Knowledging across life’s curriculum

phylogenesis amnesia

I began reading Scollon and Scollon, (2004) Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the emerging Internet. The book is introduced thus:

Nexus Analysis introduces a new and exciting theory by two of the leading names in discourse analysis and provides a practical field-guide to its application. [...] Using as a study their own experience of pioneering computer-mediated communication in Alaska in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the authors conduct a nexus analysis of the events and discourses of the time.

I will probably say more about my reading of Scollon in subsequent postings, but for now I’d like to comment the erroneous thinking that technology is neutral. Michael Chandler writes a number of interesting essays on technological and media determinism. Two of these are of particular interest to my point: Technology as neutral or non-neutral and Engagement with media: shaping and being shaped. In the first he says:

The view that technology is ‘ethically neutral’ is sometimes referred to as an instrumental view of technology. Although this stance is sometimes associated with critics of technological determinism, Michael Shallis notes that an (instrumental) belief in the neutrality of technology is also commonly associated with technological determinism. Shallis argues that ‘accepting the proposition that… technology… [is] neutral… means accepting the technological imperative’ (Shallis 1984, p. 95). Technologists usually argue that technology is neutral.

In the latter he adds:

Whatever the specific technological ‘revolution’ may be, technological determinists present it as a dramatic and ‘inevitable’ driving force, the ‘impact’ of which will ‘lead to’ deep and ‘far-reaching’ ‘effects’ or ‘consequences’. This sort of language reflects an excited, prophetic tone which many people find inspiring and convincing but which alienates social scientists. [...] Such broad claims are open to the criticism of ‘reification’ (treating the referent as if it were a single, undifferentiated object).

The Scollons explain that neutrality is a consequence of phylogenesis amnesia, a process where by we collectively forget the historical origins of our learning a technology, a technology that enables yet contrives our activities in particular ways. Chandler adds:

The routine use of a medium by someone who knows how to use it typically passes unquestioned as unproblematic and ‘neutral’: [...] And the more frequently and fluently a medium is used, the more ‘transparent’ or ‘invisible’ to its users it tends to become.

He argues that:

[A]ll media give shape to experience, and they do so in part through their selectivity. In the context of ‘a phenomenology of human-machine relations’, Don Ihde, a philosopher, has analysed the selectivity of technology, arguing that human experiences are transformed by the use of instruments, which ‘amplify’ or ‘reduce’ phenomena in various ways.

What these authors don’t say is how there is often a collective eracing of the traces that go hand in hand with various forms of uses but uses that are supported by propagandish discourse. Perhaps Scollon who takes a closer look at discourse will talk about these political influences that drive change.

Chandler speaks of an ecology of influences that work synergistically. His mediation ecology is illustrated by the following diagram, where he concludes:

[A]gainst the tide of academic specialization, [...] frame shifting is essential for gaining insights into the ‘ecology’ of processes of mediation in which we are all inextricably enmeshed – in which our behaviour is not technologically determined but in which we both ‘use tools’ and can be subtly shaped by our use of them.

Instead of neutrality we discover that there are many influences intertwined in any technologically mediated action. We also see that the going discourse tends to skew perceptions towards the inevitability of technological “progress”. In education this technological imperative is often translated by throwing out the baby (traditional pedagogy) with the bathwater, wholy replaced with bottled technologies sometime of inferior quality or simply uncessary. A critical understanding of how technology enhances and shapes learning is needed.