Let me be the parent that is contrary to those you have talked to so far.

I want my kids safe. More than anything else, I want my kids safe. But I also want them safe from the intruding eyes of some semi-anonymous individual in the government, or it's subcontracted security services.

As the parent I take the safety of my children very seriously, and I am not willing to entrust that to another individual, or organization. Individuals and organizations have reasons for existing that may not coincide with my own. They have their own agendas that may or may not include actually protecting my children from harm. I'm glad the police forces exist, and I welcome any assistance they can lend towards the protection of my children. But I do not put the responsibility on them to protect me and mine.

A police state isn't the solution for anything but laziness and blame shifting. If you need a police state so you know who to point the finger at when you fail your children, perhaps you should be focusing on things other than procreation.

The computer devices that Babbage designed were mechanical, not digital. If those had caught on, someone would have put effort into reducing the size of those computer devices, especially if they were games that might need a little portability. lighter metals also require less energy to move, and keep moving. Smaller, lighter, faster mechanical machines require lighter, stronger metals. Strangely enough, so do mechanical devices that are intended to fly.

If lighter and stronger materials had been available when aviation was in it's infancy, it's quite probable that flight technology would have progressed faster, since aircraft wouldn't weigh as much.

So in the context of this situation, computing has a lot to do with metallurgy.

I thought we wanted change? Action was the previous administration.

My doctor uses an iPad...

No it's not. It took me about 3 seconds to get to 7' 8" using your "Royal Pain" method, but I resorted to using a calculator to get to 2.34 rather than put the effort into going through the subtraction (gotta do borrowing).

I may suck at math, but I can do board feet calculations without significant thought.

Europeans make fun of Americans because we don't learn multiple languages like they do. Then they also poke fun because we won't conform to their one way of notating measurements.

Make you a deal: Declare Americanized English as the global standard for language, and we'll convert our measurements to your SI.