Intervenant·es
Solveig FERNAGU
Directrice de recherche CESI LINEACT, France
HDR U-Bourgogne Franche Comté | Ph.D. U-Lyon 2
#environnements_capacitants
#pédagogie_universitaire
0000-0002-2486-1345
titre à venir
description à venir
Jessica PIDOUX
Chercheuse postdoctorale, Université de Neuchâtel et Directrice de PersonalData.IO
Ph.D. EPFL
#sociologie_du_numérique
#approche_participative
titre à venir
description à venir
Petar JANDRIĆ
Prof. Zagreb U of Applied Sciences, Croatia & Visiting Professor at U-Bath Spa, UK
Ph.D. U-Zagreb
#critical_pedagogy
#postdigital
Using and Being: The Curious Dance of Technology-Induced Loss and Gain of Human Capabilities
Since the beginning of history, people have worried that technological development would impede human abilities. A common example is Socrates’ belief that reading and writing as ‘external memory’ would weaken human abilities to remember and think. Twentieth-century cybernetics has popularized transhumanist beliefs that technological development will lead to the enhancement of human capabilities. However, those positive predictions differ in size, scope, and timing of anticipated transformations.
As digital technologies have matured, early twenty-first century witnesses a transfer of this debate from theory to practice: we now have experimental evidence that technologies simultaneously develop some human capabilities and impede others. Together with the dominating discourse of technological determinism and instrumentalism, this has created some resistance to the trend of widespread digitization. Based on a recent event in Stockholm, this resistance is now studied under the name of postdigital backlash.
The keynote Using and Being: The Curious Dance of Technology-Induced Loss and Gain of Human Capabilities will introduce postdigital thinking about the dynamic of loss and gain of human capabilities in the process of digitization. It will outline a brief overview of current state of the art in the field. Firmly situated beyond dichotomies (pro and contra technology), technological determinism and instrumentalism, the talk will debunk some common myths and offer theoretical guidance for handling the dynamic of technology-induced loss and gain of human capabilities.