Amy J. Ko : Searching for Justice in Programming Language Design
Le lien vers l’enregistrement se trouve ici (durée : 1 heure et 15 minutes).
Heure et date : le 21 février à 12h30
Lieu : PK-4610 et Zoom
Conférencière : Amy J. Ko (University of Washington)
Titre : Searching for Justice in Programming Language Design
Abstract :
From its earliest days, computing has been an eclectic project of capitalism, war, colonialism, and white supremacy. Its central Western values of utility, efficiency, rationality, and mathematical beauty have enabled sweeping changes to culture and communication, but also amplified some of the worst parts of these oppressive systems. At the heart of many of these forces are programming languages, which deeply embed many assumptions about their users: English fluency, normative ability, and obsession with speed. These assumptions create a culture of computing that structurally excludes vast parts of humanity. In this talk, I describe my recent nascent efforts to design the opposite: a programming language and platform that seeks to be global, accessible, playful, and simple, embracing all of humanity’s natural languages and abilities, while prioritizing simplicity and play over speed and seriousness. Throughout, I’ll demonstrate these gestures toward programming language justice, pointing to alternative visions for how we might invite everyone to compute.
Biographie : Amy J. Ko is a Professor at the University of Washington Information School and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering (courtesy). She directs the Code & Cognition Lab, where she and her students study computing education, human-computer interaction, and humanity’s individual and collective struggle to understand computing and harness it for creativity, equity, and justice. With her collaborators, she’s invented many tools and programming languages to support debugging, program understanding, reuse, and learning; founded and sold a venture-backed startup; developed numerous ways to weave equity and justice into computing education pedagogy, culture, and technology; and impacted local, state, and federal K-12 CS education policy through community organizing and advocacy. Her work spans more than 130 peer-reviewed publications, with 19 receiving paper awards and 4 receiving most influential paper awards. She is an ACM Distinguished Member and a member SIGCHI Academy, for her substantial contributions to the field of human-computer interaction, computing education, and software engineering. She received her Ph.D. at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008, and degrees in Computer Science and Psychology with Honors from Oregon State University in 2002.
https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/
