After the Second World War, however, a significant body of literature developed -- you can think of it as beginning with Martin Heidegger's "Question Concerning Technology" -- that claimed that technology was not at all neutral, that technology (at least some technology) exercises as much power over us as we do over it. For example, we might say that the existence of nuclear fission technology has determined the nature of global politics as well as our sense of personal security whether or not anyone chose to have it be so influential. The non-neutral view of technology is sometimes called the "substantive" theory.
Obviously, the role you think computers should play in education depends a bit on your position concerning the neutrality of technology/technologies. In chapter 4, Ullman addresses the neutrality issue explicitly, but you might consider the entire book a comment on this issue. What is Ullman's position on the neutrality of computer technology and how does it compare to your own views on the subject?
"It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement -- that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life."Ullman's book is clearly about conflict as well, but what is the conflict about? If you were to imitate Freud's sentence so as to make it appropriate for a beginning to CLOSE TO THE MACHINE, how would you write it?
At this point in the semester it is common to find a few students who wonder why, in a course listed as CS092, we are not only talking so much, but talking about issues that seem so far from those of traditional CS. So the first thing is to make a case for why philosophical issues are not as peripheral in the design of educational technology as they are in the design of systems like those constructed by Ullman and Co., and then to figure out what specific philosophical questions need to be made explicit as we begin the project work.
Then, as we discuss the last half of Ullman's book with an eye toward the start of the projects as well as Dewey's Experience and Education, I would like us to focus on issues raised by Ullman's portrait that have something to do with the preparation and experiences that best serve people in school today. So, for example:
The second question bares on many of the issues raised by the messages from David, Alex, Ben and Kate (on the cs92-l list), and so it seems appropriate to start with them.
By the way, the mail from the list is archived at: http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cs92-l.html. You will need to register with the system in order to read what is there, and you must use the e-mail address by which you are subscribed to the list, but all this is easily done.
1. What is a system of education for, and what are institutions of education for?
2. Who is state-sponsored (i.e. "public") education for, and what is it for?
3. What is and should be the relationship between schools and the social/political structures in which they exist?
4. What difference should the existence of computing technologies and computer networks, and their place in contemporary society, make in our consideration of questions #1-3?