IEET > Life > Access > Fellows > Douglas Rushkoff
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CNN: Why I am learning to code and you should, too
Doug Rushkoff
Rushkoff
Posted: Jan 17, 2012
(CNN)—This week, New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg tweeted his intent to learn computer code by the end of the year. He joined about 300,000 other people who have signed up at CodeYear to receive free interactive programming lessons each week from the Codecademy, a web-based tutorial. I am greatly relieved.
It’s time Americans begin treating computer code the way we do the alphabet or arithmetic. Code is the stuff that makes computer programs work—the list of commands that tells a word processor, a website, a video game, or an airplane navigation system what to do. That’s all software is: lines of code, written by people. We are socializing, working, consuming, and living in a world increasingly defined by programs. Learning to code is the best way to understand what all those programs do, or even to recognize that they are there in the first place.
Just a couple of years ago, I was getting blank stares or worse when I would suggest to colleagues and audiences that they learn code, or else. “Program or be programmed,” became my mantra: If you are not a true user of digital technology, then you are likely being used by digital technology. My suggestion that people learn to program was meant more as a starting point in a bigger argument.
to read the rest of the article, click here.
Douglas Rushkoff is a fellow of the IEET, author of a dozen books and comic books, producer of two award-winning Frontline documentaries, and his essays have been published widely.
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“If you know how to code, you can likely get a high-paying job right now, or - better - make valuable stuff right now. You will understand more about how the world works, and become a participating member in the digital society unfolding before us. You will be enabling America to compete effectively on both the economic and military frontiers, where we are rapidly losing our competitive advantage due to our failure to teach ourselves code. We should not have to wait for the NYSE to be hacked by kids from Asia to learn this lesson.”
Hmm.. this about sums up your real attitude towards “all peoples and kids of the world” learning code?
Now, I don’t exactly disagree with your points raised, but you tell me.. how many computer “users” actually know how their PC, server, or network actually works? How many can take their PC apart and solve a hardware problem? Or a driver problem?
Without hardware, software language and coding skills become redundant. Machines and even robots will quickly surpass humans and their slow and cumbersome coding skills?
Learning code is not the saviour for our modern times, but thinking about socioeconomic and political change and human ethical values is the way forward. A kid is far better using his time and effort to become educated in written and oral language skills and critical thinking, as it is these skills that the pursuit of all other knowledge is reliant upon?
It is the skills of human language that will help to transform the world and politics and economies, not learning computer code that may well be outmoded very, very soon.
It is the corporate giants of America who have pioneered the use of proprietary software and Operating Systems, which has stifled the use of open source software and systems, (although this trend is now reversing). Even Apple have built their recent OS versions on UNIX platforms, (aimed towards their own corporate purposes and motives).
I did try to learn some C++ once, and then a voice in my head asked “why are you doing this?”
Yes.. let’s encourage kids in schools to learn “some” coding in their computer classes instead of wasting time and energy filling out useless Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, and turning them into zombie sweatshop labour for greedy corporations and banks?
At one time an MCSE or MCSA was a qualification worth having, today it’s as common as blueberry muffins - this has not transformed economies nor provided jobs and vacancies for these skills. Human socioeconomic politics provides jobs, not machine skills.
You are being used! As you always have and will be used! By corporate politics.. and once they have a machine/robot to code, it does not matter how many kids can code - you are redundant and no longer required!
Voices from the Occupation - A Revolution in our Sense of Self
” When people are Citizens of the World, they cease to be so easily swayed by narrow nationalist, short term, separationist prerogatives. They don’t see just the new school being built in their road, but the schools being blown to bits in Iraq and Afghanistan for the oil revenues to pay for it. They don’t see just the fragile continuance of the British Banking industry due to government bailout, but the resulting indenture of future generations, they see not only the growing middle class through the 20th century in their own country, but the 3 billion people starving in the world.
They assess progress at a different scale - they take in the world, not simply their country or region of the world. They consider the wider view. Progress for an island at the cost of regression all around, it not true progress to the citizen of the world. Their impatience for change comes from their ownership of the world as their responsibility; their patience to stay in it for the long haul from the same place.”
http://www.scriptonitedaily.org/2012/01/voices-from-occupation-revolution-in.html
Ps. Regarding Mayor Bloomberg - it is always good to hear of his initiatives to support personal development and education of the masses, and New York could do a lot, lot worse than have him as Mayor - yet his hypocrisy to support skills, business and training initiatives and promote New York on the one hand, and yet stifle free speech and use of public spaces for protest and critical thinking on the other only highlights his rather conservative views as to what people are actually free to do and say?
But I guess coding is OK
Let them eat code !
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