Pragmatic technology

" The very techniques and technologies that disburden men and women of the backbreaking and mind-numbing work performed by previous generations - and still performed by men,women and children in developing countries - also present challenges that many perceive as threatening. The same techniques and technologies that bring the exhilaration of rapid change are perceived in some quarters as diminishing the quality of life. One of the most basic paradoxes of our technological milieu is that techniques and technologies ostensibly developed as means of control are now viewed by many individuals as spinning out of control, or at very least as operating beyond their personal control."

Hickman, L. 2001. Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture: Putting Pragmatism to Work (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Technology) Bloomington and Indianapolis. Indiana University Press.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Philosophical-Tools-Technological-Culture-Pragmatism/dp/0253214440/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1354697719&sr=1-1 

Interesting in the context of a class that I took yesterday where youth workers have been seemingly 'mourning' the passing of the age of face-to-face communication in the light of the digital age, but who then get really excited about using a free platform that transfers a pdf document into a magazine ( http://issuu.com/business?gclid=CKvxqLnzgrQCFerItAodQ3cATA )!

Interesting also are the issues of control and confidence for educators: the feeling that I must be all-knowing in terms of the transfer of knowledge rather than facilitating the acquisition of knowledge. Dewey's concepts of learning as related to  the reconstruction and reorganisation of knowledge and experience are relevant - how do we skill youth workers up to feel confident about asking the right questions of young people and their engagement with digital media? How do we recapture youth work process and principles within this landscape that is seemingly so alien and terrifying to some?

Emerging from the fog...?

I can't help thinking that I should be pleased with having made Stage 2 of my doctoral studies, but instead I've been thrown back into 'conscious incompetence' mode. Just when I thought I was starting to get the hang of this, I realise that there's still a long way to go, and that the direction is still uncertain.

I haven't blogged in a while and maybe that's also something to do with it? I got immersed into the practical research tasks, got some interesting data, but stopped thinking in the bigger picture or philosophical sense of what I was trying to do..

However, discovering a book by Larry Hickman on John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology has taken me full circle again to where I started  out - Dewey's instrumentalism and pragmatism - and I'm starting to reformat my original thoughts about the digital Dewey.

The doctoral thesis has got to be so much more than an evaluation of a piece of work, no matter no national or how extensive. Dewey has to be the link here, and his definition of technology - remember that he died in 1952, 30 years before the birth of the internet - is one that will be interesting to test against the 21st century.

In digital terms, Dewey viewed change and growth as a norm and he believed that social experimentation rather than absolute principles, was needed to assess the worth of an idea or practice. For him, learning occurs through the construction, reconstruction and reorganisation of experiences to find meaning, and to enable the individual to influence and direct future situations. Here, the role of the educator is to provide the  learner  with opportunities to learn ' the instruments of effective self-direction' - a sensibility to social issues and an ability to act on them. Yet another argument for the digital youth worker?