Programming — the Second Literacy: What Kind of Information Age?

This presentation questions the assumptions behind America-centered narratives of the global Information Age and sketches a late socialist vision of the Information Society by analyzing the concept of “programming, the second literacy” developed by the Soviet programmer Andrei Ershov. At the heart of this concept is a preoccupation with the nature of the interaction between human and machine. I trace the concept's origin to Ershov's international networks and his efforts to define the identity and social role of the programmer, a new Cold War professional. As a slogan behind the Soviet education reform that introduced compulsory informatics classes in 1985, the concept reveals the connections and tensions between the expert's philosophy of information, perestroika techno-politics, and the late Soviet quest for technological modernity. My study represents a radical reappraisal of the familiar failure narrative associated with Soviet computing in general and the 1985 reform in particular. It answers Michael Mahoney's call for “computing histories” and embraces the challenges of integrating the history of software. A case study of a Soviet concept grounded in the transnational Cold War perspective, this talk will also suggest unexpected continuities between the Soviet and present day experiences with information technology.
 
Ksenia Tatarchenko is a lecturer at the Global Studies Institute, Geneva University, specializing in the history of Russian science and technology. She has held positions as a visiting Assistant Professor of History at NYU Shanghai and a post-doctoral fellow at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. from the History of Science Program, History Department, Princeton University (2013), and an M.A. in history from University Paris-Sorbonne (2006).