How do you think technology will affect the teaching and practice of philosophy?

How do you think technology will affect the teaching and practice of philosophy?

How do you think technology will affect the teaching and practice of philosophy? During my undergraduate degree (in philosophy), I took notes in numerous classes on a laptop and could download papers from a variety of journals as PDF. I have seen numerous academic perspectives regarding technology and learning - from Bert Dreyfus' idea that the podcast of his lectures at Berkeley on philosophy and literature reduced class attendance, to law schools having "laptops off" sessions to science professors encouraging (or even requiring) graduate students to blog about their lab work. I even saw a theory that ethical theories are implicitly tied to the technology of their time - the printing press linking with Kant, utilitarianism, Mill-style liberalism, the mass media of television, radio and newspapers doing the same for Rawls and Nozick. And, of course, many philosophy professors like Brian Leiter now have blogs and some have podcasts too. At technical conferences, we use technology to provide things like "backchannels" during discussions where the topic is discussed during the talk - people post links, argue, throw insults around and involve outside experts. It is a sort of live peer review. A speaker recently came onto chat during a conference for some informal pre-talk peer review. Would you consider having a backchannel chat running in the background (or perhaps broadcast up on a screen) during, oh, Introduction to Metaphysics? As someone who is an avid user (and amateur programmer) of technology and a prospective philosophy graduate student, I would be interested in specific anecdotes or perspectives that you have on how the philosophy classroom and the daily practice of philosophy professors is going to adapt or cope with the shift to the Internet. In short, could the Internet spark a significant shift in philosophy as it is currently studied and practiced?

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