Bruce-- It seems that we are in broad agreement on the part of your
note to which I was able to respond.
Just to add to a couple of aspects of your response. There is starting
to be work on critical analyses of the ethics of data base construction.
Joe Goguen here at UCSD (he has this very far out web site you can
reach through lchc.ucsd.edu/people/joe goguen) is someone who seems
to be able to both teach about the actual work of constructing such things
and to take a critical approach to the subject.
I spent yesterday in a group that has been doing research on the way
computer access/activities are distributed across social class and ethnic
lines in California. The picture is incredibly depressing. There are
really savage inequalities that go, so far as I can tell, all the way
down. That is, even in those diminishingly rare cases where poor/non-Anglo
kids have good access and trained teachers, they are getting a curriculum
that is preparing them to be data entry clerks while the rich kids
are being trained to be their bosses.
Locally, monies that might have gone to counter this trend (might have, not
would have) have been syphoned off by a phoney power crisis that has
depleted state coffer.
And, as a prior note today in response to Pedro indicates, people like me
are kept busy demonstrating the rocks dropped off of bridge ordinarily
fall.
mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 01 2001 - 01:02:21 PDT