The computer, assigned to every student at St. Paul Academy and Summit School, is able to connect to the world-wide network of over a billion computers we call the Internet, and can access the sum of nearly all human discovery, knowledge, and creativity in a matter of seconds. With it, everyone, regardless of status or background, is able to publish anything they want to, free of cost, for the entire world to see. This was a privilege once granted to the noblest or wisest of people. Now anyone with access to a computer, a number that is rising quickly and will eventually and inevitably become a number about equal to the population of the world, can publish anything they want to, free of cost and for anyone to see.

As computers become more powerful and less expensive, almost all jobs that require no intuition or human reasoning are able to be automated with computers or robotics. Yet we find that it is the small group that is passionate about computers and willing to learn that language, that is able to effectively and powerfully work and program computers. This seems completely backwards from the idealistic vision of an information-age civilization. Anyone should be able to effectively program computers.
In Doug Engelbart’s 1968 “Mother of all Demos” at Stanford University (available for free to watch), Engelbart demonstrates the stuff that makes computers of 2014 computers. The first mouse. The first true word processor as we know it today. The first hypertext page. The first video conference. The first modern interface.

These are all features we take for granted, we view them as our tools, our opportunities to learn more, to interact more, to feel more. But at one point they were so far-flung that people imagined personal computers as wooden boxes with an array of blinking lights.

Now it is cheap, inexpensive computers that are enabling a new generation of developers, designers, and consumers. Our smartphones, sometimes costing less than $200, are a breakthrough in communications. The Raspberry Pi, a $25 computer the size of a credit card, is already being used in classrooms worldwide and is serving as an educational tool for the millions of people who can’t afford a larger computer or who don’t have regular access to one.

In a school that “shapes the hearts and minds of the people who will change the world,” the administration should realize that the ones who can program computers are the ones who are changing the world. Computer literacy will be as important a skill to have as reading or writing in 5 years, and many jobs are at that threshold. Distributing computers is a great step, but to shape its students’ minds for the Silicon Valley job that will inevitably become the American job, SPA needs to offer a computer science class or integrate language-learning into logic-based classes like mathematics.

The St. Paul Academy and Summit School administration is already taking commendable steps to offer a computer science class, but in order to fully take advantage of the unique opportunity its students are presented, it needs to instate one as quickly as possible. The rapid pace of innovation makes educating a generation of technologically literate students every bit as important as the rest of SPA’s traditional liberal arts curriculum.

We are witnessing a technological revolution before our eyes. Smartphones and portable computers are only the beginning. Wearable computing has manifested itself in forms like Google Glass or running devices like Android Wear. Medicine is starting to utilize computers smaller than a fingernail for implantable devices. Computers like the Nest thermostat and lighting or security systems connected to the internet are making our homes self-aware. These devices will become our smartphones and computers in the coming years, and it’s time to get ready.