Joel's Assignment 8

I am not overly concerned with the future of computing. The dot-com explosion was simply a reaction to a new available tool, and the resulting burst was a result of letting in virtually every person's idea, which included a lot of bad ideas to begin with. Computing is now an integral part of everyday life, and has increased productivity for all aspects of business.

While some economists may argue that offshoring to developing nations hurts us, many others believe that it helps us. By giving countries such as India more wealth through offshoring, they in turn will begin to develop technology and need work for that, creating jobs. Eventually the system stabilizes, balancing out the amount of off shoring that saves money for US companies (and Indian, for that matter). Also, by increasing the amount of jobs in foreign countries, their citizens will have more money to spend on goods, including computing, thus creating a higher demand for US goods, and as a result more jobs will be available for US computer scientists. It is actually possible by off shoring that we are helping to create US jobs in the future. I agree with the report that rumors of off shoring hurting US job growth are incorrect.

I disagree with the educational part of the report. A computer science department is not training people for an IT job, it is educating them in computing. Thus, I don't think that a department should jump at every new fad or language that comes around, it should educate on the basics of computing and give its students skills for problem solving, algorithms, and the background needed to adapt as needed.

Also, I believe the best thing for the CU department of CSCI to do is simply make sure that the knowledge of the report is given to its students. This will help to debunk many of the myths currently floating about.

Last modified 24 October 2007 at 12:31 am by joelpfeiffer