Kirschenbaum’s article plays with this idea of an inserted importance on future generations’ literacy in computer languages and urges others to see the advantages of additional knowledge in technology. While I certainly don’t agree with using a computer language as a replacement to learn more traditional forms of languages, I do believe in his claim for students to be equipped with some form of CS comprehension.
Our students will need to become more at ease reading (and writing) back and forth across the boundaries between natural and artificial languages. Such an education is essential if we are to cultivate critically informed citizens — not just because computers offer new worlds to explore, but because they offer endless vistas in which to see our own world reflected.
Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. Hello Worlds (why humanities students should learn to program)
In terms of literature, I see Digital Humanities not as a way to bury the traditional forms of the past, but as a way to open up doors to deepen our understanding of it. The computer allows us to study literary pieces in ways not previously done before. For example, distant reading is conducted through the computer and can analyze hundreds of pieces of writing for the user almost instantly. In the past, scholars did not have this option for analysis and would not be able to research a subject in such a large scale. Computer language has opened up the discourse in a way that can allow us to ask new questions we would not have been able to before. This kind of technology should not be seen as a way of ruining history, but rather, as a way to better understand it.
With the world moving towards a more tech-savvy society, understanding computer languages at least at the most basic level seems understandable. I feel that everyone does not need to have extensive knowledge in the field but should know how it works, seeing as to how the vast majority of the population now goes through life with the companionship of either phone, computer, or both. Incorporating this into standard lower education could effectively help spread the awareness of these artificial languages in a neutral way and ease the population into an important discourse we are already immersed in.
2 replies on “Embracing the New World”
I like that you brought up his proposition to replace a foreign language with programming. While reading his article, I asked my roommates what they thought about the matter and we had a long back and forth eventually coming to the conclusion that programming shouldn’t necessarily replace foreign languages, but it should be valued nonetheless.
I agree with both your claim that programming will open more doors in the future, but shouldn’t replace foreign languages. Foreign languages and programming offer completely different benefits, and neither one should replace the other.