Technocultural education

Abstract

In this essay I try to describe the development of a traditional liberal education into a technological liberal one. I propose that we start by dropping the classical oppositions between man and animal, and man and machine; that we stop pitting morality against technology and rhetoric; and that we do away with the idea that ICT in our schools will necessarily tear the fabric of education apart. We should rather try and re-describe the idea of an unencumbered and independent self in terms of relational concepts, like the cyborg or more radically: like the self as interface. John Dewey led the way to this view a century ago, by coining the word intelligence as the name of educative interactions between man, animal and machine. The self as interface is a self of differences rather than identities. But that idea does not do away with our emplaced body, or our personal sense of self and identity. In the postmodern world, the cyborg is a migrant with the ability to interpret signs, understand symbols of power, see through rhetorical games, engage in argumentation, and in these activities partake in his or her own political education. The Internet nomad does not bode anarchy. He or she is the radically decentred subject that may well participate in Kant’s cosmopolitanism, Jürgen Habermas’ discourse ethics and Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction. –  But this is to go slightly beyond the text submitted here …