Becoming a Citizen of the Information Age

In this dissertation I trace the formation of citizens of the information age by

comparing visions and practices to make children and the general public computer literate

or cultured in the United States, France, and the Soviet Union. Computer literacy and

computer culture programs in these three countries began in the early 1970s as efforts to

adapt people to life in the information society as it was envisioned by scholars, thinkers,

and practitioners in each cultural and sociopolitical context. The dissertation focuses on

the ideas and influence of three individuals who played formative roles in propelling

computer education initiatives in each country: Seymour Papert in the United States,

Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber in France, and Andrei Ershov in the Soviet Union.

According to these pioneers, to become computer literate or computer cultured meant

more than developing computer skills or learning how to passively use the personal

computer. Each envisioned a distinctive way of incorporating the machine into the

individual human's ways of thinking and being-as a cognitive enhancement in the

United States, as a culture in France, and as a partner in the Soviet Union. The resulting

human-computer hybrids all demanded what I call a playful relationship to the personal

computer, that is, a domain of free and unstructured, exploratory creativity. I trace the

realization of these human-computer hybrids from their origins in the visions of a few

pioneers to their embedding in particular hardware, software, and educational curricula,