Computing 2002: democracy, education, and the future

C omputing has changed dramatically during my thir ty-two years in the field. In education, computer science has grown from the 1970s-style small university department that newly sprouted from mathematics or electrical engineering and had an inferiority complex to the current strong collection of fields that impact every element of science, engineering, business, and even humanities. In industry, a time of data-processing departments that were neither understood nor trusted by executives has given way to an era in which the CIO is one of the most important figures in every company. Computer scientists, computer engineers, information technologists, and their collective products have grown and changed in quantity, quality, and nature. Every eighteen months we generate more data than has been generated in all human history, and in a few years our students will be able to have every book they will ever read on their laptops and the Library o f Congress on a desktop. We're on the verge o f the Age of Ubiquitous Computing, but we still cannot imagine what tools or jobs will be available for our students in the near future or what they will create later, in the middle of their careers. In the first decade of this new century, it should become apparent to everyone that the computing and information fields, broadly defined, will have a profound impact on every element o f every person's life. This will go far beyond the PC, the fancy phones, and the various gadgets that are available to the world 's middle class, and it will go beyond the grand uses of technology in business, government, and science that have seemed distant f rom individual citizens. Technology may well have as much impact on the future as world governments do: People 's political, social, economic, and personal lives will be affected dramatically and more than we now imagine, for in a global knowledge economy, those without knowledge and access to technology will be left behind. Exactly which technologies are created and what they are used for depend on who has the ability to influence them. At the moment, it is white, prosperous, technologically educated men who make most o f the decisions about the nature of technology, and this defines how technology affects the entire world population. That needs to change. It 's important that as we speed forward, deciding which of the myriad technology paths to take, all types of people who will be impacted are involved as innovators, developers, and users. Women and girls o f the world have been neither educated for computing nor served by computing. Globally, w o m e n ' s part icipation in computer science grew for a while, then dropped precipitously. Computing, science, engineering, and society will suffer i f this decline continues, because women have different perspectives on technology--what it 's important for, how it should be built, which projects should be funded, and so on. The fact that women are half o f the population but only a tiny percentage of technologists leaves them out o f the future. I f half of the people o f the world are left out, it is impossible to claim that technology is developed democratically. A diverse cross-section o f people who know about technology, including women, must be involved in government policy-making about technology. There must be ways to understand the technology as it is unfolding and a greater diversity of voices will maximize that opportunity. Policy will be made with or without student input, for example, but without it there is no way to assure that inventions are not misused. To create a positive future, to assure that women equally influence the future, computing education must change. As the field that is driving and affecting all other areas, we have a heavy responsibility to lead the development of new interdisciplinary and exciting systems of teaching that can draw and hold a diverse and representative new body of students. Our students must not only do a good or great job in computing, they must be prepared to understand computing as they enter or collaborate with other areas that will be critical around the world. The fact that middle and high schools do a bad job of interesting girls in computing does not leave college educators and administrators, legislators, and funders off the hook. The