Don't teach your kid to use Microsoft Word, huh?

British computer scientist and inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, addresses a press conference at the 20th International World Wide Web Conference in Hyderabad on March 31, 2011.

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Did Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, really say parents shouldn't teach their children to use Microsoft Word?

At the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Marketplace Tech host David Brancaccio got some quality time with Berners-Lee, who mainly talked about online openness and network neutrality, but he also explained what he really meant about Microsoft Word:

"When you are explaining to a kid, when you are talking to them about a computer and you are teaching them, don't just teach them to use it, teach them that it can be programmed. There are two digital divides today. There is the digital divide between the people who don't have any connectivity and the people who use the web. There is another digital divide between the people who program and the people who can't. They need to learn early on that anything they can imagine the computer doing, they should be able to program."

 

About the author

David Brancaccio is the host of Marketplace Tech Report. Follow David on Twitter @DavidBrancaccio and @MarketplaceTech

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