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Week 2- From philosophical ideals to practicality.

The above is an image which I had included in one of my posts during IDEL and which seems to depict one of the risks of mass-produced educational programs through technology as it tends towards the ‘universalism’ described by Knox (2015) which can also give rise to the idea that the goal of education is the creation of rational thinking.

This week has brought me closer to the philosophies behind the use of technology. The hopeful views promoted by posthumanism and the ideals supporting transhumanist trends are thrilling, to say the least. On another note, there are still those, like Bayne(2015) who advocate towards the importance of the social aspect in the integration of technology within education.

Bayne’s(2015) view that ‘Reducing a field of such complexity and importance to the terminology and limitations of TEL’ while ‘positioning the ‘material’ and technological aspect as separate from and subordinate to social practice’, thereby negating the entirety of the human, is somehow vaguely reminiscent of some of Rosi Braidotti’s perspectives on technology in a posthuman world. The call for technology as a solution to various things (amongst them education) or as an upgrade for those who can afford it, often stops short from addressing other human maladies that could be caused by technologies such as poverty, the environmental damage caused by the same materials used for manufacturing technologies that are short-lived and ‘the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture’ (Harraway, 2007) while a general sense of alienation seems to permeate throughout.

While technology has, and still will, give much to the world, nothing can be gained by demolishing one world to build another. Although we do live in a world calibrated by digital time, in which the past seems long gone and the future always at hand it is only by bringing the fruits of the labour of those before us and merge them with the modern that a holistic ideal can be truly achieved.

Bayne, S., (2015). What’s the matter with ‘technology-enhanced learning’? Learning, Media and Technology, 40(1), pp. 5-20, https://doi.org.ezproxy. is.ed.uk/10.1080/17439884.2014.915851

Harraway, D. (2007). A Cyborg Manifesto. Bell, David; Kennedy, Barbara M (eds), The cybercultures reader pp.34-65, London: Routledge.

Knox, J., (2015). Critical Education and Digital Cultures. Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, pp. 1-6. Available at: https://doi.org/10.0.1007/978-981-287-532-7_124-1.

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Liked on YouTube: Rosi Braidotti, “Posthuman Knowledge”

Rosi Braidotti, “Posthuman Knowledge”
This lecture is built on the assumption that we are currently situated in a posthuman convergence between the Fourth industrial Age and the Sixth Extinction, between and advanced knowledge economy, which perpetuates patterns of discrimination and exclusion, and the threat of climate change devastation for both human and non-human entities. This convergence calls for a posthuman critical intervention in the form of intersecting critiques of western humanism on the one hand and of anthropocentrism on the other. The lecture discusses the impact of this convergence upon three major areas: the constitution of our subjectivity; the general production of knowledge and the practice of the academic Humanities. It addresses directly the following questions: what are the implications of the fact that knowledge production is no longer the prerogative of academic or formal scientific institutions like the university ? What are we to make of the sudden growth of new trans-discipinary hubs that call themselves: the Environmental and Digital Humanities, the Medical, Neural and Bio-Humanities, and also the Public, Civic and Global Humanities and so on ?

The lecture offers both a genealogy of these Critical Posthumanities and a theoretical framework by which to assess them.

More information about Braidotti’s forthcoming book, Posthuman Knowledge can be found on the publisher’s website.

See the GSD’s homepage for recently published a profile on Rosi.

Rosi Braidotti (B.A. Hons. Australian National University, 1978; PhD, Université de Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1981; Honorary Degrees Helsinki, 2007 and Linkoping, 2013; Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA), 2009; Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE), 2014; Knighthood in the order of the Netherlands Lion, 2005) is Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University, founding Director of the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University (2007-2016), founding professor of Gender Studies in the Humanities at Utrecht University (1988-2005) and the first scientific director of the Netherlands Research School of Women’s Studies. Since 2009 she has been an elected board member of CHCI (Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes). Her publications include: Patterns of Dissonance, 1991; Metamorphoses, 2002; Transpositions, 2006; La philosophie, lá où on ne l’attend pas, 2009; Nomadic Subjects, 1994 and 2011a; Nomadic Theory, 2011b; The Posthuman, 2013. She recently co-edited Conflicting Humanities (2016) with Paul Gilroy and The Posthuman Glossary (2018) with Maria Hlavajova, which are part of the bookseries “Theory” she edits for Bloomsbury Academic.

This lecture is co-organized by the Master in Design Studies Program and Womxn in Design.
via YouTube https://youtu.be/0CewnVzOg5w

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The posthumanist prophets of the 21st century.

While the posthuman is an area that has gathered quite a lot of contention, the views embraced by David Simpson and Rosi Braidotti give an idea of both ends of the spectrum of thought. David’s presentation is full of hope for a future that, given the right checks and controls will create an age of super-intelligent humans and machines that could also be characterized by super empathy. David manages to coalesce the idea that above-average intelligence (through examples like philanthropist Bill Gates) is proportional to a strong sense of empathy. While dubious in the sense that not all super-intelligent people are good empathisers, he presents the notion as the cherry on the cake, in an unavoidable race towards the super-intelligent organism. In other words, we need not fear AI, virtuality and transhumanism because they can be managed by good people.

Rosi Braidotti’s speech is several notches more complex as it is embedded in history and culture of humanism and post-humanism but she brings out a couple of enlightening points. Technologies are there for those that can afford them. While technologically-developed countries can afford to step-up their powers, third world countries are wallowing in the debris and garbage that comes from a society that generates huge amounts of electronic waste with poor communities that live on the edges of these digital waste favelas. (which reminded me of several films and animations like Blade Runner, WallE and the Matrix) . It is true that we are moving towards an age of posthumanism, yet the world has failed to control climate change, poverty, migration and a number of other maladies that have been discussed for the past decades.

VS