Kernighan Teaches... Liberal Arts?

Flamerule writes "The New York Times has an article (free registration required) examining a new course Brian Kernighan is teaching at Princeton, called "Computers in Our World", aimed at liberal arts students who won't be going into the tech field. The author describes it as "a kind of intellectual smorgasbord, combining public policy - like technology's impact on privacy, copyright and antitrust matters - with large helpings of practical knowledge of how things work, from operating systems to disk drives." The K&R text is mentioned, though not as reverently as some would demand."

Comments

Depth

[Omkar]

Will these students be exposed to computing in enough depth to understand the finer details? To the layperson, patenting software is always OK, but to me, in some cases, it seems like patenting a theorem in math. Another example is the RIAA's legal maneuvers. If people didn't swap mp3s, they'd probably swallow the RIAA propaganda about stealin from artists by downloading songs.

I think a course solely devoted to the changing nature of copyright and patents today (esp. IT and biotech) could create more awareness of today's issues.

Re:This should be interesting

[trb]

what has he done lately?

What have you done lately?

Kernighan is the foundation of some of the best CS books ever, not just one book. Find the pattern:

• Kernighan and Plaugher (Software Tools and Elements of Programming Style)
• Kernighan and Ritchie
• Kernighan and Pike (UNIX Programming Environment and Practice of Programming)

Bell Labs researchers did all kinds of ground-breaking practical CS stuff, and lots of them worked with Kernighan - Aho, Weinberger, Lesk, Bentley, Mashey, Johnson... You think maybe all these guys worked with Kernighan because he has something to contribute?

He's a researcher and a teacher. Most researchers do obscure work that no-one ever knows. How many researchers and teachers are so productive? Practically none. If you want to know what he's up to, try a search engine.

Not the only one out there

[Yossarian2000]

Sounds like an interesting class, but others have done this before. Boston College, for example, has had a course called Technology in Society for a few years now.

Re:The Perfect Opportunity

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm with Clarke on this one, not snow: there are not two cultures.

No, you're with Snow. He thought the art/science separation was a bad thing too.

Re:We had this... sort of

[IsoRashi]

Oh, and when I was at Stevens tech, they had a whole slew of introductory courses that *everyone* was required to take. Courses like calc 1 and 2, mechanics, E&M, chem 1 and 2, philosophy, literature... and comp sci classes. The first semester had the comp sci topic actually broken into two sections. The first covered the basics of how hardware functioned, the second semester was some very basic programming in visual basic. All simple stuff, but Stevens wanted to introduce you to this, and noone was exempt except for those who went into the "advanced" versions of the course.