Bill's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

Martin Hand’s chapter “Hardware to Everyware: Narratives of promise and Threat” examines the effect of Digital Technologies and most importantly the Net on the social, cultural, economical and political spheres and presents both utopic and dystopic views. But what does it all have to do with education? No one can deny that Digital Technologies have partly decentralized educational structures such as the University, have provided learners with better access to education by erasing the boundaries of time and distance, have increased interactivity, have further democratized certain educational processes and empowered IT-savvy learners and so on. At the same time, they have created new divides and new forms of exclusion, have allowed for a blurring of the line between information and actual knowledge, have led some theorists to express concerns about the digital commodification of education that is transforming students from active producers of knowledge to passive consumers of information, have boosted technocratic and bureaucratic control in the learning environment and have ushered education in the era of global capitalism.

So who’s right? Digital Technologies are a tool; as is a hammer − and you can use a hammer for building a school or for cracking a skull. Or for both purposes. That is to say, proponents of utopic or dystopic theories regarding the effect of Digital Technologies on culture and education need not be exclusively right. Perhaps utopias and dystopias can paradoxically coexist. And perhaps our responsibility as educators is to focus on the utopic part of the digital future that’s emerging.

Hand, M (2008) Hardware to everywhere: narratives of promise and threat, chapter 1 of Making digital cultures: access, interactivity and authenticity. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp 15-42.