The only thing I'm not convinced about is whether programming is something of a functional specialisation or if it will (GAS already?) become a literacy-like thing.
I mean, we generally think of numeracy as something widespread in the West for the past few decades, but the average person really does not do even basic arithmetic very well. Are we really going to do a better job of teaching people programming, or will we have to resign to the reality that most people won't learn it well?
The bit that's gets me is how fast does earth spin (without which sun rise is a bit hard to explain). Until it was accepted that air was just a thin atmospheric layer, it becomes insane to imagine we spin at a 1,000 miles an hour though a air medium that extends to Jupiter. How do you keep your newspaper still.
Kids today have Mickey Mouse cartoons explaining space rockets, moon to mars, earth spinning etc. We just accept it as true without trying to be clever about it
The same is true for literacy and numeracy - just having a society where you absorb character arcs, sub clauses, chapters, publishing, versions etc makes so much difference. Mathematical symbols were the names of Ed Sheeran albums.
Look at something simple like git - most business users should have this all the time but it's not a world view
(#) Look for episode on the podcast "Subject to chnage"
Fully 25 years after computers-in-business, especially for any significant size of business, was virtually universal.
Humans don't manage businesses anymore. They are essentially all software managed. Business management is now really meta-management of business management software.
>>> Business management is now really meta-management of business management software.
It really ought to look like :
for each emp in employees_by_dept('accounts'): emp.getvacationplaennedthismonth
or something
Imagine you have a group of illiterate managers who have just hired a group of writers to write some company policy documents.
You could have the managers (carve / draw / modern dance) their requirements in a waterfall manner.
Of course you could get one of the managers to sit down with the developers and tell them how the policy's work each day, embed with them Agile style.
However in the end you can't be everywhere, sometimes there aren't enough people in the company who understand what is needed, or even be sure that the embedded people agree on what is needed.
These are business problems - but they are also literacy problems. We have a literate society and so there are enough literate people to write policy documents to cover a whole compmay.
We need to make enough people who can code, so they can write the policy documents of the future.