In the west we have an unspoken assumption regarding the linearity of progress. Things go from simple to complex, from laborious to automated, from undeveloped to developed. As someone currently being taught how to teach, I notice this assumption at work in the way the future is presented to aspiring teachers-in-training. We are told that we will be working with technologies unimagined a few years ago, and the implication is that to be technologically illiterate or clumsy is to risk being unable to connect with students who will have grown up in the midst of the new ways of interacting.
I would like, for a moment, to call into question this idea of the projection of past rates of 'progress' into the unknown future.
No civilization before our own thought of time as a straight line, but rather saw endless repetitions of the same themes over and over. Our idea of linear progress and growth stems from the fact that living memory only ever spans a century at best; a cycle which lasts several centuries will seem like a straight line of progress from the perspective of a few generations, in the same way that the Earth seems flat from the perspective of us tiny humans.
Repeating cycles surround us on all sides - astronomical, agricultural, reproductive and on and on. I make the point because I think we set ourselves up for a fall by not acknowledging that there are limits to growth and progress, from a linear perspective. Simply put, what goes up must come down. There is a major energy problem on the horizon, one of the outcomes of which will be a forced reorganization of our food from imported to very local. This is the reason why I started teaching myself to garden, and the reason why anyone reading this might want to consider doing the same.
With this in mind, does it make sense to bias curricula towards technological achievement based on the trajectory of the past century? Should we be teaching more fundamental skills like permaculture and biointensive gardening instead of courses in digital media?
As teachers, part of our duty is to equip students to make their way through the world. This must to some degree involve contemplating the future world that they will inherit.
I highly recommend this BBC documentary on permaculture. Its in five parts, but well worth the time. Click on the YouTube link to get to the other four parts.
You assertion that it is short-sighted to regard technology innovations as the panacea to our ecological problems is an interesting perspective. It could be argued that every digital innovation has created a social or environmental crisis. I would suggest that the focus of digital media should continue to be measured with a wide range of criteria including social and ecological implications. These assessment structures are rarely applied.
ReplyDeleteAs someone who has contemplated the future from the perspective of resource depletion, I am saying that I foresee a world in which technology becomes a true luxury rather than an ubiquitous presence. Digital Media won't put food on your table, in a literal sense. I'm trying to highlight the idea that a knowledge of how to grow food will, in my opinion, be vastly more important than how to make a blog at some point in the relatively near future.
ReplyDeleteWhat I love about the new Digital Media is the idea of working with ideas and other people, of the internet as a place of communion between minds. I'm suggesting that this will be of utmost importance in the future, and should be fostered (as we are doing), but I also suggest that there has to be a recognition of where we're headed and what we're going to do about it.
I almost always get a laugh when I refer to the old saying "contingencies will save your ass". I came up with it myself as thought it were something new about 8 years back, but it's an age-old fact. A mixture of high-tech and low-tech knowledge - a broad knowledge base - is a great way to go when dealing with uncertain futures. The myriad possibilities too great to imagine are coming straight for us!!!
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