[1]
My sense is that few of those items would invoke much, beyond ones like
"AC/DC," which many black and Hispanic children would probably
recognize as a heavy-metal rock group of the mid-1980s. By AC/DC, I
take Hirsch to be referring to its electrical connotations. It is
unlikely that he seeks the popular-culture answer that it means
bisexual.
[2]
In his forward to Greimas's work On Meaning, Fredric Jameson
notes that Greimas's work is so complex and so dense that it is
difficult to absorb as a whole. Jameson mentions that his own way of
dealing with the work is to read it for what he finds useful and of
value and to leave what he doesn't understand at the moment for the
next time he returns to the text. The works examined in this section,
those of Paolo Freire, Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole, Shirley Brice
Heath and Olga Vasquez, are very sophisticated, too sophisticated to be
able to do them justice in a few paragraphs or pages of summary.
Instead the elements of those works that bear directly on the argument
under construction here will be mined and a fuller understanding of
this body of work left to the reader at his or her own leisure.
[3]
Many of these goals are completely unrealistic. I.e.,
"Compare computer processing and storage capabilities to the
human brain, listing some general similarities and differences.
(Johnson, David, et. al., 1980, p.93 -italics in original)
[4]
The Johnson, Anderson, Hansen and Klassen article discussed above,
"Computer Literacy - What is it?" lists so many different goals and
objectives that it falls into each of the following categories. in the
interests of preserving space I have eliminated their names from the
sources, but they could be listed in each of the categories.
[5]
This is particularly limited in that it doesn't imply or specify any
ability to distinguish those needs in the first place or any ability to
use computers to investigate and establish those needs.
[6]
CAI = Computer Aided Instruction -mechanistic drill and practice
software that has been proven to improve students' scores on standard
tests (cf. Tonacci 1989, "Back to Basics"). There is little proof
that these systems allow anything more than this, besides helping
schools replace teachers with machinery
[7]
In probably the broadest set of expectations elaborated anywhere
about what computer literacy might mean for the society at large,
Deringer and Molnar state the objectives of a 1980 National Science
Foundation conference on computer literacy. They begin by noting that
the "conference agreed that there [was] a national need for 'computer
literacy' [and agreed] that we are experiencing a growing national
problem" (Deringer and Molnar 1982, p.4). Their objectives are equally
broad and general. To whit: "Due to the decline in national
productivity, the increase in foreign trade competition, and national
defense and safety needs, computers have emerged as the major force for
ameliorating these conditions. Consequently, the shortage of computer
specialists and knowledge workers has raised the problem of computer
literacy to the level of a national crisis" (Deringer and Molnar 1982,
p.4).
[8]
It is interesting to note that it took longer to work through the
indexes than it did to read all the useful articles listed.
[9]
This is someone who obviously never worked with an Apple ][+ or an
early Unix box, neither of which was known for being particularly
consistent. Lately I have also wished that I could sit them in front
of the word processing package I am using to write this paper. At odd
moments it has taken to telling me, in a screen-wide, reverse video
line at the bottom of the screen:
[10]
Raymond Williams notes how modern mass media have changed the
function of drama in modern society from that of a center for political
discussion to that where the activity takes place on the screen and the
spectator is left with: "Fiction; acting; idle dreaming and vicarious
spectacle; the simultaneous satisfaction of sloth and appetite;
distraction from distraction by distraction" (Williams 1975 p.7).
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