Information Technology and Education: Computer Criticism vs. Technocentric Thinking

1: one who expresses a reasoned opinion on any matter involving a judgment of its truth value or righteousness, an appreciation of its beauty or techniques, or an interpretation... 2: one given to harsh or captious judgment.-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary ...the critic may on occasion be called upon to condemn the second rate and expose the fraudulent: though that duty is secondary to the duty of discriminating praise of what is praiseworthy. In the beginning, criticism is simple. Do I like it? My judgment is personal and intuitive. I answer to myself alone, and consider only the immediate object of my attention. Soon, however, something more is needed; taste must be justified. Others challenge our opinions and counter with their own, and even personal development eventually requires us to grapple with our reasons. The LOGO community faces the challenge of finding a voice for public dialogue. Where do we look? There is no shortage of models. The education establishment offers the notion of evaluation. Educational psychologists offer the notion of controlled experiment. The computer magazines have developed the idiom of product review. Philosophical tradition suggests inquiry into the essential nature of computation. Each of these has intellectual value in its proper place. I shall argue that this proper place is a conservative context where change is small, slow, and superficial. The crucial experiment, to take one example, is based on a concept of changing a single factor in a complex situation while keeping everything else the same. I shall argue that this is radically incompatible with the enterprise of rebuilding an education system in which nothing shall be the same. I would like to propose a very different model for thinking about the dialogue between LOGO and the world. This model is a department of thought that adopts the adjective "critical" in Webster's first sense. I am proposing a genre of writing one could call "computer criticism" by