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SUMMARY:The 10 Cultures Problem - Bill Thompson
DTSTART:20090527T131500Z
DTEND:20090527T141500Z
UID:TALK17254@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Mateja Jamnik
DESCRIPTION:In May 1959 CP Snow used the Rede Lecture in Cambridge to expl
 ore the\nnotion that British society\, its education system and its intell
 ectual\nlife was characterised by a split between two cultures\, the human
 ities\nand the sciences.\n\nToday the divide that matters is that between 
 those who can count in\nbinary and those who can't\, between the culture o
 f the technologists\nand coders and that of the users.  The division is si
 milar to\, but not\nco-extensive with\, that identified by Snow simply bec
 ause most\nscientists are\, thanks to the technological basis of their res
 earch\,\ncomputer-literate\, while many of those in the arts\, humanities 
 and\npolitics will be wondering what happened to the other eight cultures\
 nreferred to in the title of this lecture.\n\nWriter and journalist Bill T
 hompson took the Diploma in Computer\nScience in 1983 and now describes hi
 mself as a 'technology critic'\,\nstraddling the two worlds in his work fo
 r the BBC\, Arts Council\nEngland and others.  In this lecture he will con
 sider what level of\nunderstanding of computer science is needed in order 
 to be an\neffective and engaged member of modern society. Is there a\ntech
 nological equivalent of Snow's complaint that the literary people\nof his 
 acquaintance did not know of the Second Law of Thermodynamics?\nShould eve
 ryone code\, or is it enough to understand what Roger Needham\nmeant when 
 he claimed - as he so often did - that every problem in\ncomputing can be 
 solved with another level of indirection?\n\n\nPlease note that there will
  be a computing related treasure trail on the morning of the talk\, starti
 ng in Central Cambridge and ending at the venue of the talk. See http://ww
 w.cl.cam.ac.uk/seminars/800/#events for details.
LOCATION:Lecture Theatre 1\, Computer Laboratory
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