I question the role of the computer in schools, but I do not deny it is a superior means of storing and retrieving data. There is nothing sacred about the typed or printed page when it comes to keeping records. If there is a faster way to find facts and manipulate them, we are lucky to have it. Just as the computer displaced the slide rule as a calculating device, it has every right to oust the archive, the filing cabinet and the reference book, if it can prove itself to be cheaper or more efficient. But the information, even when it moves at the speed of light, is no more than it has ever been: discrete little bundles of facts, sometimes useful, sometimes trivial, but never the sub stance of thought. I offer this commonsense notion of information in deliberate contradiction to the computer enthusiasts and information theorists who have suggested far more extravagant definitions. It is my purpose here to challenge these ambitious efforts to extend the meaning of information to nearly global proportions. That project, I believe, can only end by agreeing to invest more of our limited resources in information technology and undermining students' ability to think. That is the great mischief done by the data merchants, the futurologists, and those in the schools who believe computer literacy represents the future of education. They have lost sight of the paramount truth that the mind thinks with ideas, not with information which may illustrate or decorate those ideas. Information may, where it works under the guidance of contrasting ideas, help to call other ideas into question. But information does not create ideas. By itself, it does not validate or invalidate them. Kin-wai is a pupil of PLK Vicwood KT Chong Sixth Form College (Evening Section)
