Using fiction as a vehicle for discussing technology

May 6, 2026

How might you use fiction as a vehicle for teaching computational thinking? Here are some ideas.

Read Asimov's "The Machine That Won the War", summarise it for your students, and then discuss in class.
Represent a story or poem as a flowchart. The plot diagram of The Machine That Won the War is a nice example.
Read my article F is for Flash Fiction.
Read Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" summarise it for your students, and ask them to design a program or at least an algorithm to represent what is going on.
Look at Asimov's Laws of Robotics.
Visit or revisit The dialogue between the astronaut and Hal, the all-powerful computer, in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Enjoy!

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