Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Technology's Non-neutrality

It seems that we in education still believe that technology is a pipeline through which we access information. (That follows from the models that emerged in the mid-20th century- Claude Shannon, Vannevar Bush,  JCR Licklider all treated information technology as the venue that we used to access and process information.) In the 1960's Marshall McLuhan popularized the work pointing out that information technology is not neutral. His work was unfortunately questioned by some who misunderstood the evidence and the arguments, but "the medium is the message" is supported by a rich researcher tradition by scholars such as Walter Ong, Eric Havelock, and Eric Goody.

Modern scholars continue to point out that technology is an active part of determining who we are and how we think.... this classic YouTube reminds us of that:

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