Rupert Wegerif
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Stiegler and the theory of Educational Technology

24/11/2019

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Unfortunately, our face-to-face reading group about Stiegler scheduled at Cambridge for Monday 25th has had to be cancelled. The third and final face to face reading group on the 2nd December about Embodied Cognition is also cancelled. There is a strike. Tech-Cedir will look at these issues again next term.

In my previous blog in this thread towards-a-theory-of-ed-tech-introducing-simondon.html I proposed  developing a theory of educational technology together and introduced the first paper on Simondon. Today I am introducing this paper on Stiegler and explaining why I think that Stiegler might have something to offer our emerging new theory of Educational Technology.

The focus reading is: Roberts, Ben (2012) Technics, individuation and tertiary memory: Bernard Stiegler's challenge to media theory. New Formations, 77 (1). pp. 8-20. ISSN 0950-2378 .
http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/57022/1/roberts-nf-prepress.pdf
 
But the discussion is looking Stiegler in general including, for example, his recent comments on the Internet http://www.samkinsley.com/2013/11/21/bernard-stiegler-the-net-blues/

Stiegler builds on from Simondon.
 
Firstly he takes Simondon's account of the distinctive logic of technical objects and their individuation and goes further to focus on the individuation of the network that unites them. Technical objects individuate with their milieus, as Simondon put it and that milieu can  include a network without which they could not exist. Cars require petrol stations, roads, supplies of spares and garage mechanics etc. Whereas Simondon wrote about machines Stiegler is more attuned to the Internet and the emerging Internet of Things. Does this network have its own logic? It seems to have. Something to do with universalising, connecting everything and everyone.
 
Secondly Stiegler points out that what we think of as human is always already bound up with technology such that human development has been and continues to be a co-evolution between the organic element of human and the technical element. Simondon said something similar but he referred to the human element required in the evolution of technology as being 'anticipation'. In the iterative cycles of innovation human intelligence is needed to read the cues and anticipate what is required next for the concretisation journey of the technical object.
 
Stiegler looks at human evolution and spends some time establishing that this 'anticipation' is of technical origin. Or rather it is undecidably human/technical or what/who. So, for example, the frontal cortex grew at the same time as, and in slow conjunction with, the anticipation required to make tools like flint chipped axes. Tool making led to human capacity to anticipate as much as other way around. Part of this story is also communication. Language is also more than biological  human individual. Words are jointly forged artefacts. Their use implies anticipation. Thinking how others will respond. So what we think of as a who question - who are we? - is also a what question. We are technology on the inside from the beginning.
 
[Note: Donald Merlin and Tomasello cover similar ground but focus on communication in a more obviously dialogic way. Merlin points to the splitting of the working memory into two in mimesis or gestural communication to see oneself from the the point of view of the other in communication. Tomasello writes of the need for 'dialogic representions' to handle the joint attention needed by apes to understand their increasingly complex social lives.]
 
These two moves by Stiegler going beyond Simondon are  interesting for a theory of educational technology.  To be human is to be technological. What we are educating is not just the biological individual but the biological plus the technical. 'Person plus' as David Perkins puts it. But more than that the individuation of specific humans seems to be part of the individuation journey of a socio-technical network. Education is not just about human desires it is following a larger than human logic. So we try to expand literacy without worrying too much whether non-literate cultures really want this 'gift' because we are already literacy on the inside (e.g millenium goals). Now there are moves to promote 21st Century skills or 'Future skills' that are the needs of the emerging network society on the inside. Skills such as how to work together with tools on the internet to get things done even when not co-located. This contrasts to the still common view that ed tech are tools to serve separate education goals - now the ed tech becomes the goal in the sense of teaching how to participate in the tech and with the tech. (Wegerif, 2015).
 
For Simondon and for Stiegler, transindividuation is carried by cultural tools. Education is not just about individuation it is about transindividuation. Transindividuation is an open-ended ongoing process with multiple facets.
 
One way to understand this is to take Oakeshott's claim that education is induction into 'the conversation of mankind' through which we become fully human and to push this a little further. Oakeshott ignored the tech required for his vision as literacy was naturalised for him. Clearly the conversation of mankind as taught at Cambridge in his day did not include the voices of non-literates - he did not see the problem with that. With new tech we have to see literacy as not naturalised but as just one technical system of communication amongst others. Education is induction into the dialogue of all things, not just all people, mediated by a range of technics, not just literacy.  Through education we move in the direction of becoming most fully ourselves by becoming participants in an ongoing journey of humanisation that is also transhumanisation. In small-scale oral societies education had an endpoint  - you knew when you were fully human - it was when the ancestors spoke to you and welcomed you in. With literacy, globalising empires and capitalism a new vision of the fully human emerged - the global citizen. But if we acknowledge the independent voices of technics and things, this humanism is no longer enough - education becomes induction into the ongoing journey towards universal dialogue - all matter, all animals, all peoples, all gods etc. I see this emerging new post-human vision of education as linked to science in the broad 'wissenschaft' sense where science is understood as open-minded shared inquiry.
 
Stiegler, technics and time
 
Steigler's account of the role of technics in time is interesting for an emerging theory of ed tech. Roberts, in the reading, outlines this very well:
 
'Husserl distinguishes between primary retention or memory and secondary retention or memory. Primary retention is the kind of memory that is necessary to perceive a temporal object such as a melody: in effect the melody will not exist as an object of perception unless the listener retains or remembers the notes that precede the one that is currently heard. Secondary retention is, as it were, the more traditional understanding of memory where, for example, I remember a melody I heard last week. There is also a third kind of memory, which Husserl calls ‘image consciousness’ and Stiegler calls ‘tertiary memory’ where an external object, such as a picture or photograph, reactivates a memory. Now for Husserl primary memory can be rigorously distinguished from secondary or tertiary memory because it belongs to the act of perception itself, whereas secondary or tertiary memory involve acts of imaginative selection. Secondary and tertiary memory are thus derivative from primary memory, secondary memory or our perception of the temporal object. ' Stiegler reverses that order. Our experience of time, he says,  requires and is mediated by technics.
 
To put this another way, the Internet is not just a repository of our experiences, it constitutes them. When I click on a music video I have a unique experience.
 
This is also an account of how come we experience things in time. Historical time, the past that we have not lived, is embodied in objects, texts, videos etc and our experience of time emerges in a kind of dialogue between primary time (the resonance of now) with this tertiary or historical time which is the time of technics. We have conscious awareness of time because of technics.
 
One way to investigate education technology is in relation to its role in inducting students into time (http://www.rupertwegerif.name/blog/education-as-a-journey-into-time)
 
Alienation and ed tech
 
As we saw Simondon corrected Marx to say that the problem of alienation is not so much about ownership of machinery as about participation in the design of machinery. Workers or consumers who are not participating creatively in technology development have their individuation capped - they are truncated and unhappy - not part of the larger transindividuation flow process.
 
Stiegler refers to the Internet as a 'pharmakon' concept in this respect - pharmakon means both poison and remedy in Ancient Greek and was used by Plato to refer to writing in Socrate's dialogue with Phaedrus. Writing was offered by a god to the Greeks as a remedy curing their problems but Socrates saw it more as a poison destroying current  morality and education based on practices of face to face dialogue and memorisation. (http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html) (http://arsindustrialis.org/anamnesis-and-hypomnesis and also Bernard in a video https://youtu.be/SRNjImtIA0M Stiegler Keynote www2012 Lyons).
 
Anamnesis is 'calling to mind' without tech and hypomnesis is memory tech, photos, texts etc . The danger Stiegler sees is that of control of big data. The big data of the Internet is our collective life and our possibility of trans-individuation. Is the culture/data something experienced as opposed to us or experienced as something that we are part of? (http://www.rupertwegerif.name/blog/who-are-we-really-a-blog-for-christmas)
 
This is about our experience of time. Some forms of education separate the hypomnesis from the anamnesis - historical/cultural time from everyday time. Other forms unite the moment with the history/culture - hypomnesis and  anamnesis can be united in dialogue creatively and dynamically. This is the idea of dialogic education from Freire where the dialogue has no limits but includes dialogue between the moment and the culture or between primary memory and Stiegler's tertiary memory. Ed tech has a crucial role in facilitating that dialogue.
 
Wikis and peer-to-peer learning communities enable not only access to collective knowledge but participation in producing it. Tools such as 'tinkerplots'  give interactive access to understanding and working with collective data. Citizen science projects on, e.g, global warming or exploring the interstellar debris of the big bang, give everyone access to live participation in collective inquiry into reality both producing and consuming shared understanding.
 
So the Internet could be reducing us to isolated passive individuals, dumbed down and distracted, at the mercy of manipulation by big companies - or perhaps it has the potential to facilitate the emergence of a collective intelligence that is much more than human. Stiegler shares his concern about the danger of the Internet shaping our brains in a limiting way http://www.samkinsley.com/2013/11/21/bernard-stiegler-the-net-blues/ But perhaps this depends to some extent on us, our foresight and our use of ed tech. We could use it as a tool to deliver fixed high status 'knowledge' - a framework that locates each present moment in its place and each person in their place - or we could use it as a way to engage each moment and each person more creatively in constructive dialogue with every other moment and every other person - participating in a collective movement of transindividuation that is also a transformation - a turning inside out - of reality.
 
For Stiegler this is an undecidable question or an aporia. He is side-stepping the potential charge of technological determinism and teleology. But - according to Simondon - our role as researchers is much like that of any other creative engineer - to read the cues and participate in a process of innovation that is more than just our intentions or the intentions of the machine but a kind of synergy. The emergent logic of what needs to be done to take things forward. One possible reading of our situation - a reading inspired by Stiegler's developments from Simondon - is that a coherent human/technical/natural planetary intelligence has the potential to emerge in the next hundred years or so and that the use of education technology can be defined by the role that it can play in facilitating that process. 
 
 
A glossary of terms:
http://cultureandcommunication.org/galloway/pdf/Stiegler%20glossary.pdf
 
References:
http://arsindustrialis.org/anamnesis-and-hypomnesis
 
https://www.academia.edu/20136235/A_Summary_of_Bernard_Stiegler_Technics_and_Time_1
Dan Ross
 
Stiegler, B. (1998). Technics and time: The fault of Epimetheus (Vol. 1). Stanford University Press.
 
https://youtu.be/SRNjImtIA0M Stiegler Keynote www2012 Lyons
 
Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognition. Harvard University Press.
 
Tomasello, M., & Herrmann, E. (2010). Ape and human cognition: What's the difference?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(1), 3-8.
 
Perkins, D. N. (1993). Person-plus: A distributed view of thinking and learning. Distributed cognitions: Psychological and educational considerations, 88-110.
 
Wegerif, R. (2015). Technology and teaching thinking: Why a dialogic approach is needed for the twenty-first century. In The Routledge international handbook of research on teaching thinking (pp. 451-464). Routledge.
 
Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogy of the oppressed (revised). New York: Continuum.
 

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Steps towards a theory of Educational Technology: Introducing Simondon

3/11/2019

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Some notes to introduce the Tech-CEDiR reading group sessions, especially the first one on Simondon.

Tech-CEDiR Reading Group (Session 1) – 6th Nov 11:30-12:30 – DMB GS4
Simondon
Dumouchel, P. (1992). Gilbert Simondon's plea for a philosophy of technology. Inquiry, 35(3-4), 407-421.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/291258917_Gilbert_Simondon's_Plea_for_a_Philosophy_of_Technology
​
Tech-CEDiR Reading Group (Session 2) – 25th Nov 11:30-12:30 – DMB 1S3
Stiegler
Roberts, Ben (2012) Technics, individuation and tertiary memory: Bernard Stiegler's challenge to media theory. New Formations, 77 (1). pp. 8-20. ISSN 0950-2378 .
http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/57022/1/roberts-nf-prepress.pdf


Tech-CEDiR Reading Group (Session 3) – 2nd Dec 11:30-12:30 – DMB 2S4 RECS
Chimero, A (2013) Radical Embodied Cognitive Science. Review of General Psychology © 2013 American Psychological Association 2013, Vol. 17, No. 2, 145–15
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.400.9177&rep=rep1&type=pdf


Rationale for reading group

I think that we need a proper theory of educational technology and I hope that this Tech-CEDIR reading group will help us to develop it. The idea is that, thinking about these papers and responding in face to face meetings, via twitter and on this blog, we might together begin to emerge a theory of the nature and role of ed tech. Part of that discussion might be suggestions for further readings as well as if and how the group should continue.

The three initial readings, on Simondon, on Stiegler and on radical embodied cognition are meant to stimulate discussions on three possible elements of a theory of ed tech.

Firstly, from Simondon, that technical objects or artefacts do have an essence that is different both from natural objects and from humans. Key to this is his account of individuation which suggests we should look at technical objects from the point of view of how they become what they are in a process of 'ontogenesis' that is not simply determined by human intentions or by material properties.

Secondly, from Stiegler, that what we think of as human is always already bound up with technology such that human development has been and continues to be a co-evolution between the organic element of human and the technical element. This is interesting because it potentially gives a special role to education and to ed tech in making humans and in any future project to make humans differently. Steigler shifts attention to the individuation of the network within which technical objects exist along with humans.

Thirdly the perspective of radically embodied cognition suggests how our technology can be understood as part of cognition. It follows that an education for thinking that is not only about the thinking of the organic individual (the brain?) but also a thinking of the human-technology network. This again potentially offers a role for ed tech at the heart of education.

Bypassing Heidegger

Other initial readings could have been possible. Inquiry into the philosophy of technology often starts with Heidegger. Winograd and Flores' seminal book 'Understanding Computers and Cognition: A new foundation for design' show how Heideggers philosophy is relevant to ed tech. Heidegger's distinction between the 'present at hand' (stuff we see in front of us as if independent of us in the theoretical attitude) and the 'ready to hand' (stuff we are always already involved with in doing things in the world in a practical way) is fundamental. It can be approached using the common expression 'a man with a hammer is a man in search of a nail'. 'Breakdown' is when the ready to hand become present at hand - when the skype call freezes and we move from a dialogue to looking at an image on a screen. This implies that technology extends the human body. But Heidegger's vision of technology seemed to stop with the 'techne' of the ancient greeks which referred to crafts such as weaving. Heidegger did not like modern technology very much. He preferred to spend his time in a simple hut in the Black Forest. He saw modern tech as embodying rationalism in a way that inevitably 'enframed' people, cutting them off from Being and turning the environment into resources to be exploited. I think that Simondon is a better place to start because he loved technology and liked to play with machines and engage with the latest hard science like de Broglie's quantum theory. Levinas's essay on Gagarin contains an excellent dismissal of Heidegger's view of technology.

'Technology wrenches us out of the Heideggerian world and the superstitions regarding place. From this point on, an opportunity appears to us: to perceive men outside the situation in which they are placed, and let the human face shine in all its nudity. Socrates prefers the town in which one meets people to the countryside and the trees.' (Levinas, 1990)

Here Levinas links Heidegger’s rejection of modern technology to his Nazi party involvement and his love of trees. Arguably Heidegger’s attitude to technology can still be found in Waldorf and Montessori schools and strands of the ecology movement. Human scale tech -good: big global networked tech - bad. But this attitude seems just not very relevant anymore and not very useful to help us forge a vision of education for the Internet Age so I suggest we just move on more rapidly leaving Heidegger grumbling in our wake.

Why Simondon is so interesting

Simondon was a Professor of Psychology at the Sorbonne who engaged traditional theory with modern science and technology. Merleau-Ponty was on his PhD panel. He had a big influence on Deleuze and on Stiegler. The paper we are reading introduces his philosophy of technology. (See also Steven Shaviro blog on this http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=298) Simondon is also interesting for his related account of psychic and collective individuation (see Steven Shaviro blog on this http://www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=471)

Simondon opposes the opposition of technology to nature that sees technology as a tool for controlling nature.
1) Tools are not just passively used: they are reconfigured, reinvented, extended and mutated in the process of use - this is the individuation of technical objects (consider design-based research on new ed tech tools - it is about iteration, resistance and contingency)

2) Technology is a network of relations: far from marking our alienation from the natural world, technology is what mediates between humankind and nature. Every technical object has some agency and every subject has some materiality.

All individuation,- natural forms eg crystals, organic life, technical objects, individual human selves and also trans-individual subjectivity - originates in the pre-individual. The pre-individual refers to the state of metastability that makes possible each individuation. Pure pre-individual actually exists ‘before’ any individuation – in an ‘anteriority’ that is not temporal, since time itself ‘develops out of the pre-individual just like the other dimensions according to which the process of individuation takes place’ (2005, p 34). Simondon’s inspiration for the pre-individual comes from thermodynamic metastability, and also from the famous wave-particle duality in quantum physics, in so far as this duality is ‘more than one’ and in so far as the particle is, strictly speaking, not an individual. (Barthelemy, 2012)

Simondon put forward an original theory of information as that which 'informs' - or has the capacity to inform - individuation. This is a bit like Bateson's idea of information as based on differences that make a difference. Transduction is one process whereby information can support individuation. Consider how a catalyst can lead to crystals forming rapidly in a super-saturated solution. Thought tends to work like that. Information technology has the potential to support the ontogenesis of transindividualities that are indissociably human and technical. Simondon wrote that the ‘value of the dialogue of the individual with the technical object’ is ‘to create a domain of the transindividual, which is different from the community’ (2005 p515).

This vision has inspired new form of Marxism (eg see Antonio Negri). Simondon's idea is that the alienation of the workers in industrialisation was not primarily about not owning the machines they worked on in factories - - but was more fundamentally about not being able to change those machines or to think creatively together with those machines. To be unalienated is to be creative and to be creative is not just to retreat to a hut in the Black Forest to write books and arrange flowers but is perhaps more fundamentally about being able to participate in transindividual collective activity which is supported by technological networks.

For Simondon technical objects always have a subjective as well as an objective side - they have a phenomenology. For example, think of the experience of using the internet which some refer to as being in cyberspace. Moving around cyberspace is not the same as moving around fibre-optic cable networks. Similarly using tools in education has a subjective side. We learn to understand at the same time as we learn to use our tools. Think of a slide-rule or an abacus. Now think of various software tools. This has become known as instrumentalization within ed tech (see impedevo et al 2017).

Before the next reading I will say something more about why Stiegler is interesting for our project, and then why radical embodied cognition might be interesting. Unless someone else volunteers to do this of course

Please post comments on the first reading in response to this blog or in response to a Twitter Chat that Genevieve Smith-Nunes will organise around the dates of the reading groups https://twitter.com/pegleggen




Barthélémy, J. H. (2012). Fifty key terms in the works of Gilbert Simondon. Gilbert Simondon: being and technology, 203-231.

Impedovo, M. A., Andreucci, C., & Ginestié, J. (2017). Mediation of artefacts, tools and technical objects: An international and French perspective. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 27(1), 19-30.

Levinas, E. (1990). Heidegger, Gagarin and Us, in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism,

Winograd T, Flores F (1986) Understanding computers and cognition: a new foundation for design. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company Inc., Menlo Park
Simondon 2005 L’Individuation à la lumière des notions de forme et d’information (Jérôme Millon, coll. Krisis).
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    Rupert Wegerif. Professor of Education at Cambridge University. Interested in Dialogic Education, educational technology and teaching for thinking and creativity.

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