🚀 go-pugleaf

Katherine A Lato mentions "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"
in a recent posting about how to get people to use communications
systems...

In my high school (Foxborough MA) the two "computer science" teachers 
lured teenagers into the computer classes by having them visit the
computer room during their free study periods.  They had single player
and multiplayer computer games setup for them.  Many students would
willingly take the computer courses because they had been introduced
to it as being fun.  Some of them were rather disappointed later that
computers can also mean frustrating work, but at least they can now
form rational opinions about computers and what they represent.

I have spent some years tutoring and advising people with technical
and nontechnical backgrounds here at BU, at my high school, and at the
various jobs I have held.  It has never been my opinion that everyone
should be a hacker, but I feel it is important that people should 
have some small exposure to the innards of computers in order to better
appreciate the outtards (sic).  The place to do this is in high school
or even before, not in college.  As a non medical major I have not been
required to take Biology or any other lab science at BU.  But I was 
required to take that sort of thing in high school so now I can read
magazine articles about cancer, AIDS, and whatnot with a reasonable
level of comprehension.  The same philosophy should be applied to
computer education.  The average citizen does not need to know the
specific differences between Emacs and XEDIT, but it would be nice if
s/he at least knew the difference between an editor and a compiler.
Just as I know the difference between a virus and a bacteria from 
10th grade Biology.

Computer education for children is making good progress.  While it seems
that computer illiteracy today is an insurmountable problem, the next 
30 years will show a tremendous drop in "computer illiteracy", as the
next generation of users (and software) matures.