(Hey, who cares, he won’t become a professional writer anyway.)
OK, so why learn to solve problems with a computer? You can always hire folks for that — and you don’t have time to be a “computer professional” anyway.
Same argument for not learning arithmetic. Who needs to know multiplication tables when you can get a simple electronic calculator that will be faster and more accurate, for what, free?
Computers, even now, are an integral part of our life. Almost every device that we use has one or more computers tightly integrated into its operation — and if the computers fail, so will the device.
Part of any culture is understanding what makes it tick. If you ask most kids, who are active gamers, texters, etc., “How does that really work?” You’ll get some very strange answers. They don’t have a clue. Are you illiterate, if you can read but not write? Half? How about that smart phone? Shouldn’t your kids learn something about how they work?
We see the “Watson” adverts. Hey, it beat that Japanese champion Go player and Kasparov in chess. Even did well on Jeopardy. It’s magic! What brain power! Unfortunately, it (or his sibling) missed any warning about the massive rainfall and subsequent record flooding of the Fox and DesPlaines rivers here in Illinois, last week. However, one of the 10 O’clock news weathermen said that he saw “something” in the radar that looked like storms might be coming, but nothing in the “models”. I personally measured 5.86” of rain the next morning. Oops!
The more you know about how computers actually work, the more you understand that they are just super-dumb calculating machines that can only respond to a program that tells it the sequence of calculations. Sure, it can look stuff up, and calculate at a speed that we really can’t appreciate intuitively. But it can’t think.
So how do you effectively use a device that can execute several million calculations per second? If it is controlling a piece of machinery (e.g., a robot) then the answer is “very carefully”!
Don’t you think that we all should understand something about how these beasts actually work? AND, how best to use them. AND, how to keep the devices they control from hurting us?
Of course.
Join SuperSOLVRS. it’s a start.
