I have just stumbled upon a nice article on how kids don’t really understand how computers work.
As the author writes in his conclusion, “I want the people who will help shape our society in the future to understand the technology that will help shape out society in the future. If this is going to happen, then we need to reverse the trend that is seeing digital illiteracy exponentially increase. We need to act together, as parents, as teachers, as policy makers. Lets build a generation of hackers. Who’s with me?”
His point is that, while kids are becoming fantastic users of computers (i.e. they can do Facebook using the left hand while playing Angry Birds with the right), only few of them actually understand computers. And this is going to be detrimental in the future when (i) the kids will be adults making decisions and (ii) computers will be everywhere.
There is an element of truth in that. I want my kids to be hackers. Like I was at their age!
