Learning computer science was hard. Unlearning computer science is harder.
Horatiu Halmaghi · eScholarship@McGill (McGill) · 2020
In order to succeed in a computer science (CS) education, CS students must learn how to translate reality into code, algorithms and other computational knowledges and practices. Samantha Breslin refers to these processes and practices as "rendering technical," a term which also encompasses how computational processes and practices shape reality in material and conceptual ways. Technical renderings create computational 'worlds' that enable computer scientists and CS students to frame their world in terms of problems and solutions that are computationally solvable. However, this is possible only by reducing or omitting the social, cultural, political, economic and historical aspects of reality. And once CS students learn how to render technical it becomes very difficult to think in ways that honour the full complexity of reality.This thesis is an autoethnography of some of my experiences in learning to think around the boundaries constructed by processes of rendering technical. My narrative revolves around a workshop/political intervention I organized and facilitated with/for friends and colleagues in tech to begin a conversation about the social and political challenges facing us as technologists. The workshop was a step in my journey from an uncritical CS student, to a computer programmer and computer programming educator becoming increasingly skeptical of Silicon Valley dogma, to a graduate student wishing to commit and contribute to the difficult and non-innocent work of undoing the social hierarchies and the interlocking oppressions produced by the relations of settler colonialism.Thick descriptions of the path I have walked, and of my experiences trying to invite other technologists to learn from and contribute to my learning, can offer insights for academic and activist educators interested in education for social change