, a prisoner of
your ignorance. And the only way to escape is by getting to grips with the
machines, by learning their language. If you don't get inside them, they
will get inside you. Adapt or die.

Things can only get worse. As our society becomes ever more dependent on
information technology, the gulf between those who understand computers and
those who don't will get wider and wider. In 50 years, perhaps much less,
the ability to read and write code will be as essential for professionals of
every stripe as the ability to read and write a human language is today. If
your children's children can't speak the language of the machines, they will
have to get a manual job - if there are any left."

[...]

"But this is not enough on its own; it is also necessary to spend hundreds -
no, thousands - of hours at the keyboard. This might sound like hell. But if
you want to be truly free, you have no choice but to understand the machines
you work with."

Smash the Windows 
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0%2c12449%2c1078798%2c00.htm
l>

Back to the future?

----
Ziya

Nullius addictus jurare in verba magister