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?

Digital researchers

Attending a conference for 'digital researchers' yesterday at the British Library and came away wondering why some people had attended at all. On one hand, the Twitter feed was going bonkers throughout and it was hard to keep up with the flow of thoughts, and on the other hand there were people seemingly reluctant to sign up for a Google or Twitter account.

Interesting part of the process was to group everyone even before the opening speech , in order that group members could spread themselves over the range of workshops and then communicate with each other through Tweets, wiki's etc as the conference progressed. Interesting way of capturing thoughts but didn't really work for us because of those who needed a social media induction course rather than an invitation to contribute as a digital researcher.

It did make me wonder how I ever researched anything before the internet. Even though my research focus is the digital world, how would I ever prepare lectures, workshops let alone tackle the writing that I'm trying to do currently? How would I ever have sourced the pile of second hand books that now sit on my shelves if it wasn't for Amazon, and come to think of it, how would I afford it as I do a pretty brisk trade in reselling books through Amazon as well?

I've got files upon file of links sent through to me on Twitter, and I hope that I've been able to do the same for others....PDF's, bookmarks, RSS feeds. How would I have booked the plane fare today for the August conference where I hope to deliver a paper about my research?

These are all things that are related to the digital researcher. I suppose part of my disappointment with yesterday was the focus on the negative, the what if's, rather than people just using common sense about how their information and data is stored. Huge discussion about whether journal articles should be put out there for reviewers to find them rather than the more traditional way of an article having to get past the gate-keepers like the editor and chosen reviewers.

At the heart of it is really the thought of collaboration or of open source material. In the last few weeks I've heard 3 'eminent' professors talking about how they put all their current materials online as open source material under a creative commons license. It did occur to me that maybe these are the people that have least to lose since they've already made their mark in some way. Perhaps of more interest is thinking about how those of us trying to carve out some kind of niche can use the digital world in that quest. How do we get our thoughts out there in a way that doesn't involve the gate-keepers but is still part of a robust process?