In keeping with the typical pattern associated with the introduction of new technologies, many promises have been made about the positive benefits of new information technologies to society. This article focuses on such promises as they relate to the expansion of public space in western society. I argue that technologies do exist and could be further developed to deliver on these promises but that these technologies are not the hardware and software celebrated by proponents of computer-based communications technologies. Public technologies are necessarily social in nature. I focus particularly on public education - in particular the site of the classroom - as an appropriate and potentially powerful site for developing and teaching such public technologies.
In one of the many texts I have used to teach introductory courses in sociology, the authors emphasize the material and nonmaterial aspects of culture. Kendall et al state that “our cultural tool box is divided into two major parts: material and nonmaterial culture.” Material culture is defined as consisting of “the physical or tangible creations that members of a society make, use, and share.” Nonmaterial culture is defined as “the abstract or intangible human creations of society that influence people’s behaviour.” (Kendall et al, 1998, p. 46) It is the material aspects of communication, the hardware and software of new information technologies, that are celebrated by many proponents whose utopian promises include the expansion of and increased equality within the western public sphere. In contrast, pessimists such as Postman and Ellul fear the repressive effects of new technologies on culture (Postman, 1993; Ellul, 1964.). Both views are limited by a failure to understand technology, material and non-material, as social practice and hence inseparable from culture. Defining technology more broadly as social practice undermines the technological determinist arguments of both optimists and pessimists and enables a deeper exploration of social practices that may or may not expand access to public spaces. In this article I use such an inclusive definition of technology as culture to both recognize hardware and software as social practice and to look beyond the typical focus on these dimensions to consider the social practices of teaching and learning within the location of the classroom as potential technologies of public space.
Some proponents of new information technologies argue that the mode of communication they enable are particularly suited to foster a more inclusive public space. They claim that because of the anonymity made possible in cyberspace, typical categories of inclusion and exclusion such as gender, race, class, sexual orientation and (dis)ability are no longer operative.
Electronic notes, posted in group discussions, differ from hand- or type-written letters in several significant ways. Like public bathroom graffiti, their authors are sometimes anonymous, often pseudonymous, and almost always strangers. Which is the upside of incorporeal interaction: a technologically enabled, postmulticultural vision of identity disengaged from gender, ethnicity, and other problematic constructions. On line, users can float free of biological and sociocultural determinants, at least to the degree that their idiosyncratic language usage does not mark them as white, black, college-educated, a high-school dropout, and so on. (Dery, 1994, p. 3)
Michael Heim shares this view of the relationship between anonymity and the greater inclusivity of social space, exulting that “We are more equal on the net because we can either ignore or create the body that appears in cyberspace” (Heim, 1992, p. 72). In considering educational settings, Tony Bates makes a similar point, claiming that
Because gender, race, and physical appearance, status, or experiences are not readily apparent, and because access to conferences can be made available to students and teachers alike, everyone participating is judged solely on the value of their contributions (although this is heavily dependent on the approach adopted by the tutor or moderator). (Bates, 1995, p. 11)
The celebration of disembodiment as a means to enhancing public space quickly runs aground when we find that anonymous sites often are characterized by a very hostile climate1 and that sites that are more hospitable are specifically designed to discourage impersonal, aggressive behaviour. Howard Rheingold’s study of the Well, for example, reveals an internet community complemented by a significant amount of face-to-face interaction and codes of conduct aimed at respecting difference and creating an hospitable climate (Rheingold, 1991). The assumptions about disembodiment and freedom, although bound up lately with cutting edge computer technologies, are rooted in traditional philosophies of western society and reflected in systems of stratification.
In promising the expansion of public space, proponents of new information technologies often ignore the way in which so-called public spaces have been locations of privilege for society’s dominant members. Normatively, public spaces are supposed to be inclusive. Actually, they have been characterized by a great deal of exclusivity.
Feminist criticism has been particularly powerful in revealing the ways in which the so-called universality of the public sphere is actually based on hegemonic norms that exclude “others.” People whose characteristics of identity lie outside universal norms find themselves effectively barred from presence and participation in public spaces. Importantly, however, the normative impulse of the public sphere provides ground for contestation. As Mitchell points out
As ideological constructions...ideals of the public sphere take on double importance. Their very articulation implies a notion of inclusiveness that becomes a rallying point for successive waves of political activity. Over time, such political activity has broadened definitions of “the public” to include, at least formally, women, people of colour, and the propertyless (but not yet foreigners). In turn, redefinitions of citizenship accomplished through struggles for inclusion have reinforced the normative ideals incorporated in notions of public spheres and public spaces. By calling on the rhetoric of inclusion and interaction that the public sphere and public space mean to represent, excluded groups have been able to argue for their rights as part of the active public. And each (partially) successful struggle for inclusion in “the public” conveys to other marginalized groups the importance of the ideal as a point of political struggle. (Mitchell, 1995, p. 117)
If public space has historically been expanded as a result of political struggle, are new information technologies the investment those concerned with such expansion need to make?
A return to the connection between anonymity and the expansion of public space in light of the history of the public sphere and struggles to expand its terms of access raises questions about such promises. As Pateman emphasizes, the very power of liberalism’s conception of the universal individual who participates in the western sphere is predicated upon disembodiment. But such disembodiment represents the hidden hegemony of white, middle-class, masculine norms (Pateman, 1989). Will the disembodiment of the ‘new postmulticultural construction of identity free from problematic constructions such as gender, race and ethnicity’ (Dery, 1994) heralded above deliver something less hegemonic? I have my doubts.
Spellman (1988) makes a connection between the celebration of disembodiment and systems of social stratification based on freedom from or enslavement to physical labour. Calling this western hatred of the flesh “somatophobia,” Spellman claims this western philosophical assumption is tied to the imposition of women/others associated with the body to remain outside of or invisible within the public sphere. If the illusion of disembodiment has masked the appropriation of public space by the powerful in the past and in offline contexts, will disembodiment in cyberspace make such social spaces more inclusive? The assumption seems to be that computer technology and the spaces it fosters will somehow be neutral, unlike other social spaces.
Far from being neutral artifacts and physical practices from which one can “float free”, technologies are cultural. Whether technology is narrowly defined in common sense language as tools and mechanical systems or more broadly defined as “systematic treatment” (Concise Oxford Dictionary), technology’s location within culture is crucial for understanding its social context and social consequence. While defining technology generally as knowledge, practices, and artifacts, Ursula Franklin insists on understanding technology as social practice (Franklin, 1990). Emphasizing the specific historical and cultural contexts within which technology is developed, interpreted and experienced, Franklin focuses on the way in which technologies enable some social practices and prevent others. One of the examples she provides is the assembly line. Built into the physical arrangement of the assembly line system of production is not only the assumption of but the necessity for social hierarchy. The separation of workers from the total product requires a supervisor in touch with the big picture. Franklin is not alone in defining technology primarily as social practice. Penley and Ross located computer technologies within culture, arguing that they are
far from neutral and...they are the result of social processes and power relations. Like all technologies, they are ultimately developed in the interests of industrial and corporate profits and seldom in the name of greater community participation or creative autonomy. (Penley and Ross, 1991, p. xii)
The problematic nature of access to and participation within the public sphere and the rather elite history around the construction of computer technology reveal a basic limitation of computer-based public spheres. Access to computer technology and know-how is perhaps the most obvious obstacle to the public potential of new information technologies. While computer technology public access organizations such as freenets and community nets have sprung up across North America with the aim of widening public access, poverty and illiteracy (including computer illiteracy) are significant upfront obstacles. The increasing commercialization of the internet (De Kerckhove, 1997) promises to create more challenges for access. According to recent data, the information revolution has yet to reach the majority of the world’s population. In 1995 approximately 50 million individuals in 175 (of 191) countries around the world made use of the internet. Data from the same year indicate that only one person out of every ten has ever used a telephone. While only one percent of the world’s population had access to the internet in 1995, 9 out of 10 people had never used a telephone (Orlands, 1998, p. 7). While knowledgeable hackers can obtain computer equipment at low cost and local public access organizations make terminals available at no cost, individuals generally need to make a substantial investment of time and money to access the information age.
Literacy (with regard to print media and computer-based communications technologies) is another significant factor limiting access. The various competencies (reading, writing, speaking, computer proficiency) required for participation in public life are not evenly distributed but reflect sociocultural relations of power in stratified societies. Gender, race, and class are among the significant variables that intersect and operate to influence the extent to which one is willing and able to claim voice in public space.
Technologies for expanding public space cannot assume an evenly distributed sense of entitlement to voice. The kind of literacy required for participation in public space is lacking in societies where some are provided with space and others are systematically if often subtly denied it. As Fraser remarks,
The question of open access can be reduced without remainder to the presence or absence of formal exclusions. It requires us to look also at the process of discursive interaction within formally inclusive public arenas....{There are} informal impediments to participatory parity that can persist even after everyone is formally and legally licensed to participate. (Fraser, 1993, p. 10)
Combining computer competency with already troubled issues around public space threatens to compound the gaps between those who have access and those who lack it. In developing technologies for expanding public space, computer-based hardware and software are likely the wrong place to start.
In confronting the elitist tendencies of computing culture and the likely role of new information technologies in consolidating/expanding/reconfigurating relations of inequality, Penley and Ross acknowledge the temptation to view technology as the enemy. But like many others – Franklin, Haraway and an increasing number of feminist cyber-activists, Penley and Ross emphasize the social nature of technology and argue that instead of turning our backs on computers we must create a generation of technoliterate skeptics capable of engaging critically with technology, power and public space. While acknowledging that “the odds are firmly stacked against the efforts of those committed to creating technological countercultures,” they argue that there is a “pressing need for more, rather than less, technoliteracy – a crucial requirement not just for purposes of postmodern survival but also for the task of decolonizing, demonopolozing, and democratizing social communication” (Penley and Ross, 1991, p. xvi). Haraway shares this emphasis on the need to avoid demonizing technology:
Taking responsibility for the social relations of science and technology means refusing an anti-science metaphysics, a demonology of technology, and so means embracing the skillful task of reconstructing the boundaries of daily life, in partial connection with others, in communication with all our parts. (Haraway, 1991, p. 163)
The means and mechanisms for creating a generation of technoliterate skeptics includes the development and ongoing critical exploration of public technologies. Our society is changing rapidly – old problems of exclusion combine with new forms of elitism and new opportunities for reconfiguration. Creating a generation of technoliterate skeptics means preparing members of our society to engage meaningfully with emerging technologies of all kinds – to consider, as Franklin emphasizes, not just what technologies enable but what they prevent. A broader understanding of technologies as social practices needs to challenge our common sense understanding of technologies as tools and objects. This understanding of technology supports a shift in developing public technologies from hardware and software to the social practices appropriate for building more inclusive public spaces.
A significant domain for creating a generation of technoliterate skeptics and introducing and developing appropriately social public technologies is that of public education. It is certainly not the only domain (see my forthcoming book for a discussion of feminist activity in cyberspace as a domain for contesting exclusive tendencies and modeling alternative publics, New York: Garland, 1999). While educational systems in North America and elsewhere are in a panic to keep pace with computing technologies in particular, my encouragement is for educational institutions to invest as much if not more in the social technologies that enable public space. Most of the current panic around computing technology is driven by labour market agendas and fears, partly resulting from demands of potential employers on the system to provide a computer literate workforce but largely as a result of the social, political and economic consequences of the political, economic and social restructuring driven primarily by proponents of new information technology. The shift to the information age has facilitated a new global economy and produced many economic casualties. Indications are that this increasingly widespread employment is not a temporary result of a “readjustment period” but instead is likely to be a permanent feature of our social landscape (Menzies, 1995; Rifkin). While mainstream educational initiatives emphasize a superficial, adaptative focus, the call for a significant role for the educational system in creating a generation of technoliterate skeptics reflects a deeper focus.
Rather than merely preparing students to engage with the technology with the likely consequence that such preparation will perpetuate existing social inequalities such that the majority will work for the technology while the elite will control it (Menzies, 1995), technoliteracy as an educational focus will combine technical competency with a critical awareness of the embeddedness of technology within social relations. As it stands, the majority of society-altering decisions about technology occur behind closed doors, in research laboratories, in corporate boardrooms and in government-business meetings. If admitted, few of us are competent to penetrate the insider jargon of the technical world anyway. By adopting a focus on technoliteracy, rather than technical competence in specific streams and fields, educational institutions can provide students (and faculty) with a sense of entitlement to participate in decisions about technology, the knowledge to engage meaningfully, and the skills to contribute to the construction of inclusive dialogue. It is in the integration of skills to contribute to inclusive dialogue schools integrate and develop public technologies. Technoliteracy avoids the perceived schism between technology and society that perpetuates powerlessness and disentitlement.
Educators have been among the critics of the false universalism of the western public sphere. While education has been implicated within and instrumental in maintaining and reproducing systems of domination, educational reformers from John Dewey to Paulo Freire to contemporary feminist, anti-racist and queer pedagogues have constructed an alternative dialogue about the purpose and practice of education. This dialogue has focused on issues of inclusion and exclusion, within schools and beyond.
Critical pedagogy is influenced by several critical traditions and motivated by the desire to integrate educational theory and educational practice. Like Marxism and feminism, its advocates emphasize the deeply rooted power imbalances and social inequalities that infuse schooling structures and processes.... Critical pedagogy also stresses the importance of knowledge, language, and social action within educational practices. Education has both cultural and economic significance as a mechanism that gives shape and meaning to people’s life experiences, thereby reinforcing the privileges of advantaged groups relative to powerless segments of society. Educational practices, according to critical pedagogy, must be restructured to represent the voices and experiences of all social groups, not just those who have sufficient resources and power to advance their own interests. (Wotherspoon, p. 12)
While critical pedagogues debate over the effectiveness of various social practices in providing this increased inclusion (see for example the debate about critical pedagogy in writings by Ellsworth, Giroux and Lather in Luke and Gore, 1992), the intention of creating a more public space through education is a shared focus. The connection critical pedagogues make between the normatively public space of education and systems of inclusion and exclusion that operate more broadly in society establishes the work of critical pedagogy to be the development and exploration of public technology. This focus on public technology is as essential aspect of the technoliteracy called for by Penley and Ross.
In arguing that technological change is ecological, Postman says that
It is not possible to contain the effects of a new technology to a limited sphere of human activity...one significant change generates total change. (Postman, 1993, p. 18)
Introducing new technologies into our classrooms is therefore an activity of great consequence, because, like other technological change, it is the re-tooling of the social. New technologies alter the structure of our interests: the things we think about. They alter the character of our symbols: the things we think with. And they alter the nature of community: the arena in which thoughts develop (Postman, 1993, p. 20).
It is not enough for educators to teach students how to use computers and navigate the information highway. There are critical questions to consider about technologies in general, and how humans travel through their environment. By recognizing technologies as social in origin and social in consequence, we provide ourselves with a much needed critical foothold to engage with the technology, and to engage about the technology. Research and debate in classrooms at all levels about the politics of technology should surround any skill building technology curriculum.
Lave and Wenger (1991) bring our attention to the situatedness of the learning process in communities of practice. It follows, therefore, that public technologies, that behaviours of both inclusion and exclusion are learned in community. If public spaces that are more genuinely inclusive are to be developed, members of our society need to learn to behave in ways that encourage rather than discourage broad participation. Critical pedagogues have focused on articulating and exploring the social practices, in educational settings and beyond, that encourage or inhibit inclusion.
Critical pedagogy is often categorized broadly within “new” as opposed to “old” orientations to teaching and learning. Key differences between so-called old and new forms of pedagogy relates to notions of the public – survival of the fittest versus inclusion and the facilitation/development of multiple contributions. Traditional pedagogical approaches emphasize the teacher as knowledge broker and the student as receiver of knowledge. Teaching and learning is therefore about content mastery. The “new” pedagogy – some refer to it as critical pedagogy and emphasize teaching and learning as embedded within relations of power, others refer to it as social constructivism – emphasizes the student as learner in a social context and knowledge as produced within a social context. Limitations, such as narrowly-based and hierarchical grading systems, to the extent that aspects of this new pedagogy are adopted continue to be formidable.
The old paradigm of teaching is characterized by static and hierarchical notions of power typified by assumptions that student minds are like blank sheets of paper for instructors to write on; students are considered to be empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge by the instructor. It is assumed that knowledge is something possessed by those with credentials and that a competitive atmosphere is ideal for learning. The new paradigm, in contrast, recognizes limitations of the adversarial, competitive model of teaching and emphasizes the process of knowledge construction as a social process involving students and instructors. Knowledge construction is embedded within the broader social context. Johnson et al emphasize that
All of the above can only take place within a cooperative context. When students interact within a competitive context communication is minimized, misleading and false information is often communicated, helping is minimized and viewed as cheating, and classmates and faculty tend to be disliked and distrusted. Competitive and individualistic learning situations, therefore, discourage active construction of knowledge and the development of talent by isolating students and creating negative relationships among classmates and with instructors. (Johnson et al, 1991, p. 1-11)
Johnson et al’s leadership in cooperative learning emphasizes the connection between learning and inclusion. New pedagogy is explicitly about creating an inclusive public space in the classroom (and beyond) – characterized by the construction of knowledge in relationships – among students and between students and instructor. Instructional techniques that foster a climate of intimidation and competition, are increasingly being identified as impediments to the learning process. In focusing particularly on teaching and learning as occurring within a context of power relations, critical pedagogues are providing leadership in generating public technologies.
In an article concerning the debate over political correctness at many American universities, Hoover and Howard designate quality of dialogue as indicative of climate as it relates to opportunities for participation. Specifically, they distinguish between traditional and critical dialogue. Traditional dialogue is defined as being characterized by the tactic of argumentation, which emphasizes “naming the other,” and attack-oriented communication aimed at preserving “truth.” Critical Dialogue, in contrast, is defined by the acceptance of a multiplicity of perspectives and the deliberate attempt to construct community and establish inclusive public space (Hoover and Howard, 1995). Drawing inspiration from the work of Richard Rorty, the authors emphasize that critical dialogue:
consists of commitment to discussion, to understanding, to acceptance not necessarily of the position of the other, but of the right of the other to a position, all without fear of retribution or loss. Critical dialogue therefore provides the key to community formation. Critical dialogue raises questions, stimulates conflict, suggests alternatives, and ensures interaction among members.2
In contrast,
Attack-oriented communication aimed at preserving “truth” results in dogmatic argumentation that stifles dialogue and demands acceptance of values and traditions without question.3
In a complementary article entitled “Dialogue Across Differences: Continuing the Conversation,”4 Burbules and Rice define public space as a location characterized by commitment to dialogue across differences. Public schools are an appropriate place for developing these public capacities.
There must be some forums in which such dialogue across differences is valued, and in which it is pursued by participants in good faith, even in the face of difficulty and initial misunderstanding. We believe that educational contexts potentially provide one such forum. Public schools and universities are certainly no more free from social and political conflict and patterns of domination than are any other institutions, but they do generally espouse and frequently enact a commitment – particularly at the university level – to the value of communication across difference and the benefits of encountering new and challenging points of view. (Burbules and Rice, 1991, p. 407)
In contrast to claims about how anonymity eliminates the barriers that difference poses to inclusion, Burbules and Rice emphasize that it is the construction of difference and how differences are assigned meaning and practices of communication around them that minimizes or maximizes inclusion. Instead of finding ways to pretend that socially significant differences are not really there, a process which tends to reinforce hegemonic norms of universality, Burbules and Rice emphasize insist that sensitivity to differences that translate into inclusive interactive dispositions and skills are required. These authors propose “communicative virtues” as specific components of a public technology
The success of dialogue across differences also depends on what we have called “communicative virtues” that help make dialogue possible and help sustain the dialogical relation over time. These virtues include tolerance, patience, respect for differences, a willingness to listen, the inclination to admit that one may be mistaken, the ability to reinterpret or translate one’s own concerns in a way that makes them comprehensible to others, the self-imposition of restraint in order that others may “have a turn” to speak, and the disposition to express one’s self honestly and sincerely. The possession of these virtues influences one’s capacities both to express one’s own beliefs, values, and feelings accurately, and to listen and to hear those of others. (Burbules and Rice, 1991, p. 411)
They go on to emphasize the relationship between communicative virtues and inclusivity in the educational process.
The point of stressing the communicative virtues is not to advance a particular educational or political agenda over others, but rather to suggest the dispositions that seem necessary for promoting any open and serious discussion about such matters. If a tentative agreement about how we ought to proceed educationally is to be inclusive in any meaningful sense, then it will require dialogue expressive of the communicative virtues.5
Burbules and Rice’s communicative virtues and the inclusive environment they foster are consistent with Johnson et al’ emphasis on cooperation and interaction and stand in stark contract to the adversarial norms of academic culture and traditional public space. They also suggest specific components of public technology.
Public education – and in the particular the site of the classroom - is a central location for contributing to technoliteracy within society. Citizens in our increasingly postindustrial context need to combine technical, critical and public competencies in order to engage meaningfully with new technologies of all kinds.
Critical pedagogy is a powerful force for generating public technologies because it facilitates the development of a language of critical discourse. Such technologies are the work of the classroom in creating a generation of technoliterate skeptics, equipping our society to engage critically with both the content and the consequences of new technologies. Support for this critical engagement is an important contribution educators can make to efforts to trouble boundaries between insiders and outsiders as society shifts and changes.
Critical pedagogues are active in attempting to make classrooms more inclusive largely because this is a location for developing inclusive public spaces more broadly. The classroom is a place where students have the opportunity to learn, develop and explore the implications of public technologies. The assumption that this process will carry over is the driving force of critical pedagogy.
In keeping with the intention of fostering technoliterate skeptics, the development of social technologies of the public needs to be understood as ongoing and imperfect. Questions need to be asked about the differences between intentions and outcomes and about the sincerity of intentions themselves. For example, how do various public technologies, in spite of the explicitly inclusive intentions of their developers, create new insiders and outsiders and to what extent is this desirable or implicitly intentional? How do efforts at broadening participation in classrooms undermine or fail to undermine traditional bases of exclusion? Debates among critical pedagogues, although unevenly characterized according to indicators of quality of dialogue, indicate that this process is an integral part of the activity of critical pedagogues as a community.
The title of Elizabeth Ellsworth’s groundbreaking feminist critique of early critical pedagogy is a healthy indication that these public technologies are being scrutizined: “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy” (Ellsworth, 1992). This essay and others like it have been very effective in challenging some of the universalist assumptions of early critical pedagogy. Ellsworth’s emphasis on the need to address difference meaningfully while deconstructing it is complemented by the contributions of many others, including the work of Burbules and Rice to conceive of ways to be sensitive to difference and facilitate dialogue across difference. The “communicative virtues” developed by Burbules and Rice are the kind of public technologies that hold promise for genuinely expanding public space. Whether such technologies are compatible with, enhanced by, or undermined by the hardware and software of computer developers will vary according to the order of priority of development. We should be starting with public technologies that focus on social practice rather than computers, networks and computer programs.
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1. For a study of one such site, see my book Writing the Public in Cyberspace
2. Judith D. Hoover and Leigh Anne Howard, "The Political Correctness Controversy Revisited: Retreat from Argumentation and Reaffirmation of Critical Dialogue," in American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 38, No. 7, June/July 1995, p. 971.
3. Judith D. Hoover and Leigh Anne Howard, "The Political Correctness Controversy Revisited: Retreat from Argumentation and Reaffirmation of Critical Dialogue," in American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 38, No. 7, June/July 1995, p. 972.
4. Nicholas Burbules and Suzanne Rice, "Dialogue Across Differences: Continuing the Conversation," in Harvard Educational Review. Vol. 61, No. 4, November 1991.
5. Nicholas Burbules and Suzanne Rice, "Dialogue Across Differences: Continuing the Conversation," in Harvard Educational Review. Vol. 61, No. 4, November 1991, p. 411.
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