Oh The Technologies, They Are A Changin’

If there is anything constant about today’s technological environment, it is the progressive morphing of device interfaces that are faster, smaller, and increasingly harder to distinguish from our natural environment or avoid by choice. The first two of these features are explained by Moore’s law, named after former Intel CEO Gordon Moore, whose theorem predicts the doubling rate of transistors on a microchip. The last feature is a function of ubiquitous computing and its various integrations into the many surfaces and processes of our everyday lives (Greenfield, 2006). Together, they translate into extensions of our human faculties and environment that are so fantastic they would astound even Jules Vern. The purpose of this new publication, Tetrad Illuminations, is to provide analyses of cutting edge technologies that are shaping our media ecology (McLuhan & Powers, 1989; Negroponte, 1995; O’Brien, 2010; Postman, 1992; 1999).

What often gets overlooked in our eagerness to adopt the latest and greatest gadget, device, or gizmo is that technologies have generational attachments and implications for socio-economic class, social relationships, and power relations. Those transformations then form a new media ecology (Postman, 1992). What do I mean by that? A historical example will help illustrate.

Before the printing press was developed, books were very expensive to produce and only the very wealthy and elite possessed them. They were not a significant part of the educational process in most learning spaces (prior to 1451). Most learning was oral/aural (discussion, recitation, lecture, performance). To get an idea of what the ancient Greek academies felt like read some of Plato’s discourses involving Socrates.

When books were introduced into the learning space, there was a suspicious reaction to the new technology’s potentially negative effect on learning. Had there been no resistance, the integration of books into education might have happened earlier than it did, and likewise the development of printing itself, but there is always a socio-political side to technology and invention. Media Scholar Lewis Mumford identified printing as the most impactful technological invention on civilization, second only to the clock (Mumford, 2007). In the case of printing, Mumford observes, there was a form of slavery that needed to be overcome; a case of the information haves and have-nots. Since books, and consequently the knowledge they represented, were the possession of the ruling elite, society had to be made ready for the equalizing effect of print. Mass literacy meant a loss of power for the elite.

Similar to the invention of books with their inherent individualizing effect and leveling of the knowledge playing field, I think the incorporation of electronic technology in the learning space today is encountering similar adoption resistance as did books in the early Renaissance. The way we archive and access information is changing. With that, devices and their availability to users will change, and in a cascading effect, the methods of education will change. These are very difficult transitions at both the individual and institutional level. Similar to the introduction of books, some people question the “increased” use of technology in classroom settings today. But the truth is we’ve just moved away from the technologies of paper, pencils, and black/whiteboards to electronically networked devices — and this change is creating a new media-ecology in the classroom.

The benefits are many, as are the drawbacks. The trick is to deploy and employ the current technologies in ways that facilitate and enhance learning in our classrooms. It is increasingly important for educators to make a methodological shift in the classroom from a transmission model to a constructivist model where students are engaged co-creators of knowledge in the learning space. Learning in today’s network-enhanced classroom needs to become less of a product and more of a process, less teacher-centered and more learner-centered (Young, 2008). The benefits lie primarily in the notion of synergy and innovation. Students today come to the classroom ready to explore, test, and innovate using networked technologies in hyper-linked (non-sequential) ways that just weren’t possible with previous classroom technologies.

The drawback is that they also come to the classroom with a unique ability to “disconnect” when they become bored or distracted (O’Brien, 2010; Turkle, 2011; 2015). And unfortunately today’s networked technologies provide many forms of distraction. There also may be an internal resistance to turning social media toward learning applications that is a byproduct of the medium itself, in that an entire generation has learned to interact with social media in a certain way and for certain purposes. If a generation has been trained to see social media as entertainment, it may be very difficult to think of it as something with which we can “learn” (McLuhan, 1964/1994). Again, the trick is to take the attractive “social” aspects of these technologies and translate them into meaningful learning tools.

For reasons like these it is important to avoid getting swept away in the technological tide without thoughtfully addressing a technology’s potential effects (like impacting instructional design). Some of the resistance to new technology is a result of generational media dependencies, but other reasons for caution relate to the need for a sufficient analysis and conversation to figure out how to productively weave new technologies into the existing ecological system. And if the devices aren’t being incorporated thoughtfully or meaningfully, it leaves them wide open for negative repercussions (like distraction).

Technology users need to realize the effect of their technology adoption/use on their own living, learning and relating processes. There is a great deal of evidence on how networked technologies have affected everything from our attention spans to how we connect with each other (Johnson, 2005; Taffel, 2006; Turkle, 2015). In the classroom for example, students today are becoming proactive content seekers and creators, responsible for their own and each other’s learning while teachers are increasingly filling the roles of designer, moderator, and mentor. The resulting dynamic, open, and flexible collaboration in the classroom is an exciting possibility, however significant change in learning models can be met with resistance from the dominant operating system (like moving from MS Windows to Linux) as well as from the late majority adopters within the digital generation itself (Barnes, 2008).

One key area of change has to do with what a student is responsible for ‘knowing’ versus only being able to access, or look up. I was recently startled by a student’s claim that “There is no need for memorization of the First Amendment.” What!? Of course there is. “No,” said the student, “if I need to know anything about it I can just Google it.” The ecological effect of this statement impacts the very nature of the relationship between knowledge and perspective — viz., what is inside of you when you speak, make decisions and act on choices. Might the lack of “substance” in our knowledge account for the current shallowness of political rhetoric in the public at large?

The question becomes, if we only “access” (interpret that as “read”) information when we have a question or an emergency, will it have any effect on our ideals and behaviors? But the student might say, “yah, but I can look it up any time I want” on an as-needed basis. But, is that the same thing? Having the knowledge of a principle or law inside your mind in a way that you can instantly recall on a moment’s notice will shape your thoughts and actions in ways that an “access as needed” approach will not. I think the same can be argued for other historical, artistic, and cultural knowledge.

If we lose sight of history, ethics, culture, shalom, and the distinction between truth and falsehood, perhaps we will not be prepared to identify and/or refute despots that endorse bigotry, elitism, xenophobia, and hatred (Huxley, 1932; Schultze, 2002). History might also point out that if we don’t know what our rights are, we might not know when someone is violating them (or taking them away completely)!

A number of authors have described the subtle sacrifices our electronic technologies are exacting on the ways in which we encounter information (Carr, 2011; Ellul, 1964; Quan-Haase, 2016). Little by little, people are finding they only conduct a deep dive and become expert when they find a “use” for particular information. Even then, our cognitive abilities to focus and sustain lengthy dives appear to be shortening. The fundamental flaw in the as-needed logic is that the “value” of information becomes subjective and specialized, and once done, we lose the ability to critique anything outside of our self-imposed interest boundary. If we buy in to the complete subjectivism of knowledge, then we have opened the door to all manner of abuse (cf., Lewis, 1943/2009; Ong, 1982). To some extent, a liberal education gives you the foundation for citizenship — a person able to function and contribute to a polity (a society that has an organized system of governance as opposed to anarchy).

Perhaps I have hyperbolized the significance of our technology’s impacts on our state-of-being, though I suspect not. If, as media scholar Marshal McLuhan was fond of pointing out, “the medium is the message,” then it behooves us to decipher the message before we let the medium through the door.

References

Barnes, S. B. (2008). Understanding Social Media from the Media Ecological Perspective. In E. A. Konjin, S. Utz, M. Tanis & S. B. Barnes (Eds.), Mediated Interpersonal Communication (pp. 14–33). New York: Routledge.

Carr, Nicholas (2011). The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our brains. London: W.W. Norton.

Ellul, Jacques (1964). The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books.

Greenfield, Adam (2006). Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing. Berkeley, CA: New Riders Press.

Huxley, Aldous (1932). Brave New World. New York: Harper.

Johnson, Steven (2005). Everything Bad is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture is Actually Making Us Smarter. New York: Riverhead Books.

Lewis, C.S. (1943/2009). The Abolition of Man. HarperCollins Publishers.

McLuhan, M. (1964/1994). Understanding Media: The extensions of man. The MIT Press.

McLuhan, M., & Powers, B. (1989). The Global Village: Transformations in world life and media in the 21st century. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Mumford, L. (2007). The Invention of Printing. In D. Crowley & P. Heyer (Eds.), Communication in History: Technology, culture, society, 5th ed. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Negroponte, Nicholas (1995). Being Digital. New York: Vintage Books.

O’Brien, E. (2010). Media Ecological Effects. University of Rochester Department of Psychiatry.

Ong, Walter (1982). Orality and Literacy. London: Routledge.

Postman, Neil (1999). Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future. New York: Vintage Books.

Postman, Neil (1992). Technopoly: the surrender of culture to technology. New York: Vintage Books.

Quan-Haase, Anabel (2016). Technology and Society: Social Networks, Power, and Inequality. Ontario, Canada: Oxford University Press.

Schultze, Q. (2002). Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living virtuously in the information age. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.

Taffel, R. (2006). SPECIAL FEATURE — 21ST-CENTURY TEENS — THE DIVIDED SELF — Media-saturated millennium kids live in a disconnected world that spawns intense inner fragmentation. If we are to help them heal these splits, we need to move beyond the constraints imposed by our business-as-usual methods. Psychotherapy networker., 30(4), 32.

Turkle, Sherry (2011). Alone Together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. New York: Basic Books. (available for download via Amazon).

Turkle, Sherry. (2015). Reclaiming Conversation: The power of talk in a digital age. Penguin Press.

Young, J. R. (2008). LINKED IN WITH Chronicle of Higher Education (Vol. 54, pp. A22-A22): Chronicle of Higher Education.