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Today nearly everyone is certain that schools and universities should teach students about computers, but exactly what they should teach isn't so clear. The ideal of computer literacy, of an empowering relationship with the computer, has changed dramatically since educators and their critics first began worrying about making Americans computer literate two decades ago. Originally, the goal was teaching students how computers worked and how to write programs; if students could understand what was going on "inside" the computer, they would have mastery over it. Now the goal is to teach students how to use computer applications, on the premise that if they can work with the computer, they can forget what's inside and still be masters of the technology. But is that enough? And might it be too much in some fields of education where using computers is almost too easy a substitute for hands-on learning?It seems reasonable to keep the programming/ appplication boundary in the curriculum, precisely to exercise the 'levels of consciousness.' SInce they operate in the same digital medium, intrinsic differences are few, and their synthesis (that is, acquiring the pov from which one could see 'both sides now') would be eminently practical.
I am convinced that a couple of years of regular intermediation literally made me much smarter. I think the part of it that made me the most smarter was intermediating on the formation of analogies. As I wrote out my thoughts on a variety of topics in my notebook, I would often notice analogies between ideas that I had never connected together before, and even if the analogies seemed pointless I always wrote them out and followed through all of the suggestions that each analogous thought would make for the line of thinking represented by the other.
-- Phil Agre