|
Resumen
An organization like the Association for Computing Machinery, with a variety of publications, newsletters, interest groups, and conferences, provides an important forum for discussing the nature and changes of computing profession. Such discussions should, of course, go on continuously, but there will be particular periods of rapid social and technological change in which they are more necessary. A number of articles in the journal "Communications of the ACM" over the past few years suggest this is such a time. The purpose of this article is to contribute to the discussion from a Scandinavian perspective. The authors begin by presenting a framework for understanding their profession and for discussing possible changes. The framework offers competing conceptions in terms of professional focus, approach, and role. The authors then use the framework in an examination of the current discussion within the ACM. The cited articles, in spite of having different motivation and purpose, identify a need for professional changes in education, research and practice. But, the authors argue, the changes suggested are insufficient to meet the demands placed on their profession by the ongoing changes in technology and society. As a consequence, they propose a more radical position on the future of their profession, with technology in use as its foundation, and they outline a new curriculum for the education of computer professionals. INSETS: The Mechanistic and the Romantic Views; The Professional Focus of Computing; Professional Approaches; Professional Roles. |
