Computational Thinking

Joel Gethin Lewis

Lecture 0: Introduction

What I'm going to talk about now:

0. Introduce myself.
1. The aim of this course.

0. Introduce myself.

• Born in London, grew up in Wales on a mountain.
• BSc in Maths and Computer Science at Imperial, MA in Interaction Design at Royal College of Art.
• One year at Fabrica.
• Three years at UnitedVisualArtists.
• Eight years at Hellicar&Lewis.
• Three years of visiting lecturing at CSM MA Narrative Environments and RCA Visual Communication and working on my own projects.
• One year as head lecturer on the Diploma in Creative Computing at the Creative Computing Institute. One year as the Interactive Creative Director of Universal Everything.
• Currently researching Solar-powered mesh based computing and global-scale open source Augmented Reality sculpture.

1. The aim of this course.

• Brain exploding and coding.
• I'm going to reference Wikipedia a lot in this course, because I think it's one of the best things that humanity has ever made, and I wish I'd had it when I was young. Also it's free - I hated it when teachers would reference books that I couldn't afford when I was at university.

1. The aim of this course (continued)

• There is no homework for this course. I only ask that you pay attention and ask questions if you have them. I'd really encourage you to take the time to watch the films and read the references I put up. Think of them as cheat codes to get you to the next level quicker than I did.
• To introduce lots of interesting concepts from many areas so that you know the magic word to search for if you want to know more. Obfuscation is a BIG problem.
• Not to teach you how to code, but to start you on that path and point you in the right direction.
• Not to teach the history of art, computing or graphic design.

1. The aim of this course (continued).

• To teach you see problems at many levels (abstraction), break down problems (decomposition), find the order in them (pattern recognition), make solutions using a series of steps (algorithms) and realise that you might be able to use that solution in lots of areas (generalisation).
• Most of all, to teach you to be autodidacts, and, as previously mentioned, to blow your mind at least once per lecture.
• First task: what is an autodidact?

Thanks!

• More about me: @joelgethinlewis
• Get in contact via: www.joelgethinlewis.com
• Website:
  https://jgl.github.io/ComputationalThinkingIntensiveSummer2020
• Today's slides:
  https://jgl.github.io/ComputationalThinkingIntensiveSummer2020/lecture0.html