Week #1 Notes: Ullman and the culture(s) of computing
Roger B. Blumberg, CS92/ED89
January 30 & February 1, 2001-- 227 CIT
http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/2001/cs92.rbb2.html
All of the projects are briefly described on the
Project Pool page.
As an environment for teaching and learning, the undergraduate
seminar is useful for subjects that are more concerned with
ideas than with techniques. In a successful seminar, the
discussions occupy a middle ground between extreme objectivity
(e.g. definitions) and extreme subjectivity (e.g. non-verbalizable
impressions), and promote learning and understanding through
debate, the clarification of ideas, the refinement of arguments,
and the experience of intellectual community. A premium is placed
on dialogue rather than monologue in a seminar, but at the same
time a seminar can be used by students to try out arguments and
ideas in order to see how they sound and fare in discussion.
The choice of readings in a seminar is designed to elicit discussion,
of course, but the readings also allow participants to understand
and evaluate particular ideas and arguments by seeing them projected
and depersonalized. It also provides students interested in particular
subjects to engage with an ongoing conversation between authors who
are (and often have been for a long time) interested in those subjects
as well.
Consistent with our unique
approach of CS92/ED89 to the design of
educational technology, the readings in CS92 are also chosen in
reaction to traditional approaches to software engineering
and interface design. Thus, we use textbooks very little in the
course, and most of the assigned texts are meant to do more than
simply convey information. Why? Because the design of educational
software is about the experience we want the student to have in
addition to the content we want the student to cover and the
concepts we want the student to learn; therefore, we have to
be conscious of how we make meaning from our experience with
different sorts of information.
Here are a few questions to start our discussions of Ullman's book:
- Before the widespread use of computers, debates about the use
of technology often concerned the sense in which technology
should be considered "neutral" with respect to the way it is
employed. The view that technology *is* neutral is sometimes called
the "instrumental" theory. For example, you can use fountain
pen technology to write a short story or prove a mathematical
theorem, to write a thank you note to your aunt or a letter of
protest to the editor of a local newspaper, to sign a stay of
execution or a declaration of war. Thus, you might say that the
fountain pen is neutral with respect to how it is employed, for
good or for evil, intelligently or not, well or badly, etc.
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?
- The subtitle of Ullman's book is an obvious reference to Freud's
CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS. Freud's book is beautifully written
argument about life being a perpetual conflict between the individual's
desire for freedom and the demands of society, and it begins with the
famous sentence:
"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?
- Like automobile commercials in the pre-desktop age, computer
ads often promote an equation between technology and freedom
(e.g. "Where do you want to go today?!"), and such an equation
is often part of the rhetoric concerning the use of computers
in education. Ullman's book is clearly a comment on some of the
issues involved with such an equation. Compared to Ullman,
and the views of your peers, in what sense(s) do you think the
equation is true and in what sense not?
- The introduction of any significant technology into human
activities generally involves a change in the social characteristics
of those activities. A question that such changes routinely
provokes concerns whether we have "lost" something valuable
by giving up the "old ways". Tales of "digital life" generally
have something to say about this issue, and Copeland's
Microserfs and Negroponte's
Digital Life are examples of texts that respond
quite differently to the nostalgia/loss issue. How does Ullman
deal with the issue?
- Do you admire any of the characters in Ullman's book, and do
your explanations of why you do/don't involve the sorts of things
that might have been imparted/corrected/developed through school?
- Reading Ullman I think older readers are struck by how much
power (and money) the generation of workers close to the machine
have, especially considering their age and the kinds of expertise
(i.e. professional authority) they possess. This reflects a very
serious change in the distribution of professional power (and
money!) from generations ago. Similarly, one can
make a good argument that the nature of intellectual authority
(and perhaps all forms of authority) in *public* life has also
changed drastically in the last twenty years. If one agrees that
such changes have occurred, do you think it follows that
the curriculum
and teaching/learning practices of schools should also change, to
better reflect this new view?
Do you think schools should generally reflect
the current norms of society or should they work from a viewpoint
critical of such/all norms?
- The poet Octavio Paz once wrote: "The worship of the idea of
technology involves a decline in the value of all other ideas."
How is Ullman's book an elaboration of that idea? Which ideas
fundamental to your vision of education are vulnerable to
this sort of devaluation, and which might have their value
increased by the embrace of technology?
For Next Week
Read Experience and Education in its entirety
for Tuesday, and Scheffler's "Computers at School?" for Thursday.
While you read, keep the following questions in mind:
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?
Also have a look at the
Buzz!! program for Tuesday, and the
MathBug
program for Thursday (both are only available in PC format).
