2007-11-15
Robots' Allure: Can It Remedy What Ails Computer Science?
Interesting piece in Science:
Robots' Allure: Can It Remedy What Ails Computer Science? by Benjamin Lester
I have always thought that the lack of diversity in computing has nothing to do with gender and race, but rather that it attracts students that enjoy what most other people find boring: abstract algorithms. Even though computing seems to attract mostly white men, those who get attracted are not by far prototypical representatives of a general class of "white men"---if it exists in some social sense (it does not seem to exist unequivically genetically). Increasing diversity probably would require making the field more attractive to everyone. I think robotics is one way to make it appealing (as the article suggests), but clearly not the only one. Ultimately, information technology needs to deal with more palpable things.
Robots' Allure: Can It Remedy What Ails Computer Science? by Benjamin Lester
I have always thought that the lack of diversity in computing has nothing to do with gender and race, but rather that it attracts students that enjoy what most other people find boring: abstract algorithms. Even though computing seems to attract mostly white men, those who get attracted are not by far prototypical representatives of a general class of "white men"---if it exists in some social sense (it does not seem to exist unequivically genetically). Increasing diversity probably would require making the field more attractive to everyone. I think robotics is one way to make it appealing (as the article suggests), but clearly not the only one. Ultimately, information technology needs to deal with more palpable things.
# posted by Luis Rocha @ 22:42 
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