Critical computational literacy: A call for the development of socially aware, ethically minded research within ACADIA

Abstract

As computational design matures and strives to move out of the studio/lab and into the real world, multiple dimensions of literacy, valuing the social, the political, and the ethical as well as the technical and the creative, must be acknowledged and supported. This paper evaluates the presence of research advancing socially aware, ethically minded issues currently found in ACADIA’s body of research and offers a strategy for shaping future work in this area. First, data from the CumInCAD index is used to provide a quantitative understanding of the degree to which these issues are represented in ACADIA’s history, with particular focus on the last decade. The paper goes on to articulate key offerings from the field of Software Studies to motivate and identify possible entry points for computational designers to further engage the social and ethical agencies tied to their work. Within this context, the paper argues that the set of lenses used to understand a project's digital components expands to include social, cultural, political, and ethical effects in addition to the technical realities of implementation. The analytical methods presented are intended to support a preliminary survey of ACADIA's literature and serve as a first step in identifying avenues for pursuing socially aware, ethically minded computational design research.