Overview
How the theoretical tools of literacy help us understand programming in its historical, social and conceptual contexts.The message from educators, the tech community, and even politicians is clear- everyone should learn to code. To emphasize the universality and importance of computer programming, promoters of coding for everyone often invoke the concept of ""literacy,"" drawing parallels between reading and writing code and reading and writing text. In this book, Annette Vee examines the coding-as-literacy analogy and argues that it can be an apt rhetorical frame. The theoretical tools of literacy help us understand programming beyond a technical level, and in its historical, social, and conceptual contexts. Viewing programming from the perspective of literacy and literacy from the perspective of programming, she argues, shifts our understandings of both. Computer programming becomes part of an array of communication skills important in everyday life, and literacy, augmented by programming, becomes more capacious. Vee examines the ways that programming is linked with literacy in coding literacy campaigns, considering the ideologies that accompany this coupling, and she looks at how both writing and programming encode and distribute information. She explores historical parallels between writing and programming, using the evolution of mass textual literacy to shed light on the trajectory of code from military and government infrastructure to large-scale businesses to personal use. Writing and coding were institutionalized, domesticated, and then established as a basis for literacy. Just as societies demonstrated a ""literate mentality"" regardless of the literate status of individuals, Vee argues, a ""computational mentality"" is now emerging even though coding is still a specialized skill.
Full Product Details
Author: Annette Vee (Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh) ,
Matthew Fuller (David Gee Reader in Digital Media, Goldsmiths College, University of London) ,
Lev Manovich (City University of New York) ,
Noah Wardrip-Fruin (Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, University of California Santa Cruz)
Publisher: MIT Press Ltd
Imprint: MIT Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 1.90cm
, Length: 22.90cm
ISBN: 9780262036245
ISBN 10: 026203624
Pages: 376
Publication Date: 28 July 2017
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: To order
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Author Information
Annette Vee is Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
