Article ID: CBB903684763

Code Switch: Alternative Visions of Computer Expertise as Empowerment from the 1960s to the 2010s (October 2018)

unapi

Abbate, Janet (Author)


Technology and Culture
Volume: 59
Issue: 5, supplement
Pages: S134-S159


Publication Date: October 2018
Edition Details: Supplemental issue of Technology and Culture (October 2018): Shift CTRL. Computing and New Media as Global, Cultural, Sociopolitical, and Ecological
Language: English

In the 2010s, claims that learning to program would bring economic success for disadvantaged groups became ubiquitous in American public discourse. Although the coding movement presented itself as radically new, it recapitulated earlier framings of computing skill as a mechanism for empowerment. Using examples from the early history of computing and the twenty-first-century coding movement, I show how programming skill has been variously constructed as a shift of power from management to labor, a means of economic uplift for minorities, or a thinking tool for children. I argue that coding initiatives have always been embedded in politics and that the specific types of power associated with computer skill have been tied to the social identities of coding proponents and their intended beneficiaries. I contrast coding efforts controlled by dominant industry and research groups with grassroots efforts by women and minorities that reveal oppositional logics for empowerment based on radical questioning of both the nature and the ultimate purpose of coding.

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Article Thomas S. Mullaney (October 2018) Shift CTRL. Computing and New Media as Global, Cultural, Sociopolitical, and Ecological. Technology and Culture (pp. 1-6). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB903684763/

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Authors & Contributors
Petrocelli, Carla
Guy C. Fedorkow
Tinn, Honghong
Peter Tufano
Garvey, Colin
E. Marshall Wilder
Concepts
Computers and computing
History of Computing
Computer Programming
Users of technology
Computer security; cyber security
Computer architecture
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
Places
United States
Czechoslovakia
New Zealand
Japan
Taiwan
Great Britain
Institutions
Škoda (Firm)
California Institute of Technology. Jet Propulsion Laboratory
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