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Testable computer myths

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Abstract

Our attitude to computers is informed by what the author calls the Computer Literacy Credo: a pervasive belief that working with computers requires—and creates—a new type of human mind. But there is no empirical evidence for this belief. The Computer Literacy Credo is grounded not in fact, but in a millennarial hope typical of Western culture that one day we will be able to bridge the schism between reason and passion, between the abstract and the concrete, between science and art, between the artificial and the natural, between responsibility and freedom. Our faith in computers reflects a rather new version of this old dream, in that this time the schism is healed by technological means.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Toronto, Canada

    Ivan Kalmar

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  1. Ivan Kalmar
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Kalmar, I. Testable computer myths. Interchange 18, 164–171 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01807068

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01807068

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