Attributed to Einstein...
Starting out...
Wondering about keeping a page to remind myself of my reading and thinking in the process of doing this MOOC. Is this overload? Is it really a good way of creating knowledge for myself?
Reading (core) week 1
Identifies technological determinism as being mono-causal and hence reductionist. eg. technology = tools and machines. often with phallic symbolism. Holism, in contrast, concerns itself with "the whole phenomenon and with complex interactions within it rather than with the study of isolated parts."
Reductionism and technological determinism are mechanistic explanations associated with positivism. Doesn't work when confronted with complexity of social reality. eg. We can turn machines off!
Reification - talking about things in the abstract - applies to technology as much as to society or any of its spheres - economic, social, cultural, educational, religious etc. Debate often polarized into technological factors or socio-cultural factors, and economic factors can be lumped with either end!
Technological autonomy - largely external = independent, self-determining, self-generating etc.
Technological animism, anthropomorphism
Technological imperative - notion of inevitability
Technology as neutral - instrumental perspective
Techno-evolution = progress - universal social change through fixed sequence of difft technological stages - developmental or historical determinism
Linguistic determinism - Sapir-Whorf hypothesis moderate Whorfism stresses a two-way r/ship between thought and language and also the importance of social context
Deterministic language: the impact of technological revolutions which lead to or brought about ineitable, far-reaching consequences - sooner than we think, whether we like it or not
Approaches that reject extreme technological determinism: human agency, social constraints, social opportunities, socil-cultural contexts, control, purposes, access, power
And Disney is in on the environmental dystopian act too
Is technology just a tool?
Adage: If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.
Dave Mulder's blogpost argues for a middle road with technology for learning.
Thoreau
We do not ride upon the railroad; it rides upon us.
Educational perspectives
Eek - really, this educational rhetoric is starting to sound disturbingly familiar! Ceraulo, S. (2002). Change comes hard:
higher education's view of online learning follows the familiar "pc pattern". eLearn Magazine, http://elearnmag.acm.org/archive.cfm?aid=566844
Warm fuzzies - the internet and communicative possibilities are a wonderful thing! Rheingold, H. (1996). For some, the Net is a lifeline. Brainstorms, http://www.well.com/~hlr/tomorrow/lifeline.html.
Higher education as commodity - makes me want to cry! Pedalling fear, crying wolf or giving early warning? Noble. D. (1998). Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education. First Monday 3/1. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/569/490
example of dystopian movie
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind."
Sign over photocopier
WARNING!
This machine is subject to breakdowns during periods of critical need.
A special circuit in the machine called a 'Critical Detector' senses
the operator's emotional state in terms of how desperate he or she is
to use the machine. The 'Critical Detector' then creates a malfunction
proportional to the desperation of the operator. Threatening the machine with violence only aggravates the situation. Likewise, attempts to use another machine may cause it to malfunction also. After all, they belong to the same union. Keep cool and say pleasant things to the machine. Nothing else seems to work.
Moral: Never let anything mechanical know you are in a hurry.
TINA
There Is No Alternative
quintessential determinism
http://vuible.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/471b625d9165c0e2ede43ae6d972d660.jpg
Ideas for artefact
Ideas that come out of engaging with course materials
Who has the power? We can turn the machines off. What stops us? How do we resist technological imperatives? Is the technological imperative a reality or a myth?
How does being able to identify determinism inform me? Other than resisting rhetoric about educational progress because of the potential of online learning. Pro and anti-technology can be equally deterministic. Where is the middle road? Is it one of wishy-washiness?
The danger of identifying affordances without recognising constraints.
This is the stuff that Unitec teachers' nightmares are made of! "Once faculty put their course material online, moreover, the knowledge and course design skill embodied in that material is taken out of their possession, transferred to the machinery and placed in the hands of the administration. The administration is now in a position to hire less skilled, and hence cheaper, workers to deliver the technologically prepackaged course." Noble. D. (1998). Digital Diploma Mills: The Automation of Higher Education. First Monday 3/1. http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/569/490
Cost of institutional technologies - disquieting?!
How people feel about technology
Technological determinists
Marshall McLuhan "The medium is the message"
? Karl Marx
Technocentrism
- Benjamin Franklin "Man is a tool-using animal"
- Thomas Carlyle added "Without tools he is nothing; with them he is all"
Reification - treating a abstraction as a material thing - to thingify, also technological autonomy
- Jacques Ellul - 'technique has become autonomous'
- Heidegger - technology as a monolithic phenomenon
- Dickens, Emerson, William Morris, Mark Twain, George Orwell etc etc.
Technology is not neutral
- John Culkin "we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us"
The Frankenstein Syndrome:Neil Postman 1983
"One creates a machine for a particular and limited purpose. But once the machine is built, we discover, always to our surpise - that it has ideas of its own; that it is quite capable not only of changing our habits but... of changing our habits of mind."