Everyone should know how to run a web server

[scripting]

I've been advocating teaching journalism students to run servers. because it's so central to freedom of the press these days, to not be controlled by techies. And techies love to control users. If the journalists knew what was possible and weren't scared of running a server, they might be able to just do things for themselves without waiting for permission. I've seen very powerful things created with gutsy users who didn't like to hear NO from devs. ;-)

Also, it would help drive development of easier to operate servers. I've found if I have real live users in front of me, with my team able to meet them, then we have much less theoretical ideas about What Users Want, if in doubt we can just ask them. And if they knew how to run a server, they would be able to express their wants in a way that makes better sense to engineers.

Journalists may not be the first place to do this. Problem is J-school profs are pretty scared of technology, in my experience. They don't even really understand the idea. Instead they want their students to Learn To Program. Which would basically come as a natural outcome of people running their own servers, it's the next thing to do, to customize their servers.

Also the more people who run their own servers, the harder it will be to control speech. This is important.