Do computers foster cultural diversity? Ecological sustainability?
In our age of high-tech euphoria we seem content to leave tough
questions like these to the experts. That dangerous inclination is
at the heart of this important examination of the commercial and
educational trends that have left us so uncritically optimistic
about global computing.
Contrary to the attitudes that have been marketed and taught to
us, says C. A. Bowers, the fact is that computers operate on a set
of Western cultural assumptions and a market economy that drives
consumption. Our indoctrination includes the view of global
computing innovations as inevitable and on a par with social
progress--a perspective dismayingly suggestive of the mindset that
engendered the vast cultural and ecological disruptions of the
industrial revolution and world colonialism.
In "Let Them Eat Data" Bowers discusses important issues that
have fallen into the gap between our perceptions and the realities
of global computing, including the misuse of the theory of
evolution to justify and legitimate the global spread of computers,
and the ecological and cultural implications of unmooring knowledge
from its local contexts as it is digitized, commodified, and
packaged for global consumption. He also suggests ways that
educators can help us think more critically about technology.
"Let Them Eat Data" is essential reading if we are to begin
democratizing technological decisions, conserving true cultural
diversity and intergenerational forms of knowledge, and living
within the limits and possibilities of the earth's natural
systems.
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