Topics Education

Question Some time ago, a question was asked: "How do you think technology will affect the teaching and practice of philosophy." The responses, while interesting, were a little too pragmatic. So, I would like to reformulate and ask a parallel question: How do you think technology will affect teaching and learning in the 21st century? Is the technological classroom the next great revolution? Or is it all hype, rhetoric, and advertising spin? Can philosophy help guide us in sorting the useful from the useless, the time wasting, and cost incurring technologies? Plato/Socrates was uncertain about print, Heidegger warned that in asking "the question about technology" that we are on the wrong track ... So, what advice would philosophers give to teachers trying to negotiate the validity of the technological revolution for teaching. George

Accepted:
May 17, 2010

Comments

Dear George,

I don't have too much of my own to add (but see below).

Really, I wanted to recommend to you the work of philosopher Neil Postman. He was the go-to philosopher on the issue of technology and citizenry. You might want to start by looking up his lecture called "Five Things We Need to Know about Technological Change." Currently there is a link to it here: http://www.mat.upm.es/~jcm/neil-postman--five-things.html - not sure how stable that link is. You can also find out more about Postman and his books at http://neilpostman.org/ -- but I am not sure who owns that website. Good luck, I think you will enjoy Postman.

P.S. I agree that philosophy generally has been cautious about technology. But perhaps contemporary philosophers have special reason to be cautious: philosophical enterprises that make use of technology quickly break out to become their own (better funded) fields - as in the case of psychology, physics, cognitive science, etcetera.

P.P.S As to the issue of philosophy students today, I can only speak from my own observations. Students' attention spans are getting shorter, but their ability to conceptualize complex problems with original visuals or graphics is impressive. These trends do impact how I teach. I won't repeat the experimental course where I only assigned one book (Plato's Republic) for fifteen weeks. On the plus side, my classes now feature plenty of chances for students to draw or doodle concepts to make them their own. A good day is getting thirty 'updated' drawings and essays on Plato's cave -- where students are self-aware enough to depict themselves as being prisoners chained to the cave wall of the internet!