Technology

Meeting the Rule of Technology with Counterpractices

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

From Albert Borgmann’s Power Failure:

“… for a long time time to come technology will constitute the common rule of life.  The Christian reaction to that rule should not be rejection but restraint … But since technology as a way of life is so pervasive, so well entrenched, and so concealed in its quotidianity, Christians must meet the rule of technology with a deliberate and regular counterpractice.

Therefore, a radical theology of technology must finally become a practical theology, one that first makes room and then makes way for a Christian practice.  Here we must consider again the ancient senses of theology, the senses that extend from reflection to prayer.  We must also recover the ascetic tradition of practice and discipline and ask how the ascesis of being still and solitary in meditation is related to the practice of being communally engaged in the breaking of the bread.  The passage through technology discloses a new or an ancient splendor in ascesis.  There is no duress or denial in ascetic Christianity.  On the contrary, liberating us from the indolence and shallowness of technology, it opens to us the festive engagement with life.”

The crucial insight here, for Christians and non-Christians alike, is the necessity of formulating deliberate and intentional counterpractices.  It is not enough to merely desire or will to live well with technology.  The “rule of technology” engraves itself on us by shaping the routines and habits of daily life so that it is both pervasive and unnoticed. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, Jamie Smith makes a similar point in a recent blog post:

But as Pierre Bourdieu would emphasize, such “micropractices” have macro effects: what might appear to be inconsequential micro habits are, in fact, disciplinary formations that begin to reconfigure our relation to the wider world–indeed, they begin to make that world. As Bourdieu puts it in The Logic of Practice, “The cunning of pedagogic reason lies precisely in the fact that it manages to extort what is essential while seeming to demand the insignificant” (p. 69).

The force of such habituated, world-making practices and micro-practices must be met with counterpractices.

Technology in the Classroom: How To Do It Right

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

Matt Ritchell raises a series of crucial questions regarding technology in the classroom in his NY Times piece this weekend, “In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores.” More precisely, Ritchell raises questions regarding the seemingly uncritical push to deploy technology in the classroom regardless of costs and ambivalent results. In fact, he hits almost every topic of concern I would think to mention if I were writing a similar article, including the influence of those who do stand to unambiguously prosper from the implementation of technology in the classroom, those who make and sell the technology.

If you’re interested in technology and education, I encourage you to read the article. Here are a few excerpts. You’ll notice, I think, that even the endorsements come off as rather suspect:

“This is such a dynamic class,” Ms. Furman says of her 21st-century classroom. “I really hope it works.” Hope and enthusiasm are soaring here. But not test scores.

“The data is pretty weak. It’s very difficult when we’re pressed to come up with convincing data,” said Tom Vander Ark, the former executive director for education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and an investor in educational technology companies. When it comes to showing results, he said, “We better put up or shut up.”

Critics counter that, absent clear proof, schools are being motivated by a blind faith in technology and an overemphasis on digital skills — like using PowerPoint and multimedia tools — at the expense of math, reading and writing fundamentals. They say the technology advocates have it backward when they press to upgrade first and ask questions later.

“My gut is telling me we’ve had growth,” said David K. Schauer, the superintendent here. “But we have to have some measure that is valid, and we don’t have that.” It gives him pause. “We’ve jumped on bandwagons for different eras without knowing fully what we’re doing. This might just be the new bandwagon,” he said. “I hope not.”

“Rather than being a cure-all or silver bullet, one-to-one laptop programs may simply amplify what’s already occurring — for better or worse,” wrote Bryan Goodwin … Good teachers, he said, can make good use of computers, while bad teachers won’t, and they and their students could wind up becoming distracted by the technology.

“In places where we’ve had a large implementing of technology and scores are flat, I see that as great,” she said. “Test scores are the same, but look at all the other things students are doing: learning to use the Internet to research, learning to organize their work, learning to use professional writing tools, learning to collaborate with others.”

“Even if he doesn’t get it right, it’s getting him to think quicker,” says the teacher, Ms. Asta. She leans down next to him: “Six plus one is seven. Click here.”

Clearly, the push for technology is to the benefit of one group: technology companies.

I’m not suggesting technology in the classroom is useless, although it can sometimes be worse than useless. What we ought to take issue with is the blind embrace of technology for technology’s sake. Technologies such as laptops and Smartboards are deployed as if their mere presence in the classroom augmented the educational value of what goes on inside. This is not education, it is superstition; the tool becomes a talisman. Or, worse yet, under the assumption that the medium is essentially neutral, old task are assigned on new technologies to little, or possibly counterproductive, effect. This is naive at best.

What students need to learn with regard to technology is not how to use countless (often inane) tools like Powerpoint. Rather technology in education should be introduced in order to teach the students how to engage with technology critically and intelligently, and, ultimately, toward human ends.

Teach the history of technology, teach the sociology of new media, teach media theory, teach philosophy and ethics of technology, teach students how to program and code.

Help students become meta-critically savvy about their tools.

Teach students to become critics of texts and applications — Twelfth Night and Twitter.

Use technology to transcend the curricular divide between the sciences and the humanities.

Teach them not only the possibilities opened up by new technologies, but also their limitations.

Do not parade new technologies before students like so many idols sent to deliver us from our darkness who must be unfailingly acquiesced and mollified.

Don’t merely teach students to do what a new tool enables them to do, help them to question whether we ought do what the tool enables or whether we ought to do with the tool other than its makers considered.

The problem with all of this, of course, is that we must first teach the teachers and administrators.

Weekend Reading, 9/2/2011

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 2 Comments

As you may have noticed, posting has been light this week, and by light I mean non-existent. The fall semester has commenced and I’m already swamped. I’ll try to keep up the posting, but in the mean time here are some items to keep you busy. Three weeks in row!

Cornel University’s Chatbots on Youtube: This is just interesting. Cornell University researcher has two chatbots talk to each other and they have an intriguing conversation. I’ll let you decide what to make of it. (Update: I forgot to include a link to Kevin Kelly’s exchange with the programmers and his observations on his blog.)

Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age by Cathy N. Davidson in The Chronicle: In defense of online, technologically mediated education. Some good points, but I’m not quite convinced with the tenor of the whole. Would love to hear your thoughts.

When Cursive Cried Wolf by Elissa Lerner at The Book Bench: On the reemergence of handwriting as a creative niche and its benefits.

The Haimish Line by David Brooks in The NY Times: Wisdom regarding the simple, happy life with a Yiddish twist.

A Walk to Remember to Remember by Jesse Miller at Full Stop: This is a lovely reflection on the virtues of walking in a digital age. If you’re only going to read one of these, make it this one.

Kranzberg’s Six Laws of Technology, a Metaphor, and a Story

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ 62 Comments

Dr. Melvin Kranzberg was a professor of the history of technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the founding editor of Technology and Culture. In 1985, he delivered the presidential address at the annual meeting of the Society for the History of Technology in which he explained what had already come to be known as Kranzberg’s Laws — “a series of truisms,” according to Kranzberg, “deriving from a longtime immersion in the study of the development of technology and its interactions with sociocultural change.”

I’ll list and summarize Kranzberg’s laws below, but first consider this argument by metaphor. Kranzberg begins his address by explaining the terms of the debate over technological determinism. He notes that it had become an “intellectual cliche” to speak of technology’s autonomy and to suppose that “the machines have become the masters of man.” This view, which he associated with Jacques Ellul and Langdon Winner, yielded the philosophical doctrine of technological determinism, “namely, that technology is the prime factor in shaping our life-styles, values, institutions, and other elements of our society.”

He then noted that not all scholars subscribed to “this version of technological omnipotence.” Lynn White, Jr., for example, suggested that the technology “merely opens a door, it does not compel one to enter.” This is a compelling metaphor. It captures the view I’ve taken to calling “technological voluntarism,” technological determinism’s opposite. Technology merely presents an opportunity, the choice of what to do with it remains ours. Yet, while working with an element of truth, this view seems ultimately incomplete. And by pursuing the open door metaphor itself, Kranzberg suggests the inadequacy of a view that focuses too narrowly on the initial choice to use or not to use a technology:

Nevertheless, several questions do arise. True, one is not compelled to enter White’s open door, but an open door is an invitation. Besides, who decides which doors to open-and, once one has entered the door, are not one’s future directions guided by the contours of the corridor or chamber into which one has stepped? Equally important, once one has crossed the threshold, can one turn back?

Those are astute and necessary questions, and all the more evocative for the way they play off of White’s metaphor. These questions, and the answers they imply, lead Kranzberg to the formulation of his First Law: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.” By which he means that,

“technology’s interaction with the social ecology is such that technical developments frequently have environmental, social, and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices and practices themselves, and the same technology can have quite different results when introduced into different contexts or under different circumstances.”

Here are the remaining laws with brief explanatory notes:

Second Law: Invention is the mother of necessity. “Every technical innovation seems to require additional technical advances in order to make it fully effective.”

Third Law:  Technology comes in packages, big and small. “The fact is that today’s complex mechanisms usually involve several processes and components.”

Fourth Law: Although technology might be a prime element in many public issues, nontechnical factors take precedence in technology-policy decisions. “… many complicated sociocultural factors, especially human elements, are involved, even in what might seem to be ‘purely technical’ decisions.” “Technologically ‘sweet’ solutions do not always triumph over political and social forces.”

Fifth Law: All history is relevant, but the history of technology is the most relevant. “Although historians might write loftily of the importance of historical understanding by civilized people and citizens, many of today’s students simply do not see the relevance of history to the present or to their future. I suggest that this is because most history, as it is currently taught, ignores the technological element.”

Sixth Law:  Technology is a very human activity-and so is the history of technology. “Behind every machine, I see a face–indeed, many faces: the engineer, the worker, the businessman or businesswoman, and, sometimes, the general and admiral. Furthermore, the function of the technology is its use by human beings–and sometimes, alas, its abuse and misuse.”

There is a good deal of insight packed into Kranzberg’s Laws and much to think about. I’ll leave you with one last tidbit. A story recounted by Kranzberg to good effect:

A lady came up to the great violinist Fritz Kreisler after a concert and gushed, “Maestro, your violin makes such beautiful music.” Kreisler held his violin up to his ear and said, “I don’t hear any music coming out of it.” You see, the instrument, the hardware, the violin itself, was of no use without the human element. But then again, without the instrument, Kreisler would not have been able to make music.

You can subscribe to my newsletter on technology and society here:  The Convivial Society.

Material Faith: Gestures Toward a Theology of Technology

~ L. M. Sacasas ~ Leave a comment

In his 2003 book, Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology, philosopher Albert Borgmann invites us to consider what a theology of technology might look like.  He suggests that “there is hope for a coming to terms with technology not in the vortex of the initial confrontation, but only after one has passed through it.”  Then he goes on to add,

A radical theology of technology would be one that, through the experience of technology, could call into question what now counts as unproblematic …. In short I believe that the experience of technology can awaken in us a new potentia oboedientialis, a new capacity to hear the word of God.

As I read him, Borgmann is suggesting that a theology of technology is enabled by the experience of technology to perceive aspects of human experience that would otherwise remain obscured.  Passing through the vortex allows us to see more clearly what we may have apprehended only vaguely, if at all.

So for example, it seems that the vortex of rapid technological change encourages us to become aware of technology’s cultural consequences in a way that those who experienced technological change at a glacial pace would have been unlikely to perceive.  When technology does not change markedly in a generation or more, it tends to blend into the presumed natural order of things.  The acceleration of technological change encourages awareness of the attendant disruptions of established patterns of life.  Such awareness is sometimes accompanied by anxiety, euphoria, or nostalgia.  At best, though, it is a first step toward a discerning, critical disposition aimed at faithfulness and wisdom.

Two elements of experience thrown into relief by passing through the technological vortex come to mind.  Theorists of technology, and of digital media in particular, have over the last decade drawn attention to the materiality of texts and to the embodied nature of knowledge.  It is a concern fostered by the apparent immateriality of digital media and the not-so-fringe visions of disembodied immortality that animate many in the Silicon Valley set.

The rhetoric of disembodied posthumanism, for example, led Katherine Hayles, a scholar of literature and computer science, to articulate a countervision which secures the significance of the body.  In doing so, Hayles drew on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Paul Connerton.  Both Bourdieu and Connerton produced rich studies of embodied practices within traditional societies — practices geared toward the task of cultural remembrance.  Connerton cited, among other examples, the significance of the enacted Christian liturgy as an instance of embodied practice aimed at securing enduring social memory. The ascendency of digitized memory, then, is the figure against which the ground of embodied knowing and remembering becomes visible.

Along similar lines, Jerome McGann working within the field of literary studies and having pioneered the digital archive (Rossetti Archive) drew attention to the significance of materiality in the case of texts.  When texts become digital, it is suddenly important to ask what difference the material attributes of the book makes.  Reinforcing Borgmann’s point, the materiality of the book would have remained largely taken for granted had not the advent of digital texts and e-readers drawn our attention to it.

Similarly, a theology of technology will address itself to the new fields of human experience being disclosed by the rapid advance of technology.  This by no means amounts to a wholesale endorsement of all technological change and its consequences.  Marshall Mcluhan, for example, viewed the task of understanding technology as an act of resistance to that same technology:

I am resolutely opposed to all innovation, all change, but I am determined to understand what’s happening because I don’t choose just to sit and let the juggernaut roll over me.  Many people seem to think that if you talk about something recent, you’re in favor of it.  The exact opposite is true in my case.  Anything I talk about is almost certainly to be something I’m resolutely against, and it seems to me the best way of opposing it is to understand it, and then you know where to turn off the button.  (Understanding Me:  Lectures and Interviews, 101-102)

Of course, we need not take quite so oppositional a view either.  Rather, the point is to reckon with what technology discloses about itself, the world we inhabit, and the human condition – and to take theological account of such disclosure.

It is worth noting that the renewed focus on embodiment, materiality, and what amounts to liturgical forms of knowing and remembering accord well with prominent themes within the Christian tradition.  It is, however, a focus that the Christian tradition has historically struggled to maintain.  Strands of American evangelicalism in particular, but not exclusively, have tended to reduce faith and practice to assent to the intellectual content of propositional statements thus occluding the significance of the material and embodied conditions of Christian discipleship and worship.

Perhaps taking a cue from theorists of technology it is possible to look again at the significance of the body and the rich material culture of Christian faith and practice.  Moreover, resources within the Christian tradition may fruitfully be brought to bear upon contemporary discussions of embodiment and materiality yielding genuine engagement and dialog.  The Christian faith after all is a faith of bread and wine, water and wood, body and blood.  It is just the right time, then, to rediscover the body and materiality of faith.