#EDCMOOC Week 1: Looking at the past

Hello again! After introducing myself, I'm ready to start writing about Week 1 contents, focused on utopian and dystopian claims about technoloy and digital culture.

I guess the main reading for this week is Chandler's text, an introduction to technological determinism. I think it is quite necessary to discuss this concept, because utopias and dystopias about technology are based on the idea that technology can actually change society and our lives (a deterministic idea), either for the good or for the bad. The videos presented this week help to illustrate this idea. New media (nice to find an Argentinian video on the list!), with its sci-fi echoes, is probably the most pesimistic one (machines destroying the city of La Plata, while humans can just watch); while  Inbox might be the most optmistic, as it shows the way technology can connect people, thus providing them with a means of communication (do not forget that connecting and communicating are two different things). Bendito machine III (a most interesting video) also displays a dystopian view on technology, dealing with many classical issues: the connections between religion and technology (humans can end up worshipping technological devices as if they were gods), the way new devices replace former ones, and even e-waste. Finally, I think Thursday shows the way humans, animals, technological devices are connected in a complex network of intertwined causes and consequences in which there's no place for determinism. Here I agree. I don't believe technology on its own can change anything, for technology is created within a society and it is conditioned (though never determined) by it.

Other authors, however, believe that technology is neutral and neither do I agree with this idea. Technology as a unique factor can't change our lives, but neither is it a mere instrument we can use in any way we choose. I've always liked the idea that we can't use technology without being somehow used and changed by it, we can't simply control all the outcomes. I think this is also true when using technology with educational purposes: we can only try to predict and imagine what students will do with the digital tools we are introducing, but we can never know for sure what will actually happen.

I've also found Prensky's article quite interesting (even when I don't agree with it). I've never liked the digital natives/digital inmigrants concepts, because I think they are deterministic and way too simplistic. Our relationship with technology doesn't only depend on age and generations, but on many other factors: you can easily find children and teenagers that hate computers and don't know how to use them, and middle aged people who are real geeks. I think the main challenge we face when studying digital cultures and their impact on education is to avoid simplification as well as technological determinism. What do you think? :)