Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation
Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation
Computer science education for preservice elementary school teachers
ACM SIGCUE Outlook
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Computers are not easy to understand. Even a computer scientist who devotes full time to the field cannot hope to fully comprehend the capabilities, limitations, applications, and implications of these machines. Joseph Weizenbaum, in his recent book Computer Power and Human Reason (1), suggests that most people “understand” computers via what he calls a computer metaphor. Weizenbaum quotes I. A. Richards, who says a metaphor is “fundamentally a borrowing between and intercourse of thoughts, a transaction between contexts.” That is, a metaphor is an analogy, a simile, a model; it is designed to relate the unknown to the known. There are many possible computer metaphors. Weizenbaum makes the point that many people have accepted one particular computer metaphor, and that it is a particularly misleading one. Computer scientists think of a computer as a machine that can carry out an effective procedure. The words procedure and effective procedure have meaning to non-computer scientists. They can see that humans carry out procedures, or that many activities of humans can be thought of as execution of effective procedures. The effective procedure computer metaphor thus leads to the belief that humans and computers are quite similar in their capabilities and in the way they solve problems.