As a child of the nineties, I grew up with computers (and the internet) deeply integrated with my life. As a result, I, and my peers, have an intuition for technology that our parents, and even those born only a few years before us, lack. To remove computers from elementary schools is an AWFUL idea. Technology becomes more important every day. If kids aren't using it during these formative years of their development, many of them simply won't "get it" when they're 12+. The US already has a hard enough time encouraging students to major in sciences, and bay area schools already don't teach CS. Removing computers will only exacerbate this problem.

I'm surprised that "Human-Level AI" got such a large number of votes while "Immortality" got very few. Assuming humanity was able to create an artificial intelligence identical or at least similar to a human, wouldn't immortality be easily attainable from there?

It may very well be prevalent in all forms of religion. I was brought up Jewish, and my religious school teachers were quick to remind us all about how the Jews were always persecuted, thereby making them special and justifying the need for the state of Israel. Once I had gotten tired of the God bullshit, my parents used the same persecution bullshit to try to guilt trip me into staying with the religion. A previous poster mentioned an "us and them" mentality. That hit it on the nose. All religions (just look at Scientology or any other cult) need to create such a mentality among their followers to keep them believing. If reason won't work, then prey on their egos.

This just screams for some Gentoo Ricer jokes. Looks interesting though.