If only 16% of the population can read and comprehend this article, then what does it mean to say that 29% of Americans (over 25) have a Bachelor’s degree? The best thing we can say is that you can get a Bachelor’s degree and still have a fifty-fifty chance of not being able to read and comprehend an article in Hispanic Business Magazine. That’s not good. Not good at all.
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One way to really see this is when people on Twitter auto-update their Facebook (guilty as charged). The experiences and feedback on Twitter feel very different than the experiences and feedback on Facebook. On Twitter, I feel like I’m part of an ocean of people, catching certain waves and creating my own. Things whirl past and I add stuff to the mix. When I post the same messages to Facebook, I’m consistently shocked by the people who take the time to leave comments about them, to favorite them, to ask questions in response, to start a conversation. (Note: I’m terrible about using social media for conversation and so I’m a terrible respondent on Facebook.) Many of the people following me are the same, but the entire experience is different.
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Now, put yourself in the position of a headteacher, faced with deciding whether or not to offer Applied ICT or Computing. The former is an absolute joke of a course, requiring little more than a pulse to pass. The latter requires familiarity both with standard applications like operating systems and officeware, but also relatively advanced use of databases, and basic programming in a high-level language. Which one would you, the headmaster, choose to offer, considering the potential success rates?
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I’m really getting annoyed with OnSwipe.
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Scripting News: OnSwipe. Can I get a ‘hell, yeah’?
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Now, you can call me a bigot if you like, but if I am trying to find people to go into business with, programmers to work with and the like - if you are stupid enough to think that the universe is just one giant home delivery catalogue, you are not qualified. How do I know that the code you write is reliable if you deny common-sense cause and effect relationships? You don’t have to write unit tests because the spirit of Ramtha shines down on you and tells you that the code is good.
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The Internet isn’t crowding out book reading: “For adults who read online articles, essays, or blogs, the book-reading rate is 77 percent”. This is no surprise: television has fucked up far more people’s lives than the Internet ever could. Worrying about the Internet rather than television is a little bit like worrying about the trace amounts of carcinogens in your coffee when you smoke forty a day.
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If you are finding it difficult to communicate, stop blaming lack of face-to-face visual contact. If you can’t communicate in writing, it may be because you can’t write properly. There is a cure for that: education and practice.
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