[bitwize]

That was largely true in the West also until very very recently. One thing that's problematic is that although more people have access to a computer these days, they are treated as access points for MySpace, Facebook, Word and games more than anything else.

When I was growing up a computer was something you programmed just like a television set was something you watched. This was a psychological result of the fact that most machines of the day (including PCs) booted into BASIC if deprived of alternatives. When schools taught computer skills they included some elementary programming (usually in BASIC) in the curriculum. Not so today when majoring in Word and Excel is a perfectly viable academic career path.

So we're screwing our kids out of a chance to mess around with computers also and while the number of people actually using PCs has gone up, they're psychologically more distant from programming than ever it seems, and I'm treated more and more like a superintelligent space alien when I mention I'm a programmer.