If computing is like writing, then what is the equivalent of literacy for the digital age?
A thousand years ago, writing was a technology enjoyed by an elite few: rulers, clerics, scribes. This technology offered the power to store information with more permanence than human memory, to pass such information between people, and to archive it for future generations.
The invention of the printing press in the 1400s made books widely available, and literacy spread. Today, literacy rates exceed 90% in most of the world. Not everyone is a novelist or English professor, but almost everyone can read street signs, write down a grocery list, or send a text message.
That’s from a writer who argues that programming is the basic skill everyone needs.
But what if industrialization or the machine age are better analogues? Did we ever think everyone should learn to be a factory worker or a machinist/repairman?