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Acknowledgments Let Them EatDataisthe outgrowth of many influences and personal experiences, which included encountering the perceptions of how computers are being viewed in cultures in South Africa, Asia,Mexico , and the indigenous cultures of the American Southwest. The question of whether the proponents of educational computing understood the broader educational and cultural implications first became a concern in the late 1980s as I watched the proliferation of computer education courses that failed to engage issues surrounding the most dominant characteristic of a computer: It is a cultural mediating and thus transforming technology. Concerns about the vision of a global culture based on computer-related technologies that continue to be promoted in books and through the media became more central as I began to learn how Third World writerswere questioning the Western approach to technological and economic development. My more long-standing focus of attention, which has been on writing about how the educational process reproduces the vii viii Acknowledgments cultural patterns that are exacerbating the ecological crisis, became a major source of motivation for writing a book that examines the linkages between computer-mediated learning and the spread of environmentally destructive cultural patterns and practices. But books never spring from the head of an autonomous thinker. Conversations with scholars and activists who share similar concerns , years of reading over a wide area of related topics, and conducting graduate seminars where ideas were questioned and refined, all had an important influence. The scholar-activists whose conversations and books have been especially useful include Fritjof Capra, Alan Drengson, Harold Glasser, Andrew Kimbrell, Jerry Mander, Helena Norberg-Hodge, George Sessions, Vandana Shiva, Charlene Spretnak, and Langdon Winner. The many opportunities to learn from them can be traced to the Foundation for Deep Ecology,which brought together on a fairly regular basis scholar-activists who are addressing global issues from a deep ecology perspective. Students in the doctoral specialization of Community and Environmental Renewal at Portland State University who have helped in the clarification of ideas include Bill Bigelow, Eric Brattain, Jeff Edmundson , Stephen Gilchrist, Shelley Simon, Andrea Smith, and Robyn Voetterl. The support given by my wife, Mary Katharine Bowers, has taken many forms, including suggestions for making parts of the analysis more lucid and sharing insights and perspectives on issues that I had overlooked. Also appreciated isthe awareness on the part ofBarbara Ras, executive editor of the University of Georgia Press, that the book addresses the growing concerns of many parents and citizens that have not been adequately examined in a public forum. Her encouragement and suggestions for improving the manuscript have been especially useful. Aspecial debt is owed to copyeditor Marcella Friel for suggesting changes that significantly improved the readability of the book. ...

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