syllabus! ()

Computer Class has two primary intellectual influences: Seymour Papert and Joseph Weizenbaum. Papert and Weizenbaum were professors at MIT starting in the 1960s, and their theories about computer cultures couldn't be more different — at least on first glace. Papert believed computers were uniquely good at enabling learning and was a major figure in the movement to bring computers into classrooms.

"The computer is the Proteus of machines. Its essence is its universality, its power to simulate. Because it can take on a thousand forms and can serve a thousand functions, it can appeal to a thousand tastes." (Mindstorms viii)

Papert designed a learning environment called which included "a child, a teletype machine, a computer, a large flat surface and an apparatus called a turtle." (LOGO MEMO 4). The turtle was a glass domed robot which followed instructions written in Papert's LOGO programming language. See the Ludus page for more details. When used by teachers according to Papert's instructions, LOGO was an incredibly effective teaching tool—not just for teaching programming, but for teaching kids how to solve complex problems, revise their own work, and develop ambitious projects. For Papert, the computer had the potential to be a tool of radical empowerment.

For Weizenbaum, by contrast, the computer had the potential to be a tool of radical deception. Joseph Weizenbaum is best known for programming ELIZA, an early chatbot, in the early 1960s. Weizenbaum programmed ELIZA as a demonstration of how computers can create illusions of intelligence with fairly rudimentary programming. Instead, people found ELIZA so convincing that it inspired a wave of belief in Artificial Intelligence, which Weizenbaum found shocking and disturbing. In his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human Reason, Weizenbaum articulates his criticisms of computer scientists and programming culture.

"The engineer can resign himself to the truth that there are some things he doesn't know. But the programmer moves in a world entirely of his own making. The computer challenges his power, not his knowledge." (CPHR 119)
"I knew of course that people form all sorts of emotional bonds to machines, for example, to musical instruments, motorcycles, and cars. And I knew from long experience that the strong emotional ties many programmers have to their computers are often formed after only short exposures to their machines. What I had not realized is that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people." (CPHR 7).

Papert's optimism and Weizenbaum's pessimism about the act of programming, the personal computer, and radical pedagogy make them useful figures for thinking though current discourses on what computation is and can be. In Computer Class, we read selections from Papert's Mindstorms, The Children's Machine, and The Connected Family, as well as Weizenbaum's Computer Power and Human Reason.

Full Computer Class 1 Syllabus

Seymour Papert: Things to Do With a Computer.

Seymour Papert: Things Not to Do with a Computer

Joseph Weizenbaum: Do not do things with a computer.

Background Reading