Education in a digital era A ‘ gestural ’ exploration of the practice of writing

1. Education in a digital eraA ‘gestural’ exploration of the practice of writing Joris Vlieghe ECS-Forum, 23/11/2012

2. Main concern: meaning of ‘education’ in a digital era, i.e. anage in which digital technologies have come to replace traditional ways of teaching and learning (based on writing and reading texts; direct and face-to- face classroom-instruction) • Philosophical analysis, based on the work of threerather different authors (Flusser, Stiegler, Agamben), whonevertheless are ‘connected’, becausethey have developedtheirtheories in criticaldialoguewithHeidegger – and more preciselywithHeidegger’suncriticalexecration of technology

3. Flusser & Stiegler have explicitelyembraced a technology-centered (≠ technology-determinist) view. I arguemoreoverthatitmightbepossible to developanAgambenianphilosophy of technology • A technology-centered approach allowsfordealing in a new way with concrete practicesthat take place in schools, i.e. looking at them as materiallyconditioned and heavilyembodied ‘gestures’ • Central in mypresentation: the practice of writing(literacy)

4. Heidegger’scommentsontype-writing The typewriter tears writing from the essential realm of the hand, i.e. the realm of the word. The word itself turns into something “typed”. […] Mechanical writing deprives the hand of its rank in the realm of the written word and degrades the word to a means of communication. In addition, mechanical writing provides “this advantage”, that it conceals the handwriting and thereby the character. The typewriter makes everyone look the same - mechanization of writing = writing by default, no real (proper) writing - such an improper use → cultural crisis (standardization of humanexistence)

5. VilémFlusser • Technocentricperspective: analysis of technology-mediatedpractices in theirmaterialconcreteness: what does it mean ‘to put very material letters upon the surface of a very material sheet of paper?’ • Interestingconsiderationson the use of the typewriter that go in the oppositedirection • ‘The typewriter is a machine for writing lines from left to right and for jumping back to the left side. Thus, the typewriter is, to some extent, a materialization of a cultural program of ours. If we look at the typewriter, we can see materially, to some extent, how one aspect of our mind works.’

7. A phenomenology of gestures • a more recent and more pronouncedly technological variation of a certain activity, even if it might at first sight seem to be secondary to (derived from, less authentic than) the most exemplary form of this activity, might disclose it in a way that was unlikely to take place beforehand • As long as we only knew longhand it was difficult to approach writing ‘as a gesture’, as a material and technologically mediated practice the sense of which cannot be derived from what we spontaneously think and feel, but only when we take the concrete things we do ‘as bodies’ into consideration • Longwritingis typewritingby default

8. Flusseronwriting-basedthought • Ironically, mechanicalwritingdiscloses, more than ‘proper’ writing does, ‘what thinking is’. • Hypothesis: the technique of writing is notmerely a means toexpressourthoughts, itshapesourthoughts in a particular way. The gesture of writingforms the verypreconditionforcritical thinking tobecomepossible in the first place • ‘Repression of the naturaltendency to think aloud’ (associativeandrhizomatic), ‘forcing’ ourideas ‘intospecificstructures’ Cf. writing = destructive, ratherthanconstructiveactivity • ‘Writingviolatesthinking in a wayspeaking does not’ • Thinking of literatebeings = linear, diachronic, one-dimensional, one-directional, historical • Thisalsoimpliesthatwriting-based thinking is only a contingentpossibility. It has a beginning and probablyalsoan end.

9. Flusseronwriting-basedthought • Thinking based on alphabeticwriting vs. Thinking based on ideographicwriting/numbers • Oral vs. literate culture (Cf. Ong) • Alphabeticwritingis different fromspeaking, but is neverthelesslinked to anacoustic regime (‘itmakes sounds visible’, it concerns ‘a musical notation of spoken language’): → one-dimensional and uni-directional (linear) logic ↔ Ideographic/numericalwriting(‘a notation of ideas’)is linkedtoanoptical regime → two-dimensional and multi-directional (circular) ‘logic’

10. Flusseronwriting-basedthought • Since the inventionand proliferation of the alphabet, literalthought (one-dimensional) has supersedednumericalthought (two-dimensional) • Thisis also the case in a worldthatsincemanycenturies has been dominatedby a scientificrationality: in academic courses graphs, pictues, tables and formulae are stillsituatedwithinalphabetictexts • It is onlywith the advent and proliferation of digital media that a non-linear logic mightbecomeculturally dominant. • Just likean analysis of typewritingdisclosedwhat the gesture of writing was allabout, we needan analysis of the ‘gesture of computing’. • Reveals new possibilitiesforgeneratingthoughts, viz. zero-dimensionalthought

11. Post-history • Alphabeticwriting is the basis of the veryideathat we are historicalbeings • In pre-alphabetictimesthere was only ‘history’ in the sensethatpeople made monuments (inscriptions, meant to beremembered and considered) • Alphabet-basedthoughtproducesdocuments(notations): the writer/reader is forced to jump from one word to the other, and so a sense of historical progress originates for the first time • When alphabetic writing becomes obsolete, we might perhaps for the first time forgo the idea that it is our place in history which should guide us in how we live our lives

12. Post-history • ‘We no longer imagine that we are in chains (for example chains of causality, or in a bustle of laws and regulations), and that freedom is the effort to break those chains, but rather that we are immersed in an absurd chaos of contingencies, and that freedom is the attempt to give this chaos shape and meaning. (This reshaping of the question “freedom from what” into “freedom for what” is extraordinarily characteristic for the rupture in our thinking.’ • This concerns not so much a transition to a post-historical era, but the coming into being of post-post-historical conditions.

13. Flusser & Stiegler • LikeFlusserStieglerendorses a techno-centric point of view i.e. a non-heideggerianperspectiveontechnology: we cannotdecideon the basis of our proper humancapabilitieshow (and if) we shouldusetechnologies, it is rather the use of particulartechnologiesthatdecideswhat we, as humanbeings, are • Contrary to FlusserStieglerarguesthattoday we shouldopposeanydisconnectionbetweentechnology and historyand, moreover, thatthis is the truecalling of education.

14. Stiegler: externalmemory • In ourownconstitution as subjects we are dependentupon the use of historically contingent technologies • Technologies = concrete objects (pen, mug, shovel) and practicesrelated to them (writing, drinkingwine, shoveling coal) are in and of themselvesmemories: individualpeople are born and die, butacquiredskill and knowledge are stored IN technologicalobjects/practices (‘hypomnemata’) themselves • Thistechnologicalmemory ≠ aninternal, phylogenetic memory (DNA of the ‘phylos’ homo sapiens) = anexternal, epiphylogenetic memory. • E.g.: memory is not in writings (Homer, the Bible, etc.), writingitself is a memory. • The human condition is a prostheticcondition

15. Stiegler: (trans)individuation • Subjectivity is notsomethingthat is alwaysalreadythere • There are no subjects or individuals, onlyprocesses of individuation(Simondon) or of becoming-subject • We constituteourselvesbyusing (particular) technologiesthatnecesarrily have a history: when we learn to master a concrete technology we always continue a linethatprecedesourownexistence: Individuation = co-individuation(withothers/oldergeneration) = trans-individuation(withhistory) • Conservatism, notfor the sake of conservation, butfor the sake of the coming intobeing of the new (Arendt) (trans-/co-)individuation = transformation

16. Stiegler: short- and longcircuiting • There are fundamentallytwo different ways to relate to one and the sametechnologythat is constitutiveforour subject-constitution. • LONG-CIRCUITING: to appropriate the wholehistorythat lies at the basis of the technology we use, bybeingco-producers and co-constructors • SHORT-CIRCUITING: to use the sametechnology in such a waythat the proces of (trans-) individuation comes to a halt (= ‘proletarization’)

17. Stiegler: short- and longcircuiting The need to materially draw squares is not a redundant step in acquiringgeometricalinsight . Neither is the retaking of a whole set of axioms and definitions on the basis of whichthisinsight is constructed. ↔ currenttendencytojust ‘learn’ thistheoremtoapplyittosolveproblems

18. Stiegler: short- and longcircuiting • Analogously, in order to beable to writeonenecesarillyhas to go through a long, demanding and tediousphase of learning to mastercalligraphy. • Whatthenabouttypewriting (keyboard)? - It is not in itself a short-circuitedactivity, as long as we first learn to write and thenlearn to type (whichdemandsalsoquitesome effort) - It onlybecomesshort-circuitedwhen we usethistechnology without anyproductivecontribution (and without anyknowledge of the hardware thatmakesitpossible). Thenour ‘writingcapacity’ is fullydelegated to the machine.

19. Stiegler: short- and longcircuiting • Similarly, we canonlyreallyreadbecause we alsocanwrite: reading is onlypossibleon the conditionthat we potentiallycould have written the text we read ↔ watching a film: we delegate the reading/decoding to the DVD-player • Reading can be either long-circuited or short-circuited: ‘when you are reading a book, you individuate yourself by reading this book because reading a book is to be transformed by the book. If you are not transformed by the book, you are not reading the book – you believe that you are reading’

20. Stiegler: technology as pharmakon • All technologies are pharmaka: one and the same object (and the practicesrelated to it) canbeused as a cureor as a poison, i.e. itmight as wellcontributeto (trans)individuation and transformation (throughlong-circuiting) as to proletarization (throughshort-circuiting) • THUS: technocentrism, butnotechnodeterminism. It is not the technology as suchthatunivocallypromotesordistorts the possibiltyforindividual and collectivetransformation ↔ CARR, The Shallows: internet technologies as suchtransform and distort our critical-intellectual capacities and make impossible any attentive reading

21. Stiegler: technology as pharmakon • Becauseeverytechnology has a pharmakon-character, itcanbeabused and exploited, particularlybycultural industries (programming industries) • Thereforeevery society needsaneducational system (programminginstution), thatembodies the responsibility/care the oldergenerationtakesfor the youngerand that is willing to fighta constant battle against the possible misuse of technologies • This was the case in AncientGreece, the craddle of the school …. The institution called ‘skholè’ was not in the first place invented as an organized way to access the knowledge of writing, but precisely as a system of ‘therapy’, i.e. a system that took care for the young generation and that fought a constant battle against the possible misuse of the technology of writing (Kambouchner, Meirieu, Stiegler, 2012, pp. 20-21)

22. ‘The school of the future’ • And thisstillholdstruetoday in relation to digital technologies • The very technologies that make collaborative, democratic and emancipatory production processes possible, like search engines, video-sharing websites, on-line encyclopedia, but also wireless connectivity and GPS-locating systems, are used in such a way that they become the means of our own subordination to the laws of a consumerist economy • The question is not to useornot to use digital technologies, but to prevent the young to becomeproletarized consumers. Here we should put our faith in the school of the future.

23. ‘The school of the future’ • We should learn to use these technologies in such a way that the new generation gets the opportunity to continue the process of transindividuation • Plea for digital literacy: learn to use, keyboards and touchscreens, but also wordprocessors and search engines, just like we have learned to write properly (i.e. within long circuits of transindividuation) → ‘writing’ is a paradigm for understanding the role of education • The young generation should master the grammar of the digital – literally. The ‘gramma’ is a ‘line drawn’, which is always the continuation of a line that already exists. The task of the future school is therefore a fully historical one

24. Stiegler vs. Agamben Anyhow, there is no point in taking a Luddite attitude towards digital technologies and thereforeStiegler criticizes Agambenwhenhewrites: ‘It would probably not be wrong to define the extreme phase of capitalist development in which we live as a massive accumulation and proliferation of apparatuses. […] we could say that today there is not even a single instant in which the life of individuals is not modeled, contaminated, or controlled by some apparatus. In what way, then, can we confront this situation, what strategy must we follow in our everyday hand-to-hand struggle with apparatuses?’

25. Stiegler vs. Agamben • Just likeHeideggerAgambenappears to be a technophobic, whodoesn’tunderstandthattechnologies are pharmaka : ‘then it is impossible for the subject of an apparatus to use it "in the right way”. Those who continue to promote similar arguments are, for their part, the product of the media apparatus in which they are captured’. • Agambenthusseems to believethat we shouldemancipateourselvesfromdigital technologies, ratherthanseekforemancipationwithindigital conditions. Onlywhen we escape thiscaptivation, we willbecome free again and live anauthenticlife.

26. Agamben vs. Stiegler • I believethatStiegler’s reading of Agamben is completely incorrect and thathedoesn’tmake the best of anAgambenianphilosophy of technology • Moreover, itmightbedoubtedwhether the trueHeideggerian is notsomuchAgamben (because of hissocalledtechnophobia), butStieglerhimself: After all, central to his argument is that we should deal withtechnology in a properway and that we (orbetter: the school) should prevent improperuses This proper use is defined as keeping a connectionwithhistory(continuing the line). In the end, Stieglerabandons his radicaltechnocentristperspectivein favor of a very traditionalist view on educationwhichdecideswhat are good and bad (uses of) technologies

27. Agamben vs. Stiegler “There is no correct use” • Stieglerinterpretsthis as : for a technophobicslikeAgamben “therecanonlybe incorrect use” • Butperhapssomethingelse is at stake: the wholeideathat we canoppose correct and incorrect (proper and improper) usespresupposessomethingthatnolonger has meaningunder present conditions, viz. the ideathat we have to relate to history in order to guideourindividual and communalexistence = Flusser’spost-post-historicalcondition

28. Agamben/Flusser vs. Stiegler • Instead of looking at whatanincorrectuse of the digital does no longerallowfor and ask the school to take preventivemeasurestoguaranteecorrect use (Stiegler) , • we mightequally look affirmatively to what the useas such of zero-dimensionaltechnologiesdoesimply • … even if the implication is thatitleads to a disconnectionfromhistory and to a form of existencethatelbows out establishednotions of subjectivity

29. Agamben/Flusser vs. Stiegler • Analogous to the way in whichananalysis of mechanicalwritingdisclosedsomethingabouttext-basedthought, • a phenomenology of digital gesturesmightgrant the possibility to come to termswith a new and previouslyunimaginableform-of-life, which is entirelypost-post-historical. • Onlythenwillitbepossible to ‘to bring [technologies] back to a possible common use’, to use Agamben’s affirmative phraseology.