Geek Reading: Achieving Techno-Literacy

One of my all-time favorite tech writers, Kevin Kelly, published an excellent piece in New York Times Magazine entitled "Achieving Techno-Literacy." In it, Kelly discusses what he learned about technology from homeschooling his 8th grade son for a year.   It's really worth a read, but here's the meat of the piece:

Technology will change faster than we can teach it. My son studied the popular programming language C++ in his home-school year; that knowledge could be economically useless soon. The accelerating pace of technology means his eventual adult career does not exist yet. Of course it won’t be taught in school. But technological smartness can be. Here is the kind of literacy that we tried to impart:

• Every new technology will bite back. The more powerful its gifts, the more powerfully it can be abused. Look for its costs.