One of my chief interests, starting early (elementary school), has been computer programming.
After attending university as an undergrad, my first job out of college was that of high school teacher, of maths in particular although I taught some other subjects.
This was a small, private Catholic school and faculty capable of teaching multiple subjects were given opportunities to do so. Having just come through Princeton, and being one of the few males in a school for women, the nuns in charge could see my utility. I brought some of the latest thinking into the mix. My international upbringing was a plus also.
Much of that "latest thinking" with regard to my job as mathematics teacher, had to do with these programming languages. APL by Kenneth Iverson had taken the Princeton campus by storm, in the form of scattered terminals any student could use, regardless of what courses she or he was taking.
Within weeks of moving into Princeton Inn, I was programming battleship in APL and reading the code, character by character, to my friend Glenn Baker, from my cohort in the Philippines, then at Hampshire (later Brown).
If you've ever touched APL, you know how mathy it is. Wouldn't opening doors in computer world make maths all that much more relevant? Students kept asking "why are we learning this?" whereas programming had its obvious applications.
Also, the REPL (interactive command line) could give immediate feedback and invited simply playing around, chatting by sending math expressions to an interpreter.
So yeah, dialing back to the early 1980s, it was very clear then, as it is now, that the curriculum would be changing. Seymour Papert introduced Logo and turtle graphics. Alan Kay introduced Squeak. Children and teachers of children had become the preferred audience for many genius innovations.
Fast forward and we're finding the merger is much further along. Programmers are very "type aware" whether object oriented or functional. They tolerate abstractions in coding languages, as a path towards generality and therefore code reusability.
On the maths side: Category Theory. The mere existence of this bridge gets the zipper started, as it were, such that the two flaps (computer science and math world) come together as one.
However, CT is not for everyone and that's where more right brain bridges come in. We have our experiments with new kinds of prose in the 1900s, ala Ezra Pound and James Joyce. Writers discovered it was both OK and relevant to push the envelope, in terms of what language, the printed word especially (with embedded figures), might accomplish.
One of those prose experiments, RBF's Synergetics, opened geometrical information to experienced readers in the humanities. They wouldn't have to detour as much, into abstract linear algebra. The C.P. Snow chasm (the opening divide between different thinking styles) was countered within the realm of pattern languages.
Unfortunately, I don't think Princeton itself was able to keep up, and schools in general started falling by the wayside, as the most effective teachers came to the foreground in the University of Cyberia (a made up name signifying internet space), including from the ranks of pre-existing academies (e.g. from MIT) that contributed to the growing stash of open courseware.
We're still in this era, of Global U convergence, with CT and Synergetics both worthy entry points if you're of a comprehensivist (polymathic) bent. I recommend exploring some of the recent Codas I've been working on with the TrimTab group.
