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

The Perfect Opportunity

[BetterThanJimbo]

I think this is exactly the types of classes needed out there.

For all the people who know nothing of issues like electronic voting, DMCA, Elrdrid v. Ashcroft, the hardest thing was to get the idea out to non-computer folk. Raising awareness of complex technical issues is usually next to impossible, and this is a great start.

Re:The Perfect Opportunity

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I think this is exactly the types of classes needed out there.

For all the people who know nothing of issues like electronic voting, DMCA, Elrdrid v. Ashcroft, the hardest thing was to get the idea out to non-computer folk. Raising awareness of complex technical issues is usually next to impossible, and this is a great start.

It's a start, yes, but it's not enough. This is going to be a bit of rant, I'm afraid ...

Why in God's name do students at Princeton -- Princeton, which at least used to be known as the greatest math school in the US! -- need to take only one course in "quantitative reasoning?" As a math major at a perfectly average state college, I had to take quite a few classes in English, communications, history, and other liberal arts subjects. I'm not complaining about this; a good liberal education is, and should be, part of what being a college graduate in any subject means.

But "liberal education" should include science as well as liberal arts. There's no reason at all why students "headed toward degrees in politics, history, English, art history, psychology and economics" shouldn't learn how to differentiate a polynomial, calculate Gibbs free energy, or write "Hello, World." Studying the effects of science and technology on our world is all well and good, but those studies will only mean something if they know what science actually looks like.

I'm with Clarke on this one, not snow: there are not two cultures. There is only one culture, and if you can't discourse on the structure of a sonnet and the second law of thermodynamics with equal ease, then you're uncultured, period.

Geek religion

[Derwen]

"The K&R text is mentioned, though not as reverently as some would demand"

Then they should have got Saint Ignucius to write the article. ;-)

Why this is important

[Nate B.]

As noted in the article, upon explanation of the inner workings of a computer and that it just manipulates bits really fast, one of the students said he had an "aha" revelation. This is the kind of thing that should be taught to everyone in school.

Dinking with Word and Paint, don't de-mystify the machine. Only by having a basic (no pun intended) understanding of the machine and what it does will a person be willing to control it. So many folks that have computers are so intimidated by them that they are afraid to control the machine. Changing fundamental settings like wallpaper truly scares some people. (Insert gratuitous MS slam here)

Equally important is the discussion and enlightenment these students will get on matters of copyright, law as it is being applied to computing, and patents. Only a well informed citizenry will prevent the spate of knee-jerk reactions to minor problems. Perhaps a well educated citizenry will clean up the ridiculous mess that is the DMCA and software patents.

I hope This kind of course gets cloned and used in education everywhere. It's desperately needed.

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.

CS and Liberal Arts have a lot in common....

[JoshuaDFranklin]

Another good article is "The Elements of (Unix) Style" abuot Unix as literature.

Anyway, my point is that a lot of these Lberal Arts kids are going to be interested in knowledge about a wide area of subjets--that's the whole focus of a Liberal Arts education. Computers is another area (though, today it would be extra interesting since everyone uses them but so few know how the "magic" works) to learn about. Of course, there are always some who don't want to learn.

I was wondering about textbooks or notes and looked up the course info at Princeton's site. It's COS 109... unfortunately they don't have many details but searching for K himself led me to his notes and problem sets (link is HTML, but notes are pdf). He obviously used cal(1) for the schedule, too.

Enjoy!