The Paradox of Computers

Abstract

Depending on their context and their purposes, computers have a bewildering variety of characteristics and effects. Their power is matched only by their frailty. The highly competitive ethos in the computer industry sits oddly beside the claim that the use of computers encourages collaborative and cooperative patterns of work. And the grandeur of visions of how computers may transform the ways in which we think and learn becomes ironic in the light of the banal and trivial realities of many of the computer programs currently available. Paradoxical characteristics and effects such as these shape how community educators and adult learners perceive computers and determine the quality and quantity of the contribution that computers can make to adult learning and community development.

“To see a world in a grain of sand…” William Blake, Auguries of Innocence.