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Article ID: CBB903684763

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

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

DOI: 10.1353/tech.2018.0152

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

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Education Computer Programming Power (social sciences) Computers and computing Users of technology Diversity in the workplace Comparison Employee empowerment Technology and politics History of Computing 20th century

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

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