Week #1 Notes: Ullman and the culture(s) of computing

Roger B. Blumberg, CS92/ED89
February 1 & 3, 2000-- 227 CIT
http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/2000/cs92.rbb2.html


What are the projects proposed by Brown faculty this semester?

What is a seminar for?

What are the readings for?

Ellen Ullman's Close to the Machine

Here are a few questions to start our discussions of Ullman's book:
  1. 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?

  2. The subtitle of Ullman's book is an obvious reference to Freud's CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS. That 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?

  3. 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?

    Thursday notes:

    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.

    For next week

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