Software Source Code as Heritage: The UNESCO – Inria Paris Call (2018)
An eminent group of international experts met upon invitation of UNESCO and Inria in November 2018 at UNESCO’s Headquarters to discuss software preservation. Emerging from this meeting is the Paris Call: Software Source Code as Heritage for Sustainable Development. The Call argues for greater access to software source code in order to ensure that citizens, and young people in particular, are empowered with sufficient digital skills and literacy to fully participate in today’s digital society. The Paris Call becomes a strong basis to imagine and build new actions around the preservation of the code, and sustain Free and Open Source Software communities through the exchange of the knowledge now archived as part of the Software Heritage Initiative.
Pope Francis calls on students around the world to learn computer science (2019)
Pope Francis tapped his way into computer history by joining three young women from around the world to contribute a line of code to an app aimed at promoting United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Seattle entrepreneur and Code.org co-founder Hadi Partovi was on hand to present the event as part of a project called “Programming for Peace.” The event, organized by the Pope’s foundation, Scholas Occurrentes, in Vatican City, featured the Pope calling on students around the world to learn computer science and to use their creativity for the common good. And it was reportedly the first time a Pope had ever written code
Obama announces a new Computer Science Education initiative (2013)
Computer Science for All is the President Obama’s initiative to empower all American students from kindergarten through high school to learn computer science and be equipped with the computational thinking skills they need to be creators in the digital economy, not just consumers, and to be active citizens in our technology-driven world.