Ethnocomputing a Multicultural View on Computer Science
Piet Kommers, Erkki Sutinen · University of Twente Research Information · 2002
Despite all the hype around the dream of global society, the borders of the world have not disappeared. Rather, they have sharpened and changed their form from geographical to electronic frontiers. The prevailing Westernness of Computer Science is a major problem with the Computer Science education in developing countries. The students not only face a new subject, but also a fundamentally different philosophy and problem solving methods. In this article, we shall present a new member to the family of ethnosciences: ethnocomputing. Ethnocomputing challenges the prevailing way of thinking that in order to keep up with the West, other cultures have to adapt to Western ways of thinking. Relying on constructivist theories, we argue that the universal theories of computing take different forms in different cultures, and that the European view on abstract ideas of computing is culturally bound, too. Studying ethnocomputing – i.e. the computational ideas within a culture – may lead to new findings that can be used both in developing the Western view of Computer Science and in improving Computer Science education in foreign cultures.