[geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

[der Mouse]

> Bootstrapping... we are losing the knowledge of how to do that.

"I am a primitive, come from a far world by what strange freak we will
not say.  What is the nature of two sticks I must rub, that fire may be
born?  Must they be tough, dry oak, or must one be a soft resinous bit
of pine?  Tell me how I may make fire."

"Why, with matches or a heat ray--"

Okay, that's from memory; I can't find the book offhand, and Google
doesn't seem to have the text of the story online (not that the latter
is surprising, as the story is recent enough to still be under
copyright).  But my point - like the point of the character first
quoted above - is that losing the bootstrapping knowledge isn't
necessarily a problem.  For how many people is it a problem that they
don't know how to start a fire by rubbing sticks together?  Or that
they can't put a sharp edge on a stone with another stone?  Or that
they can't shoot a bow, much less make one themselves?

Yet all those skills exist today, in comparatively small numbers, and
most people today could probably learn them if they had the time to
experiment and the motivation to do so.

The skills necessary to maintain something like Google exist, too,
probably in about the same numbers they always did; they just seem rare
because the population among which they're being looked for has grown
drastically.

/~\ The ASCII				der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B