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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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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.

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