Panel Statement 

Panel: Software Literacy and Creative Industries

Although workers in academia are fluent in digital technologies at an email, database, spread-sheet level, they remain largely illiterate to languages of code, and to the broader conceptual aspects of the networked world. Outside of studies in computer science, matters of code, the influence of computational thinking and the extent to which algorithms shape the perceptions and conditions of reality, remain largely untaught. Technological literacies that are now central to every field of social, political, and economic import are being ignored by the academy. As a result, universities that have been long celebrated as institutions to instruct and celebrate literacy are themselves becoming increasingly illiterate. Languages of code, and their broader implications need to be taught in universities, but prior that, they must be taught to the universities. Beyond academic buzz terms of future-readiness and innovation, in order to remain fundamentally relevant and rhetorically coherent, the academy must catch-up to the present.

• Murray Mckeich, RMIT University, Australia

Full text (PDF)  p. 406-407