I’ve been writing about the current discussions in Britain about whether computer science should be part of the National Curriculum in secondary schools. (For the record, my view is yes.) So it was interesting to come on this piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education which tackles one of the objections that are often made: what’s the point of learning to program? Isn’t it like insisting that everyone who drives a car should be able to repair it?

I recently finished reading Douglass Rushkoff’s Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age. Rushkoff argues that knowledge of coding is essential: “Understanding programming—either as a real programmer or even, as I’m suggesting, as more of a critical thinker—is the only way to truly know what’s going on in a digital environment, and to make willful choices about the roles we play” (8).

The learning that goes on in the traditional classroom may teach digital literacy, but does it teach an understanding of code? Rushkoff claims that for students taught to use programs rather than to create them, “their bigger problem is that their entire orientation to computing will be from the perspective of users. When a kid is taught software as a subject, she’ll tend to think of it like any other thing she has to learn. Success means learning to behave in the way the program needs her to. Digital technology becomes the immutable thing, while the student is the moving part, conforming to the needs of the program in order to get a good grade on the test” (136). This echoes some of the same patterns I’ve seen in my classroom: a student who is only familiar with what others’ programs can do, and used to working within those systems, might never consider a solution outside those boxes.

Douglass Rushkoff’s Program or Be Programmed might not convince you to dive headfirst into C#, but it is a solid foundation for starting conversations on the value of technical skills for yourself, your institution, and its students in any discipline. Some of the arguments are dubious, but the book offers succinct and clear discussions of lessons gleaned from longer works such as Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together and Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget, other essential texts considering these same ramifications of our relationship with new technologies.

This distinction extends beyond coding and applies to all areas of learning; true education should empower individuals to think critically, challenge existing structures, and innovate beyond the limitations of pre-designed systems. Books remain one of the most effective tools for fostering this kind of independent thinking, providing in-depth knowledge and perspectives that go beyond surface-level engagement.

Access to a broad range of resources is essential for fostering this kind of intellectual curiosity, and platforms like All You Can Books offer an extensive library of audiobooks and eBooks that encourage self-guided learning across disciplines. Whether diving into programming fundamentals, exploring philosophy, or analyzing the impact of digital culture, having unlimited access to knowledge allows learners to step outside the constraints of traditional education and take control of their own intellectual growth.

Memo to self: Must get Rushkoff’s

book.

Put this on your website:

“Unbankable film director Ken Russell seeks soulmate. Must be mad about music, movies and Moët & Chandon champagne.”

It worked! Elise Tribble married him.

From a lovely Guardian obit by Derek Malcolm.

From a piece I wrote for Comment is free.

The only thing that’s surprising about this [news that teenagers don’t use email] is that people are surprised by it. Most teenagers use technology to communicate with their friends and for that purpose email is, well, too formal. (Apart from anything else, because it’s an asynchronous medium, you don’t know whether someone has read your message.) So kids use synchronous messaging systems such as SMS and social networking tools that provide the required level of immediacy.

But the main reason young people don’t use email is that they haven’t yet joined the world of work. When (or if) they do, a nasty shock awaits them, because organisations are addicted to email. The average employee nowadays receives something like 100 email messages a day and coping with that deluge has become one of the challenges of a working life.

Organisational addiction to email has long since passed the point of dysfunctionality and now borders on the pathological, with employees sending messages to colleagues in nearby cubicles, people covering their backs by cc-ing everyone else and managers carpet-bombing subordinates with attachments. The real problem, in other words, is not that email is dying but that it’s out of control.

Steve Hewlett has a perceptive pieceabout the Leveson inquiry in today’s Guardian.

Leaving aside questions about tabloid techniques and intrusion – which are plainly serious enough in their own right – so much of what we heard last week had rather more to do with fiction than fact. The picture that emerges is of legions of tabloid foot soldiers – reporters, paparazzi and private detectives – prepared to do almost anything to get the “story”. In other words, to gather material to illustrate and support something the desk – the editors back at base – had already decided is true.

Again, there won’t be anyone who has ever worked in journalism who won’t instinctively understand this phenomenon – which, incidentally, is far from being restricted to the tabloids or even to newspapers.

For the working journalist, the world is full of editors and proprietors (not to mention channel controllers and commissioning editors) prepared to settle for nothing less than proof of the correctness of what they thought all along. Journalists also know that the price of failure to deliver what the boss demands can be very high indeed.

Spot on. Which explains why calls for ‘ethical’ standards in British journalism are doomed to fail. Such calls assume that journalism in Britain is a profession (with all that implies in terms of professional standards, etc.) It’s not a profession at all — just a trade grafted onto a ruthlessly competitive industry. In a way the miracle is not that UK tabloid standards are so low, but that the country still has some good journalists who still have some ethical standards.

From a Guardian interview with Umberto Eco:

It is claimed that he called the film of The Name of the Rose a travesty, but that seems unlikely. He says only that a film cannot do everything a book can. “A book like this is a club sandwich, with turkey, salami, tomato, cheese, lettuce. And the movie is obliged to choose only the lettuce or the cheese, eliminating everything else – the theological side, the political side. It’s a nice movie. I was told that a girl entered a bookstore and seeing the books said: ‘Oh, they have already made a book out of it.'” More laughter.