Computational Literacies Lab

0001 Impacts of computing

Computing affects people through the settings it enters, the institutions that adopt it, the rules that govern it, and the choices of the people who build and use it, and this part takes those up in an order where each section prepares the next. It begins descriptively: 0001.a follows computing through widening settings, from a classroom to a whole society, and 0001.b asks what those technologies change for individuals, institutions, and societies, and how society shapes them in return. The next sections ask who is served well and who is not. Section 0001.c weighs who gains and who pays, 0001.d looks at what happens when computer systems help make decisions about people, and 0001.e turns to the specific design features that let people with disabilities use a product at all. Those concerns lead to the question of how a society responds, first through binding rules in 0001.f (laws, licenses, and policies, along with the technical and human measures that carry them out) and then through ethics in 0001.g, which takes up what the rules leave unsettled. The last two sections come down to individual people: 0001.h covers the habits that keep someone safe and responsible as a user, and 0001.i describes the people who work in computing, what they do, and how they got there, which is knowledge your students will ask you for.