Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Lowell Monke: The Ecological Impact of Technology

This is one of the better essays on technology and education that I have read lately--it questions the unquestioned assumptions of the necessity of computers and our frequent blindness to the negatives of computer-based education:

Education Next, Fall 2004

"The Human Touch" by Lowell Monke

An excerpt:

As the promise of a computer revolution in education fades, I often hear promoters fall back on what I’ll term the neutrality argument: “Computers are just tools; it’s what you do with them that matters.” In some sense this is no more than a tautology: Of course it matters how we use computers in schools. What matters more, however, is that we use them at all. Every tool demands that we somehow change our environment or values in order to accommodate its use. For instance, the building of highways to accommodate the automobile hastened the flight to the suburbs and the decline of inner cities. And over the past 50 years we have radically altered our social landscape to accommodate the television set. In his seminal book Autonomous Technology, Langdon Winner dubbed this characteristic “reverse adaptation.”

Consider the school personnel who already understand, intuitively, how this principle works: the music teacher whose program has been cut in order to fund computer labs; the principal who has had to beef up security in order to protect high-priced technology; the superintendent who has had to craft an “acceptable use” agreement that governs children’s use of the Internet (and for the first time in our history renounces the school’s responsibility for the material children are exposed to while in school). What the computers-are-just-tools argument ignores is the ecological nature of powerful technologies—that is, their introduction into an environment reconstitutes all of the relationships in that environment, some for better and some for worse. Clinging to the belief that computers have no effect on us allows us to turn a blind eye to the sacrifices that schools have made to accommodate them.

Not only do computers send structural ripples throughout a school system, but they also subtly alter the way we think about education. The old saw, “To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail,” has many corollaries (the walls of my home once testified to one of my favorites: to a four-year-old with a crayon, everything looks like drawing paper). One that fits here is, “To an educator with a computer, everything looks like information.” And the more prominent we make computers in schools (and in our own lives), the more we see the rapid accumulation, manipulation, and sharing of information as central to the learning process—edging out the contemplation and expression of ideas and the gradual development of meaningful connections to the world.

In reconstituting learning as the acquisition of information, the computer also shifts our values. The computer embodies a particular value system, a technological thought world first articulated by Francis Bacon and René Descartes four hundred years ago, that turns our attention outward toward asserting control over our environment (that is essentially what technologies do—extend our power to control from a distance). As it has gradually come to dominate Western thinking, this ideology has entered our educational institutions. Its growing dominance is witnessed in the language that abounds in education: talk of empowerment, student control of learning, standards, assessment tools, and productivity. Almost gone from the conversation are those inner concerns—wisdom, truth, character, imagination, creativity, and meaning—that once formed the core values of education. Outcomes have replaced insights as the yardstick of learning, while standardized tests are replacing human judgment as the means of assessment. No tool supports this technological shift more than computers.


Read the Entire Essay

6 comments:

Michael said...

Good point Harry--and that is what I mean by computers... the web--surfing for information--short blasts of repetitive waves of info... reminds me of almost drowning at Newport beach when I was repeatedly slammed by 10 foot waves (I digress)...

Despite the money plowed into schools I'm shocked by how naive most entering-college students are about the Internet as an informational source.

I'm also interested in his critique of the "medium" and the technology as altering our spaces and practices.

Susannity said...

Very interesting article. Thank you for posting it.

I do believe computers are tools, but the problem is that we don't manage tool use or we use the tool in a less than ideal way I think.

I can hand my son a hammer, but if I'm not there to help him understand its purpose, nuances of use, and safety issues, I'm not being diligent in my child's use of that tool imo. Same with computers.

Also, computers are isolationist in many ways. Sure, I may be speaking through this computer to you and your readers, but I'm not really interacting with you. I find this to be a major downside of computing when it is over or nonjudiciously used. This has affected our societal interaction, ethics, etc imo.

Well must pick up munchkins at bus stop. Gotta run.

Michael said...

Harry--yes, a very strong rip tide, especially as the sets come forward (for those not familiar a series of four to six waves)... shore-breakers that show no mercy for the human body (especially since the drop-off there is immediate and cuts down a tired person scrambling out of the way)

Susanne--I couldn't have put it better--you demonstrate through your words what he is talking about--commenting and relating, then jarring us out of your comments by signification of time and place (bye--I have a person in the world that needs me to be in a time and place).

Heidegger used to complain that we bang the hammer all day long and never think about it until the head falls off--perhaps that is the problem, but even worse what happens when the "tool" works so effectively that we have no comprehension of its operation?

Michael said...

Speasking of the hammer:

http://dialogic.blogspot.com/2004/11/what-happens-now-im-waiting-for.html

Michael said...

Speasking of the hammer:

Oops--lets make it a link

Michael said...

Like Heidegger’s story of the hammer, it seems that many of us are content to bang away building postmodern constructions with no concern for the “post” that supports our foundations. The only time we notice anything is when the ‘tool’ breaks down—which, of course, in our contemporary consumer milieu would mean that we simply replace our hammer with a new one with no concern about what went wrong (Agnes Heller). We constantly search for that one “Divine Hammer” that we can bang all day long (Breeders)—a tool that will allow us to rest in the certitude of a solid structure to mask our foundations.