"I read about it," said Samwell, but his friends retorted before he could finish that sentence.
"Yeah yeah we know. You read about it from a very old book."
That was one of very unremarkable scene from Game of Thrones series that I have been watching. I found it astonishing that every book mentioned in the series had much value to it while every time I visit the book store nowadays, I find books about every useless thing. Aisles and aisles of cookbooks with the same recipe, translated youth fictions about vampires and dragons, books teaching you how to be rich as if it could be taught, self-help books all teaching you to believe in yourself, I find them all borderline useless. Yes, of course, I find books that I am looking for every now and then and I understand that different people have different tastes. I still do love reading books much more than other media as a form of learning, though my university professors seem to prefer Powerpoint slides. It occurs to me that these books are there to be sold, not to educate. Back in time, when the population barely know how to read, authors were scholars, men and women of wisdom writing books on the sole purpose of passing on their gathered knowledge. Though the entire population were not a big fan of those books then, they never cease to stop serving their purposes.
Today when the population know their letters, and are much or less eloquent enough for casual readings, they do nothing but. On the other hand, not a lot of people know how to program. Not a lot of people understand programs either. Programs are interacted with all the time, but never to be understood by the general public. As arrogant as it may sound, programmers are the 21st century scholar arranging language features into place to serve a purpose. Years from now when everyone is to required to know a programming language, our programs are the ones they will paraphrase.
More often than naught, men and women fluent in many languages are more open to higher learning. They were the advisers of kings and rulers. They are surely not the same as the people who write stories encouraging teenage girls to love blood sucking creatures. And programmers of today will rise up to do the same. I find that fascinating!
