Learning in the Digital Age: A Transdisciplinary Approach for Theory and Practice (Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter) 3658355352, 9783658355357

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Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter

David Kergel · Peter Pericles Trifonas · Arkaitz Letamendia · Michael Paulsen · Samuel Nowakowski · Patrik Kjærsdam Telléus · Tadeusz Rachwał · Birte Heidkamp-Kergel

Learning in the Digital Age A Transdisciplinary Approach for Theory and Practice

Diversita¨ t und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter Reihe herausgegeben von David Kergel, IU International University of Applied Sciences, Duisburg, Duisburg, Germany Rolf Hepp, Institut für Soziologie, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Berlin, Germany Birte Heidkamp-Kergel, E-Learning Zentrum, Hochschule Rhein-Waal, Kamp-Lintfort, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany Dirk Jahn, Fürth, Bayern, Germany

Der Prozess der Digitalisierung durchdringt zunehmend alle Lebensbereiche und führt zu einem grundlegenden gesellschaftlichen Wandel. Im pädagogischen Feld bedingt das digitale Zeitalter eine Re-Strukturierung von zentralen Konzepten wie Lernen, Lehren und Bildung. Im Kontext einer sich zunehmenden ausdifferenzierenden Gesellschaft, stellen Diversität und Bildung zentrale Erkenntnisgegenstände der Medienpädagogik dar, die durch den medialen Wandel re-strukturiert werden. Um vor dem Hintergrund medialer Transformationsprozesse die Komplexität von Diversität und Bildung angemessen aufarbeiten zu können, steht v.a. eine zeitgemäße Medienpädagogik und E-Learningforschung vor der Herausforderung, sich einem transdisziplinären Dialog mit anderen Wissenschaftsdisziplinen zu öffnen. Ein derartiger Dialog ermöglicht es, die Komplexität von Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter mit Bezug auf Erkenntnisstrategien und Forschungsergebnissen aus anderen Disziplinen zu thematisieren und zu diskutieren: Es ergibt sich Raum für einen transdisziplinären Dialog über Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter, der mit der Buchreihe initiiert und weitergeführt wird.

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/15766

David Kergel · Peter Pericles Trifonas · Arkaitz Letamendia · Michael Paulsen · Samuel Nowakowski · Patrik Kjærsdam Telléus · Tadeusz Rachwał · Birte Heidkamp-Kergel

Learning in the Digital Age A Transdisciplinary Approach for Theory and Practice

David Kergel IU International University of Applied Sciences Duisburg, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany Arkaitz Letamendia Political Science Department University of Basque Country Sarriena, Vizcaya, Spain Samuel Nowakowski Campus scientifique Université de Lorraine Nancy, France Tadeusz Rachwał Humanities Chodakowska University of Social Sciences Warszawa, Poland

Peter Pericles Trifonas Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto Toronto, ON, Canada Michael Paulsen Institut for Kulturvidenskaber Syddansk University Odense M, Denmark Patrik Kjærsdam Telléus Department of Health Science and Technology Aalborg University Aalborg Øst, Denmark Birte Heidkamp-Kergel E-Learning-Zentrum Hochschule Rhein-Waal Kamp-Lintfort, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany

Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter ISBN 978-3-658-35535-7 ISBN 978-3-658-35536-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35536-4 © Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Responsible Editor: Stefanie Eggert This Springer VS imprint is published by the registered company Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Abraham-Lincoln-Str. 46, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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David Kergel & Birte Heidkamp-Kergel—Learning in and Beyond Civil Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Patrik Kjærsdam Telléus—Windmills of Your Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Arkaitz Letamendia—Popular Learnings and Alternatives in the Digital Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Michael Paulsen—the Plateau of Learning in the Anthropocene—How to Relate Differently to the Earth . . . . . . . . .

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Samuel Nowakowski—Hybridization, a Matter of Place, Time, and … Towards the 4th Dimension of Training—the Disturbances of Time and Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Tadeusz Rachwał—on Learning and Changing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Peter Pericles Trifonas—Notes on Digipedia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Authors

Birte Heidkamp-Kergel is coordinator of the E-Learning Center at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. Her professional experience is located at the interface between teaching and learning research, conceptual educational work, media pedagogy, and e-Education. At the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, she has worked, among other things, as a didactic-technical expert at ELAN e.V. (E-Learning Academic Network) and within the Quality Pact Teaching Project eCULT (eCompetence and Utilities for Learners and Teachers) as well as a research assistant in the sub-project “eDidactics and eScience” (Quality Pact Teaching Project “FLiF” - Research-based Learning in Focus). Her focus in teaching and research is diversity-sensitive e-learning, research-based learning with digital media, diversity in the digital age, qualitative education, and learning research. She is co-editor of the book series “Diversity and Education in the Digital Age” (VS Springer) and the book series “Perspectives on Education in the Digital Age” (Routledge). David Kergel Prof. Dr. for Social Work at the IU International University of Applied Sciences, worked i.a as educational coordinator for the VSU, (Association for Social and Environment Pedagogy) Berlin (Germany), taught as Ph.D. Fellow and afterward as External Lecturer at the Institute for Learning and Philosophy of the Aalborg University (Denmark) and the University of Siegen. He coordinated the projects “e-Didactics and e-Sciences” at Carl von Ossietzky University and “Habitussensitive Counselling” at the HAWK University of Applied Sciences. David Kergel was Visting Researcher a.o. at the Duquesne University (USA) and the METU University. David Kergel is coordinator of the Research Group “Diversity and Education in the Digital Age” and Editor of the Routledge Book Series “Perspectives on Education in the Digital Age”

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and the Springer Book Series “Diveristät und Bildung im Digitalen Zeitalter”. David Kergels research focuses on Diversity (in the digital age), media-ethics and media-pedagogy, social inclusion and learning (in the digital age), and intercultural Pedagogy. Patrik Kjærsdam Telléus Patrik (b. 1974) graduated with a master’s degree in philosophy from Copenhagen University in 2003. He moved to Aalborg University, and the philosophy department as a lecturer and later a Ph.D. fellow. His thesis was on conceptual deliberation in applied ethics based on Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and Patrik received his Ph.D. degree in 2013. During his Ph.D., he was a visiting scholar at the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth College. Since 2014, he has been part of the scientific faculty at the Department of Health Science and Technology at Aalborg University (Denmark), where he now holds a position as associate professor in medical ethics and problem based learning. He has published on several topics in ethics, such as neuroethics, clinical ethics, research ethics and ethical theory. He also does research within the philosophy of learning and in different topics related to medical education and medical professionalism. He is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Problem-based Learning in Higher Education. Apart from regular teaching assignments for undergraduate and graduate students at the Faculty of Medicine, he annually runs two acclaimed interdisciplinary Ph.D. courses, one in Basic Bioethics and one in Understanding Theory of Science. He also works with developing pedagogical competence for the university staff. Arkaitz Letamendia holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher (Basque Government Program) in the Department of Political Science (UPV/EHU) and member of Parte Hartuz Research Group. He is also an associated researcher of Centre Émile Durkheim (SciencePo Bordeaux-Université de Bordeaux). He has been a visiting researcher at the City University of New York, European University Institute in Florence, Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada in Reno, and Centre Émile Durkheim in Bordeaux. Arkaitz Letamendia’s research focuses on political and cultural sociology, social movements and popular culture, areas in which he has published various works. He has taught subjects such as sociological theory, social research methods, and social anthropology at the Basque university. As part of his postdoctoral research, he is currently working on the

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changing dynamics of mobilization and political conflicts during the 2010 decade in different cases of Western Europe like Catalonia, Basque Country and France. Samuel Nowakowski [email protected]; is a senior associate professor at the University of Lorraine. He is a researcher at LORIA (Laboratory of Computer Science and its Applications - UMR 7503). His current research is mainly focused on the modeling of web uses, artificial intelligence, intelligent companion systems and their implementation in transversal eEducation projects. He teaches digital humanities at the Information Communication department of UFR SHS Nancy and at the Ecole des Mines de Nancy and carries out several educational innovation projects. He is in charge of the pedagogical & digital mission for the UFR SHS Nancy, responsible for the teaching of Humanities at ´ the Ecole des Mines de Nancy, member of the network of educational guides of the University of Lorraine and intervenes on humanism issues, digital, digital transition and pedagogy in many public and private institutions in France and abroad. He is the co- author of the book entitled “Demain est-il ailleurs? Odyss´ee urbaine autour de la transition num´erique”, FYP Editions, 2020. Michael Paulsen (born 1974) is an associate professor and head of Intercultural Pedagogy Studies, at the University of Southern Denmark. His research focuses on the ontology and axiology of education. Currently he is working on developing a new understanding of education situated in the Anthropocene. He has led several research projects in Denmark. He has worked as an associate professor in Applied Philosophy at Aalborg University from 2012–2016, where he was chair of the Study Board. He completed a MA in Social Philosophy at Aalborg University, Denmark, and a PhD in Philosophy, also Aalborg University. From 2017–2020 he has been coordinator of the Nordic research network “Learning & Bildung in time of globalisation”. He has published several books and articles within educational research. See https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/ en/persons/mpaulsen. His latest books are: (1) Paulsen, M., & Tække, J. (2021). A New perspective on education in the digital age: Teaching, Media and Bildung. Bloomsbury Academic. (2) Paulsen, M., jan jagodzinski and Hawke, Shé (Ed.) (2021). Pedagogy in the Anthropocene: Re-Wilding Education for a New Earth. Palgrave Macmillan. Tadeusz Rachwał is Professor of English at the SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw where he teaches literary and critical theory and thematic courses addressing the issues of posthumanist critiques of the

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Anthropocene. His publications address various conerns of contemporary literary and critical theories in social and political contexts. His book on cultural uncertainties – Precarity and Loss – was published by Springer in 2017. Peter Pericles Trifonas is Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto. His areas of interest include ethics, philosophy of education, cultural studies, and technology. Among his books are the following: Converging Literacies, Deconstructing the Machine (with Jacques Derrida), International Handbook of Semiotics, International Handbook of Research and Pedagogy in Heritage Language Education, CounterTexts: Reading Culture, Revolutionary Pedagogies: Cultural Politics, Instituting Education, and the Discourse of Theory, The Ethics of Writing: Derrida, Deconstruction, and Pedagogy, Institutions, Education, and the Right to Philosophy (with Jacques Derrida), Roland Barthes and the Empire of Signs, Umberto Eco & Football, Pedagogies of Difference.

Introduction

Learning and digitization represent central and at the same time open concepts on a global level. Learning and digitization have a discursive effect that can hardly be assessed across fields. Social change can scarcely be adequately discussed and shaped without clearly defining these two terms. This is where the following research project comes in. The interdisciplinary research project “Learning in times of Digitization” was created in response to the global dimension of learning and digitization, which is nevertheless open to interpretation. The starting point was to ask scholars from different countries and with different research focuses on these fundamental concepts of contemporary society. On this basis, localization and foundation for further transdisciplinary discussions should be provided. The authors of this volume come from the cultural sciences, the social sciences, computer science, and philosophy. Each author should contribute his or her analyses of these terms. Through this transdisciplinarity, the concepts should be reconstructed in their epistemological complexity. This epistemological location should be understood as transdisciplinary as well as collaborative. Thus, the present volume should instead be read as a polyphonic analysis. To ensure this collaborative character of the book, a heuristic set of questions was developed in advance in close dialogic coordination. These questions provided the basis for the analyses. The collaborative dimension of knowledge construction is evident in the dialogical cooperation of

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 D. Kergel et al., Learning in the Digital Age, Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35536-4_1

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Introduction

the authors of this volume.1 The reader is also called upon to participate in the process of knowledge construction. Instead of lining up the various responses, the reader can aggregate meaning and significance for him or herself entirely in the spirit of hypertextual, rhizomatic, and associative reading strategies. Thus, the reader becomes part of the research process, of which the present volume is merely the first result. Thus, among other things, this research will be further advanced and differentiated within the framework of the network “Diversity and Education in the Digital Age.”

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The first chapters of the book were written before the outbreak of the global corona pandemic, and the final contributions were written during the corona pandemic. From this perspective, too, the book reflects from a heuristical perspective social transformation processes with a global impact.

David Kergel & Birte Heidkamp-Kergel—Learning in and Beyond Civil Society

What is Learning? Learning appears as an anthropological constant. A person who does not learn is unimaginable—similar to a person who does not breathe. However, the way learning takes place and what should be learned depend on more cultural, historical, social, etc., contexts. This is also applicable to the approach learning is conceptualized. Here arises one structural challenge of conceptual work of social science research: when learning is defined as an anthropological constant, the defined object is already implicitly defined from a specific cultural/societal context. In this case, it is the context of a white, male European social scientist who worked once as a primary school teacher. Already the conceptual version of learning as a process in which humans construct knowledge based on experience is part of a specific situating. One way of dealing with this structural difficulty, with which the social scientist is constitutively confronted, is to reveal one’s epistemological roots. Only by uncovering these epistemological roots, it becomes possible to determine the concept of learning in a scientifically sound way.

Civil Society Civil society represents a combination of economic and value systems, has a centuries-long history, and forms the basis of the society we live in today. Civil society can be understood as a secular, political and social order concept. That concept bases on the rational competence of the (state) citizen: He is supposed to reason, act and decide rationally. A consequence is that the citizen is responsible

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 D. Kergel et al., Learning in the Digital Age, Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35536-4_2

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for his actions. A central element of civil society is represented by the critically reflective individual (cf. Kergel 2011 & 2019). The cities of the Middle Ages represent the birthplace of civil society (Kropotkin, 1993). From these cities, bourgeois culture unfolded. Therefore, a Eurocentric perspective is structurally inherent in the analytical discussion of civil society. Civil society and bourgeois cultures distinguish from the feudal society of the Middle Ages. Feudal society was based on a static economic and social order. The essence of the feudal culture was economic stagnation for centuries. There were no noteworthy inventions that could be associated with an aristocracy/noble rule in Europe. Technological breakthroughs were very sporadic (cf. Steingartz, 2015, p. 32). In the feudal economic order, everyone took the place of birth. In contrast, civil society and bourgeois culture see themselves as a meritocracy-based system based on citizens’ freedom. Since the French Revolution at the latest, freedom has been one of the guiding concepts of bourgeois society. This includes free economic activity as well as a free press: Thus, according to Marcuse, “freedom of thought, speech, and conscience” is as much a part of bourgeois culture as a “free economy” (Marcuse, 2014, p. 21). The latter establishes the achievement principle of bourgeois society on an economic level.

The achievement principle of civil soecity and bourgeois culture As mentioned above, the historical roots of the bourgeoisie lie, among others, in the Italian trading cities of the eleventh century: starting from the trading cities that emerged in the eleventh century, the self-image of the free citizen developed in the “bosom of feudalism” (cf. Schmied-Kowarzik, 2019, p. 32): Through the revolutionary emancipation of the citizens of the cities, which was itself made possible by economic changes, a tremendous economic, political, technical, and scientific upheaval of the entire culture took place (cf. Schmied-Korwazik 2019, p. 33). The starting point of this transformation process was the distinction of the bourgeoisie from the feudal nobility, which had hitherto represented the ruling class and was the dominant cultural actor. Nobles defined themselves by birthright, among other things. Their position in society was God-given and therefore did not have to be earned/earned. Money was valued accordingly: In the nobility of feudal society, a ‘traditional economic ethic’ was established, according to which money was a means to an end. Money was needed and had. Where

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it came from and how it was earned, on the other hand, was of no importance (cf. Reinhardt, 2014, pos. 1372). Privileges were passed on without achievement—economic prosperity was not earned but mainly was linked to the class into which one was born. Against this inequality by birth, the bourgeoisie set the merit principle. The emerging bourgeoisie no longer assumed that the individual was defined by faith and birth. Instead, the individual could determine his destiny and became the embodied agent of the idea of growth, eagerness to work, diligence, the will to perform, a sense of duty. These were the core bourgeois virtues (cf. Steingartz, 2015, p. 38). To this day, bourgeois culture is characterized by a pronounced performance ethos/achievement orientation. It is essential to earn one’s place in society. Economically, this is reflected in the competitive principle of capitalism. Competition spurs people on to economic and cultural excellence (cf. Felber, 2019): It can be stated that with civil society and bourgeois culture, the achievement principle was invented. Individual freedom is displayed in individual abilities (cf. Verheyen, 2018, p. 66). These individual abilities are shown in individual performance. Through individual performance, everyone has the chance to earn his place in civil society.

Learning as the cognitive basis of the bourgeois achievement principle The bourgeois conception of achievement also fundamentally changed the pedagogical field. According to bourgeois understanding, the fundaments for the performance of individuals are laid in childhood and adolescence. With the formation of bourgeois society, childhood and adolescence’s conception becomes established (cf. Ariès 1998). In childhood and adolescence, people are supposed to develop their performance potential and thus be prepared for the bourgeois concept of competition. Since its beginnings, bourgeois pedagogy has also been a performance-oriented pedagogy. In this context, performance is always interindividual, or rather, performance is interindividual competition-based. Consequently, the achievement is manifested in being better than others. The competition-based logic of capitalism manifests in the pedagogical field through the competition between pupils. In the course of the establishment of civil society, a public education system emerged. In connection with this, the concept of grading also developed. In the nineteenth century, within the German Empire, the introduction of standardized grades became established. The grades, which were eventually

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also represented numerically (cf. Verheyen, 2018, p. 62). Numerical performance assessment facilitates inter-individual assessment. With individual grades, performance becomes inter-individually determinable. Based on school performance, a school-leaving qualification can be acquired to this day, opening up or obstructing career opportunities. The competition-based logic of capitalism as an originally bourgeois economic system is manifested in the pedagogical field by being better than the competitors, which promises a ‘deserved’ place in the social fabric. It is not surprising that in the bourgeois discourses of self-understanding, the achievement is placed above nobility by rank. Nobility by birth gives way to nobility by merit. Thus, the doctorate is considered the nobility of knowledge of bourgeois society (Kergel 2019), which can be acquired through one’s performance.

Learning in the Digital Age E-learning concerns itself with teaching and learning in the digital age. In this context, e-learning is an effect of the media change brought about by digitalization in education. It is not surprising that e-learning also raises questions about the media dimension of learning. In this context, the question arises about what exactly is meant by the term medial and the term media. The media theorist Mersch (2006) points out that it has sometimes been ‘doubted’ that the concept of media can be defined concisely at all (cf. Mersch, 2006, p. 10). Palm (2004) speaks of a ‘conceptual chaos that the term ‘medium’ triggers’ (cf. Palm 2004, p. 49). This chaos could be “escaped by denying it [the concept of media] any categorical meaning beyond its diffuse use for certain technical means of dissemination” (Palm 2004, p. 49). Regarding the relevance and conceptual openness of the concept of media, it is not surprising that from a media-pedagogical point of view, there is insufficient clarification of the concept of media or mediality (cf. Bettinger, 2017, p. 76) can be observed. Despite or precisely because of this openness, a clarification of what is understood by a medium seems unavoidable. The word ‘medium’ can be understood as a dimension of analysis that focuses on information exchange’s material structure. Media content and media form cannot be separated. In other words, the medium in itself does not exist. Instead, media content and media form merge into each other: Without media content, there is no media form and vice versa. When a Shakespeare play is viewed in the theater, the impression, the experience, and the phenomenal structure of the play/content are different than when the play is received as an audiobook,

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viewed as a film, or played itself. The play as such exists in the performative (re)production, which is medially bound. At the same time, and this is another central point, the medial structuring of phenomena also defines the subject’s positioning. As a theatergoer, the Shakespeare play is perceived differently than when the play is rehearsed and performed (Kergel & Heidkamp, 2015, p. 63). There are no ‘extra-medial states’. Learning processes are also always medial, and every knowledge has a medial specificity (cf. Bächle, 2016, p. 49). New medial structures such as digital information transmission lead to new forms of reality experiences. Subsequently, new media technologies lead to new knowledge and cognition possibilities (cf. Bächle, 2016, p. 49). Against the background of these considerations, the media-theoretical question arises of how the medial structure of phenomenon can be analyzed as something that appears. The medial structure analysis is complicated by the ‘paradox of the medial’ (cf. Mersch, 2006, p. 226). With the analytical focus on the content, the medial structure of a phenomenon ‘disappears.’ We often only become aware of the cell phone as a mediator when a poor connection limits the conversation’s quality. To develop an analysis perspective for dealing with the medial structure of phenomena, we can use the concept of content-form dynamics. For the analysis of learning processes, the challenge arises to analyze the relationship between medial structure and learning: E.g., which medial structure enables behaviorist learning, which medial structure enables cognitivist learning, which medial structure enables (socio-)constructivist learning? In other words: • Which content-form dynamic or which medial structure corresponds most closely to the communicative structure of behaviorism, cognitivism, and (socio)constructivism or educational learning? Concerning this question and against the digitalization background and forms of communication in the digital age, the terms poly-phony (several actors compose a text) and polydirectionality (several actors communicate with each other in different directions) become relevant. These terms describe the medial structure of digital communication. The participatory media structures that define the Internet—and here in particular ‘Web 2.0’ as a so-called ‘join-in network’—enable democratic forms of interaction: As a unidirectional media, Television separates the ‘recipient’ from the ‘producer’ or the ‘communicator’ from the ‘recipient’. Due to their polydirectional and polyphonic structure, digital media enable potentially dialogic communication spaces and interaction processes d. The medial structure of digital communication is therefore characterized by a polyphonic (several authors

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can work synchronously on texts) and a polydirectional (several authors can communicate dialogically with each other) dimension. Asymmetrical communication relationships are thus—potentially—undermined. In a wiki entry, for example, ‘the reader’ can easily take on the role of ‘(co-)author’ due to the polydirectionality of wikis—as a consequence, a polyphonic text is created to which several individuals contribute their ‘voice.‘ The remix and mash-up culture of the Internet is an effect of the digital media structure: “Technology could enable a whole generation to create—remixed films, new forms of music, digital art, a new kind of storytelling, writing, a new technology for poetry, criticism, political activism—and then, through infrastructure of the Internet, share creativity with others (Lessig, 2001, p. 9). It is precisely this ephemeral or non-static form of communication that determines learning processes in the digital age—at least potentially: Content is produced and changed by users, which poses a challenge to media literacy in the digital age. Thus, according to Weel, a key challenge is to teach strategies to confidently “deal with turning the solid, unchangeable monuments of print into the continual, ever-changing events of the digital realm” (Weel, 2011, p. 218). Consequently, the changes in medial possibilities and social relations pose a challenge for teaching/learning scenarios. From an e-didactic perspective, the challenge is to develop strategies that enable learning that is adequate for digital communication structures. In this context, particular attention must be paid to ensuring that the digital’s dialogic and collaborative potentials are appropriately actualized in teaching/learning scenarios. At this point, the differentiation between cooperative and collaborative forms of work appears to be an important distinction for e-didactic. Cooperative work stands in the tradition of Fordist work: The task is subdivided into tasks. Every single learner works on a task. The results are put together. Experience has shown that this strategy is often used by learners, especially in group presentations and other group work. Although this seems to be efficient, it often reduces the results because there is no dialogical validation of the work results. In collaborative work, a dialogic discussion takes place at every step of the work. Especially dialogic collaboration usually leads to work results with high quality and increases the learning experience quality (cf. Kergel & Heidkamp, 2015). Dialogic collaboration can be realized via digital media in a low-threshold and flexible manner, independent of time and location. Just as digital innovation is constantly expanding reality, the same is true with digital learning possibilities. This means that these analyses of learning in the digital age are merely a provisional body of work in an age of accelerated technological innovation.

What Goes Beyond Learning?

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However, epistemological concepts can be identified that distinguish civic culture. The concept of e-learning and learning has its deep structures in the epistemological model of the bourgeois individual. Through the medial structure of the digital, these concepts of bourgeois epistemology are transcended. Collaborative work represents one example. The individual as a central epistemological actor is transcended. The individual as an isolated agent of epistemological processes is dissolved in the sphere of collaborative epistemological processes. Through the discourse on collaborative learning, the bourgeois fixation on the individual is subversively undermined.

What Goes Beyond Learning? The concept of time is a challenge for the human experience. The human being seems to be exposed to time. Heidegger summarizes this philosophically: The essence of human existence lies in its existence. Heidegger opposes a conception of man as something merely existent: man has a life to lead. He has to make decisions and realize possibilities or let them go. The existence of being ends with death. To exist means to seize possibilities and to drop others. Death is the last possibility. The sensitivity of anxiety opens up death as this last possibility and that it is the only death, that is, that death is entirely and only about me. In the face of death, Dasein opens up a defined decision space within which it exists. Only when it consciously accepts this space does it exist as a whole. Thus, death is not simply a final event but radiates back to the existence of Dasein. The mortality and finiteness of Dasein already determine it during its life. Heidegger calls this overall structure the “being toward death.” To provide a bit more pragmatic analysis, one can refer to the concept of time in physics: From this perspective, time is first a physical quantity. The commonly used formula sign of time is t. Time describes the sequence of events. Thus it has a definite, irreversible direction. Time represents the mode of transitoriness, which shows itself in a before and an after. Time appears thereby as ontological size—and with it ineluctable. Learning can be interpreted as an implication of time or the dimension of knowledge production within the concept of time. Before is the not-knowing or less-knowing, the after is the knowing or the more-knowing. Learning is time through knowledge construction. However, the

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ontological dimension of time can certainly be challenged, for example, through the concept of spacetime. Spacetime or spacetime continuum refers to the joint representation of threedimensional space and one-dimensional time in a four-dimensional mathematical structure. This representation is used in the theory of relativity. Humans experience place and time as two distinct realities, in part because of the causality associated with time (an effect cannot occur earlier than its cause). In classical physics, and for the most part in engineering, place and time are treated as independent quantities. However, at velocities of the order of the speed of light, it becomes apparent that the time and location of an event are mutually dependent. Time and space cannot be separated. This raises the question of whether, by questioning the ontological validity of time as before and after, a different form of learning can be conceptualized. To define this thought, Zen Buddhism will be used. In principle, learning can be defined as a sustainable change in behavior or behavioral potential (cf. Winkel et al. 2006). From a civic perspective, learning represents a part of the civic narrative of freedom. However, learning can also be analyzed as part of the bourgeois narrative of progress. The bourgeois narrative of progress shows itself, among other things, in the term ‘revolution’. The French Revolution gave rise to the modern image of revolution as a radical eruption in the direction of progress. The concept of revolution exemplarily represents the bourgeois belief in progress. The events of 1789 had not only thrown the entire then known world into turmoil, but with them, the modern idea of a revolutionary upheaval had arisen in the first place. Until then, the term revolution was used to describe the opposite of our modern notions: the term revolution originally steemed from astronomy. The term described the movement of planets in their orbit. The planets ‘re-volvered’: In other words: they returned to an earlier state. This was the actual political meaning: the return to an earlier state and to eliminate deviances. (Gerber, 2018, p. 85). In the context of the bourgeoise deconstruction of the world, the term revolution received a new meaning. The term revolution became a metonymy for bourgeoise progress- in other words, ‘revolutions stand for the will to change’ (Telesko, 2010, p. 19). As a radical change, revolutions metonymically manifest the (bourgeois) transformation potentials of social realities. Discursively, revolutions are proclaimed in a wide variety of social subfields with an enormous impact. For example, each media revolution required a new way of learning. Learning is a manifestation of a permanent process of progress: The fact that people learn throughout their lives is a product of their need for education or

Learning and Time

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learning. Thus, learning is based on repeated experiences that a human being makes. Consequently, learning is not a result of genetically determined or genetically determined reaction tendencies. Instead, humans change as a result of experiences. Learning, like disease, growth, or aging, is a process of human change. In contrast to disease and aging, however, learning involves the acquisition of knowledge based on experience. This knowledge acquired through the process of learning leads to a lasting change in behavior or behavioral potential. Learning always means progress. From this perspective, learning can be analyzed as part of the civic narrative of progress. In other words, an understanding of learning described here is irrevocably part of bourgeois culture. The question of what goes beyond learning is one that also affects civic culture. Civic culture is based on progress and an increase in knowledge, on an improved after through progress.

Learning and Time Zen Buddhis is a branch of Buddhism whose essential characteristic is meditation. Zen Buddhism originated in China in about the fifth century. In its early days, it was significantly influenced by Daoism. Through monks, it spread to the neighboring countries of China. From the twelfth century, Chan reached Japan and received a new expression there as Zen. The terminology used in Europe and the USA for Zen is therefore derived mainly from Japanese. This reached the West from the twentieth century in again new interpretation. Zen Buddhism has a pragmatic approach towards religious practices. Some branches of Zen Buddhism know no deities and nothing else supernatural. From this point of view, Zen is thus, by definition, not a faith. This complete absence of faith and transcendence radically distinguishes it from known religions. Zen is often said to offer “nothing”: no teaching, no mystery, no answers. The goal of epistemological processes/the aim for truth is nothing. The purpose of learning and teaching in Zen is that one must detach oneself both from one’s drives (e.g., the urge for material possessions or social status) and from abstract desires, which include the desire for knowledge or (paradoxically) the desire for enlightenment. Here an alternative concept of epistemological practice is formulated: European Learning starts from the individual who orders the world and thus creates knowledge. This learning is ego-centered. The individual conquers the world

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through learning. The demarcation between the individual and the world/object dissolves in Zen: The perception of nothing bases on the abolition of the separation of the inner world and the outer world. This also means to abandon the ‘illusion’ of an ego separated from the rest of the world. Therefore, one should stop identifying with this I and not “hold on” to anything else: no things, no beliefs, and no thoughts. This means a crucial difference to European learning: new things need to be discovered, and new thoughts must be developed. This need for the new constitutes time as a concept of a before (less knowledge) and after (more knowledge). In-between is the process of learning. The Zen reverses this process. The before is the state of knowledge which needs to be substituted by an experience of nothing; as soon as this experience has arrived, learning stops. European learning requires permanent, performative learning: As soon as one knows more (the state of the after), this state turns into the ‘before’ of a new learning process. This dynamic is the basis of the never-ending cycle of creating progress. Zen dissolves from this process. As soon as this state has arrived, the time of learning in the sense of a before and an after dissolves.

References Bächle, T. C. (2016). Digitales Wissen, Daten und Überwachung. Zur Einführung. Junius. Bettinger, P. (2017). Medienpädagogik als Kulturwissenschaft!? Überlegungen zu disziplinären Öffnungen und Anschlüssen. In MedienPädagogik: Zeitschrift für Theorie und Praxis der Medienbildung. Themenheft Nr. 27: Tagungsband: Spannungsfelder und blinde Flecken. Medienpädagogik zwischen Emanzipationsanspruch und Diskursvermeidung. 65–85. Felber, C. (2019). This is not economy: Aufruf zur Revolution der Wirtschaftswissenschaft. Deuticke. Gerber, J. (2018). Karl Marx in Paris. Die Entdeckung des Kommunismus. Piper. Kergel, D., & Heidkamp, B. (2015). Forschendes Lernen mit digitalen Medien – ein Lehrbuch. #theorie #praxis #evaluation. Waxmann. Kropotkin, P. (1993). Gegenseitige Hilfe in der Tier- und Menschenwelt: Grafenau: Trotzdem. Lessig, L. (2001). The Future of Ideas. The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World. Creative Commons Version. Random House. Marcuse, H. (2014). Der eindimensionale Mensch. Studien zur Ideologie der fortgeschrittenen Industriegesellschaft. Zu Klampen. Mersch, D. (2006). Medientheorien zur Einführung. Junius. Palm, G. (2006). CyberMedienWirklichkeit. Virtuelle Welterschließungen. Heise. Reinhardt, V. (2014). De Sade: oder Die Vermesseung des Bösen. Beck (kindle Version) Schmied-Kowarzik, W. (2019). Kritische Theorie einer emanzipativen Praxis. Konzepte marxistischer Erziehungs- und Bildungstheorie. Beltz/Juventa. Steingartz, G. (2015). Unser Wohlstand. Bastard Ökonomie und seine Feinde. Btb.

References

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Telesko, W. (2010). Das 19. Jahrhundert. Eine Epoche und ihre Medien. Böhlau. Verheyen, N. (2018). Die Erfindung der Leistung. Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Weel, A. v. d. (2011). Changing our textual Minds. Towards a digital Order of Knowledge. Manchester University Press Winkel, S., Petermann, F., & Petermann U. (2006). Lernpsychologie. Schöningh.

Patrik Kjærsdam Telléus—Windmills of Your Mind

What is learning? Learning is the annexation of something alien. When we learn something—whatever it is—it first appears strange, and remote, and foreign, and then we acquire, we conquer, we inhabit, we colonize, we master, we domesticate, we take and we own. The unfamiliar becomes familiar, and what was not ours, come to be ours. That which was unknown is now known by our exploration, our embrace, our capture, our consumption, our… annexation. There are numerous learning theories, i.e. theoretical and often conceptual attempts to understand and explain learning processes. Some focus on cognitive issues, others on social or broader psychological issues. Some on motivation, others on outcome, some on content, others on process. The first idea of learning I came across was Plato’s and the latest one is Meizirov’s Transformative Learning. As the editor-in-chief of the Journal for Problem-based Learning in Higher Education I regularly come across learning theories. Even though PBL specifically targeted higher education ought to be a rather narrow field, the theoretical varieties are remarkable. A speculative hypothesis for the waste amount of learning theories could be that they seldom are theories explaining the abstract or general phenomenon of learning. On the contrary, they tend to appear together with descriptions, and often times normative descriptions or even promotions of specific pedagogical practices and pedagogical situations. To put it rather bluntly, one might say that learning theories are metaphysical warrants for specific didactical positions indorsing specific methods or actions and specific axiological aims. What joins these two—the particular pedagogical setting and the learning theory—is not

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 D. Kergel et al., Learning in the Digital Age, Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35536-4_3

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a clear and present phenomena but rather a foggy and ambiguous concept of learning or learning process. When I call the learning theories metaphysical it is because it doesn’t seem to be a unified scientific research field covering learning and generating theories that specifically target learning, either as competing theories or as supplementary positions or as coherent progressive theory building. Rather it seems as if learning theories are constructed by using bits and parts of theories, hypothesis and ideas from a range of other scientific fields, like psychology, sociology, anthropology, and other forms of knowledge or belief fields, like philosophy, art and religion. Books on learning theory or books as collections of learning theories tend to be colored, not only by the pedagogical practice or setting that is either investigated or simply exemplified by the theory and theorist, but also to a large extend by the backing behind the warrant. This backing is typically stemming or rooted in the theorist primary disciplinary training (in sociology, psychology, communication etc.) or in the values and ideals of the theorist particular praxis field (like art, medicine, management, etc.) or in the theorists belief system and ideological pursuits (as types of philosophy, religion, politics etc.). If I were to attempt to understand and express what a learning theory is, I would therefore not look to claims explaining learning or describing learning or identifying learning. Instead, inspired by an investigation of the concept of facts I did a few years ago, I would look to an idea from the late Wittgenstein, called ‘hinge propositions’, and ask what learning theories do for us. A learning theory is a proposition illustrating a concept of learning (or learning process). This proposition is neither an empirical proposition nor is it an a priori proposition. Instead, it is a proposition that hinge the two, by appearing to be empirical from one side and a priori from the other. In order for the proposition to have that quality, it needs to be uttered from a position where the empirical and the a priori is one and the same. I.e. from a position of what we might call epistemic belief, or with another word, from a position of certainty. This position, however certain it is experienced and comprehended, it is not, as it might appear to us, or we might assume, a position of God. As Haraway would explain to us, it is nothing but a conditional position, dependent on the contextual merger of both the situated object under investigation (the empirical pedagogical setting) and the situated investigator (the a priori backing of the learning theorist). Using Haraway, instead of Wittgenstein, might therefore make me attempt to say that the concept of learning, is not an illustration by a learning theory in the form of a hinge proposition, but instead I might say that the concept of learning is an expression by a material-semiotic actor. Regardless of which expression I choose

What is learning?

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the simple point is to illuminate the metaphysical character of learning theories, and the contextual conditional belief involved in any claim of learning. In that sense, one might say that answering the question: What is learning? is to find comfort in a nonsensical, perhaps even bewildered, metaphysical belief. More epistemic success might therefore stem from, instead of the question What is learning, ask the questions What do I learn? How do I learn it? and Why do I want to learn it?. The mystery of ‘learning’ will undoubtable show itself in the answers to these three, more simple, but at the same time more dubious questions. However, in this first chapter, the question asked is: What is learning? So, what nonsensical and bewildered metaphysical belief is represented in my metaphor of annexation of something alien? Well I think that there are at least three figures worth marking as constituting my belief. First that of the stranger or the strange. It tells you that every learning process starts with the two folded position of the acceptance of one’s own inadequacy and the willingness or openness towards that which is strange or alien. Without recognizing this position, no learning will take place. This also indicate that key obstacles for learning are e.g. arrogance and isolation. The second figure is to be found in the poorly disguised violent character of the metaphor. Learning is a form of violence from a position of power. It is to challenge the sovereignty of a natural now or an order of things, and to embrace one’s right to mastery. This violence is seldom depicted in a negative light; instead it is illustrated by positive virtues of evolvement and rightfulness, sometimes even as emancipation. When my metaphor has a slightly more negative connotation it is not because I think learning is a terrible thing and ought to be avoided, but it is because I want us to remember that the endgame of learning is the opposite, or even the destruction of the opening game. The metaphor is trying to ask us to remain humble as we inflict our powerful violence upon the natural now or upon the order of things, and conquer ourselves and the world around us. Here the older thinkers might talk of hubris or shout memento mori, while more modern theorists and thinkers tend to talk of critical thinking, cautionary principles, fallibility or simply reflective practices. The last and third element in my metaphor is that learning requires an effort; and the more alien that which I want to learn is, the more effort it requires. By this, I obviously want to claim that if you want to learn something, you have to work at it; that it doesn’t come by itself, like an intuitive insight or by God whispering in your ear. But more than this, this element of my metaphor is also hinting towards the issue of learning as an individual or a collective quest or process. What I mean is that there might be a natural desire in the learning process to minimize the effort on my part, by joining my quest with others’.

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Sometimes even letting others do the actual annexation, while I just tag along. However, going down that last road obviously leads to false processes of learning and illusionary figures of knowledge. That doesn’t necessarily mean, that I’m left to all alone take on the quest and the annexation of something alien, like the emancipated autonomous hero of the Enlightenment. Just like in most walks of life, doing things together makes our doing stronger, firmer and in many ways more righteous and by that token also better. Collaborative or collective efforts are vital aspects of learning, and allows us to grasp the knowledge we gain, as with other doings, in a stronger, firmer, more righteous and thereby better way. However, to do it right is not to spare myself from effort, but on the contrary to apply myself even more, if I am, and we are, to avoid the false and the illusionary. I am pleased with this metaphor because, amongst other things, it pinpoints the moral complexity of knowing and the epistemic perplexity of learning. This perplexity might be summoned in two simple questions: a) to what extent is that which I now learn already known to me?, and, to put it in a more practical (and moral) fashion: b) by what right or by what power can I claim that which was not mine to be mine?

Accredited literature Haraway, D. (1988) “Situated knowledges: The Scientific Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” Feminist Studies nr 14, 3 Mezirow, J. (2000) Learning as Transformation: Critical Perspectives on a Theory in Progress. Jossey-Bass A Wiley Company Plato Menon [Platons skrifter Bok 2, Bokförlaget Atlantis, 2001] Telléus, P. K. (2018) “As a matter of fact” Academic Quarter 17 Wittgenstein, L. (1979) On Certainty, edited by G.E.M. Anscombe and G.H. von Wright, Basil Blackwell

Learning in a digital age The literature on perspectives and tools, explanations, warrants and consequences, risks and opportunities following the introduction of “the digital” is growing for every minute. That is in itself probably a testament to the current claim of a digital age. Digital age or not, our present time is indeed digital to an extent never seen before. In the profession of higher education this is naturally also the case. Elsewhere I have written briefly on the subject. It was before Covid-19

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and the pandemic of 2020 brought us to a catapult-like entrance into the digital world of education. In that text, called “Dark waters beneath the digital surface”, I conclude that the digitalization in education is primarily only superficial changes; that we just change the looks of the tools if you will. We still try and want to do like we “always” do, and we judge our actions and comprehensions on the basis of how well they perform according to the “normal physical” standards. However, then I start to think, and unravel some far more profound changes. My focus is on—and I do hate saying it—metaphysical changes. How time and space is profoundly altered and language is fundamentally transformed. These changes are to begin with, not easily visible or apparent to us, but they reshape our actions and comprehensions on an existential level, making e.g. our traditionally based judgment of successful uses of digital tools and platforms unaccountable, or even invalid, and in need of new standards and new value criteria. There is no question in my mind that “the digital” is effecting not only our educational practice but more importantly it is altering our way of being educators, and of being students. In that sense, learning in a digital age is something we are just starting to comprehend, and we need to be careful in judging that learning, because we have not yet developed evaluation criteria fitting for this process. Let us put those big and speculative words aside for now, and not talk about learning in a digital age metaphorically, metaphysically or ideologically, but instead practically. At the university where I work we have recently been asked to revise all our study regulation in the intent to include new learning goals. These learning goals should be progressive and fall into two categories. The first category was old news to us; it was that of Problem-based Learning (due to PBL being the official pedagogical practice at the university). The second category however, was a new one. It was digital competencies. What on earth, should we write in those study regulations? After brainstorms, review searchers and readings, and discussions a few different clusters of competencies began to emerge. First cluster, is all that which relate to ‘digital’ in terms of tools and means, such as search engines, data collections, linguistic aid, reference assistants, data sharing and collaborative platforms, etc.. This cluster is primarily practical competencies that enables the student to maneuver and effectively function as a student (and later as a professional and academic) in a world of digital applications, activity forms and procedures. It is what some call digital literacy in its most practical or mundane form. The second cluster builds on the same concept of digital literacy but focus on the more idealistic or emancipating semiotics of the term. That means that

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the digital competencies in this cluster has less form of practical know-how, and more as an approach that utilizes the digital tools for progressive and innovative purposes. To maneuver in the digital reality of a student is, for the student to be able to expand, grow and create knowledge processes that the digital tools unlock and enable. The first cluster of competencies are rooted and confirmed in a learning perspective that focus on what we might call pragmatic and contextual adaption. It is sort of a necessary adjustment to the demands and conditions of the increased digitalization of higher education and scientific practice. The second cluster on the other hand is recognizable as a constructivist perspective of learning and learning processes. The mission is to have the students co-create their digital reality and for them not to simply use digital tools as means to an end, but to incorporate the digital tools as enactments for new or extended ways of knowing and perhaps even being. The first and the second cluster gave way for a third cluster, a critical cluster, or meta-cluster if you will. Here digital competencies is not merely about digital tools, conditions and opportunities, but about managing a reflective digital practice, digital knowledge and digital life. The competencies in this third cluster is supposed to make the student competent to face the challenges of using the digital tools and to be able to handle the consequences of a digital reality. These competencies go beyond the students’ disciplinary (or cross-disciplinary) educational program and learning process, and includes shaping human and social qualities and equip the students for living a digital life. An important subcategory in this third cluster is ethics. The moral demands and ethical difficulties that appear as part of the increased digitalization of life, such as data storage, surveillance, harsh and hateful communication, etc. calls for ethical deliberation and moral consideration. Another subcategory is metaphysical or broadly philosophical. Asking questions about time and space and language games, as well as more condensed questions, e.g. about transhumanism and the logic of inquiry and evidence. The third cluster takes its warrants from more applied theories of reflective performance or deliberative conduct and critical thinking, as well as it make use of speculative philosophy and a broad spectrum of different explorative, theoretical or conceptual discussions. Here is a brief overview of the clusters of digital competencies that I talk of:

Learning in a digital age Competency cluster

Digital literacy 1—practical know-how

21 Digital literacy 2—knowledge expansion

Meta-cognition—living the digital life

Pedagogical vision To make an suitable action

To make a perceptive To make a reflective judgment choice

Learning goals / competencies

Data collection Presentation and communication Project and process management

Contextual comprehension Exploration and innovation Participation in collective learning processes

Purpose

Utility and application

Constructive and Mature trust and certainty adequate intelligence

Value

Efficiency

Excellence

Critical thinking Identify meaning and reference Qualify norms and values

Responsibility

Having identified these clusters of digital competencies two questions emerge. First: to what extent can competencies of this kind be part of formal higher education? Second: how do we implement a didactical practice that allows for learning these competencies? The first question is important to ask, and doesn’t just apply to digital competencies, but to all kinds of, what I like to call, supplementary competencies. This could be anything from the PBL competencies I mentioned before, and social abilities, performance competencies etc. to classic academic virtues. These type of competencies are important parts of any university education, and the acquisition of them are often naturally merged with the disciplinary learning process of the students. There is a tendency in higher education to declare these competencies and make them explicit, but I believe that can be a dangerous path to take. There is two reasons for that. First because it can be difficult to frame. Which competencies are developed within the actual program, and by default a result of that program? To answer that, means setting some boundaries for these competencies that can be difficult to uphold. It is difficult to see how a competency like using a digital platform for sharing documents, or using a reference software like end note, or communicating in a respectful tone of language, or exploring a topic, can be said to be developed and learned within the start and stop of an educational program. If you want to, you can make use of designated courses or sessions, but that means introducing a new element in the program, which already is an integrated part of the students getting through the program in the first place. The risk you run by

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such a strategy is that you separate the competencies from the disciplinary, and thereby make them more or less ad hoc, and that forces or demands the imaginative construction of an integration (which was unnecessary to begin with). I’m not against expressing these competencies, and by that subscribe an explicit value to them, but I believe that it is important to keep them naturally integrated and naturally developed. They are necessities, requisitions, consequences and benefits of the educational program, and the acquisition and development of them is an assimilated continuous process. This brings us to the second reason, which is simply how to evaluate the progress and level of achievement or knowledge of these competencies. Perhaps the know-how of using specific tools and platforms can be successfully evaluated, but since it is a supplementary know-how, that needs to be there in order to perform well in the disciplinary requirements and learning processes it seems unnecessary to evaluate on its own. Looking at all three clusters it is also difficult to see how to create a systematic and acknowledged scale or criterions for evaluating the quality or level of the students’ competency. More importantly, it is difficult to see why one would like to do that. We can all agree on the competencies being useful and helpful and valuable for the students’ development and functionality, but it seems most unnecessary to differentiate the students’ competency in regard to those positives. It seems like it is something the student discover and excel in, on the basis of his or her own judgment, effort and capacity in regard to the disciplinary struggles and achievements. It is—as said before—important that it is there, but the quality of the ‘thereness’ is reflected and indirectly exposed in the quality of the disciplinary product and achievement. The second question is also interesting. Are these digital competencies part of the hidden or tacit curriculum, and by that simply a natural part of the educational program, and in need of no further exploitation, explanation or designated training? Or could, or should there be a clear and present didactics for digital competencies? I think the answer is quite simple. It is the responsibility of us as university educators to qualify and facilitate the students’ learning process. That means to empower them for their educational and professional development in the best possible way. Digital competencies, of all three clusters sorts, is part of the present ‘best way’. But just like Kugel described in his paper “How professors develop as teachers”, the focus is not to teach them these competencies, but to help them learn them. That we do by helping them see them, find them, reflect on them, and practice them as they are learning all the rest.

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Accredited literature Iordache, C., Mariën, I., & Baelden, D. (2017) “Developing Digital Skills and Competences: A Quick Scan Analysis of 13 Digital Literacy Models.” Italian Journal of Sociology of Education, 9(1), 630. Kugel, P (1993) “How professors develop as teachers” Studies in Higher Education Volume 18, no 3 Spante, M., Sofkova Hashemi, S., Lundin, M. & Algers, A. (2018). “Digital competence and digital literacy in higher education research: Systematic review of concept use” Cogent Education, 5:1, 1519143 Telléus, P. K. (2020) “Dark waters beneath the digital surface” in Kergel, D., Heidkamp-Kergel, B., Arnett, R. C. & Mancino, S. (red.). Communication and Learning in an Age of Digital Transformation. Routledge

What goes beyond learning? In Plato’s Menon we are introduced to a learning theory, which in short could be something like: learning is to seek out that which you have forgotten. This learning theory is possible because of Plato’s metaphysical ideas of eternal souls, essential forms and the world of being and the world of becoming. Therefor the conception of learning is comprehended within a systematic reality (in Plato’s case a dualism) that enables the particular learning process (in Plato’s case the memory of the reasonable soul), and affirm the meaning, clarity and truth of the learning outcome (in Plato’s case the eternal essential ideas). Besides this, Plato’s learning theory in Menon is presented for another reason. The dialogue asks the question of Areté, roughly translated as excellence or virtuous capability, and whether or not this desirable state for a human being can be trained or learned. The learning theory is explained as an answer to what we might perceive as a moral theme, i.e. the issue of humans to become what they are meant to be, to live up to their designated potential. Menon is regarded as an early work by Plato, and this moral theme will re-appear in later works as well (Protagoras and The Republic as two prime examples), and with that the discussion / answer becomes more complicated as Plato’s metaphysics becomes more complicated. For now the point I’d like to make is simply that learning is inseparable from not just the particular pedagogical setting, and from particular ideas about reality and truth, i.e. ontological and epistemological positions (of this I wrote in response to the first question). However, even more importantly is that learning cannot be separated from the moral theme of human evolvement,

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of ideas about righteous and virtuous human becoming. So, to answer what goes beyond learning, I’d like to highlight this moral theme and make a claim of ethics. There has been a lot of water under the bridge since Plato, and the moral theme of learning has indeed become much more complicated, and there is a great variety of answers and adoptions available. I’d like to focus the moral theme on the specific issue of collaborative learning and knowledge acquisition, and in regard to that the specific moral notion of responsibility. For Plato—and many others- the moral theme of learning is becoming the right kind of moral character. For others, like e.g. Kant in his famous essay on the enlightenment, the moral theme of learning is a question of how you use your intellect. However, both those kind of ideas make use of the learner as an individual character, and a more or less autonomous intellect. But as the branch of epistemology starts to introduce more collective and collaborative ideas about knowledge, such as the ideas of Ludwik Fleck, and as the learning theorists also move in that direction with concepts like peer learning and communities of practice, it makes sense that the moral theme also address this perspective. In an anthology on PBL, I wrote a piece about, what I then called, ethical demand as an inherited obligation in pedagogical settings stemming from problems. I tried to argue for this ethical demand finding a qualified expression or implementation as part of supervision, i.e. as part of the interaction between a supervisor and a student or a group of students. The ethical demand was characterized as the Q&A of a conceptual deliberation that qualified the joint knowledge seeking process by realizing what was regarded as important and valuable in the context of the particular problem and particular pursuit. The moral theme of learning is here comprehended as this ethical demand of students and supervisors committing to dialectic and inquiry driven supervision with the intent to not only acquire knowledge, but to attain valuable knowledge. In this anthology there is an even better example of a collaborative version of the moral theme. It is a paper, written by my friend and colleague Merete Wiberg. The paper is called “Learning rights, participation and toleration in student group work: A moral perspective”. At first glance Wiberg is talking about how to make a group effort work, and how to manage a peer collaboration as part of a project based learning process. But then she introduces the concept of learning rights, and that is where things become really interesting. She develops the concept primarily based in Dewey’s work, especially his metaphor of participator and spectator, but through the particular pedagogical practice of problem and project based learning in higher education, the concept becomes remarkably vital.

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By using the term learning rights Wiberg manage to combine the epistemological pursuit of the students collaboration with a necessary moral dimension. So when she ask group work to be governed by tolerance, acknowledged participation and mutual engagement, etc. these, fundamentally moral, attitudes are not part of the collaborative learning process as distinctly defined and separable elements of ethics, that can be added to the process at our convenience or for our benefit. Instead, they are there as inseparable essentials of the very collaborative learning process itself. It is, so to speak, what the process is / is about in the first place. i.e. the right to learn, and thereby our obligation to acknowledge and support that right amongst each other. Wibergs backing in moral theory for the concept of learning rights is to be found in the Danish philosopher K.E. Løgstrup, and his theologically inspired relational ethics or an ethics of care, but I would image that the concept would work just as well interpreted through the lenses of e.g. duty ethics or a contract theory of ethics. Nevertheless, Wiberg’s paper and the concept of learning rights is a wonderful example of the moral theme of learning enacted in the modern pedagogical setting of collaborative learning. Picking up a point from my previous answer to the question of learning in a digital age, one key element in this ethical understanding of “beyond learning” is the notion of responsibility. Responsibility as a moral theme of learning is perhaps most visible in regard to scientific activities, i.e. the learning process of scientific research. The popular idea of Modus 2 science is an obvious example of integrating science with other actors and activities in a way that explicitly talks of duties and responsibilities attached to the research process. However, I think Poppers classic essay on the moral responsibility of the scientist is the prime example. It is rooted in the Aristotelian virtue ethics giving us the same type of position or idea as in Plato’s discussion of areté. To participate in scientific activities is to become a virtuous character, i.e. together with the higher order of learning comes a higher order of morality. In short, it means that the scientist by token of his/her scientific character should be aware that the role of scientist also carries a responsibility for the development of science as well as the development of applied science. This is summed up as a dual moral responsibility: 1) to the quality of the knowledge that the students of science make known and 2) to exercise caution in regard to the belief in and use of that very same knowledge. Keeping the collaborative idea of learning processes in mind will set the notion of responsibility in a slightly different light. Here I think P.F. Strawson’s celebrated essay: “Freedom and Resentment” can help us. Strawson’s main idea is

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that moral responsibility is rooted in the natural and human complexity of relationships, where our reactive attitudes define the idea of moral responsibility, i.e., the way we respond to e.g., kindness, indifference and offensiveness (the latter is Strawson’s prime example throughout the essay). These attitudes are first of all related to specific and present situations, and they constitute both a personal view and objectiveness, as well as elements of emotional response and rational behavior. This means that the moral theme of learning is once again to be understood as showing itself as an integrated part of collaborative or relational learning processes. This can be as we take responsibility for activities of sharing knowledge, giving feedback or peer review etc., but also as a responsible attitude towards the participants and (perhaps?) towards the non-human elements in the interactive learning process. This attitude or trait of moral responsibility mature during the learning process itself, and is stimulated by both the particularities as well as the universals of that process.

Accredited literature Fleck, L. (1997/1935) Uppkomsten och utvecklingen av ett vetenskapligt faktum – Inledning till läran om tankestil och tankekollektiv [Entstehung und Entwicklung einer wissenschaftlichen Tatsache. Einführung in die Lehre vom Denkstil und Denkkollektiv / Genesis and development of a scientific fact] Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion Kant, I. (1784/1999) “Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” in Mary J. Gregor (ed.). Practical Philosophy. The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Cambridge University Press. Plato Menon [Platons skrifter Bok 2, Bokförlaget Atlantis, 2001] Popper, K. R. (1971) “The Moral Responsibility of the Scientist” Security Dialogue 1971 2: pp. 279283 Strawson, P. F. (1962) “Freedom and Resentment” Proceedings of the British Academy, volume 48; reprinted in Strawson, P. F. (2008) Freedom and Resentment and other essays Taylor and Francis Group / Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, UK Telléus, P.K. (2013) “On rational demand: A sensible answer to the request for ethical awerness within the Aalborg Model” in Krogh, L. & Aarup Jensen, A. (eds.) Visions, challenges and strategies – PBL principles and methodologies in a Danish and global perspective Aalborg University Press Wenger, E. (1999) Communities of practice: Learning, meaning and identity Cambridge University Press

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Wiberg, M. (2013) “Learning rights, participation and toleration in student group work: a moral perspective” in Krogh, L. & Aarup Jensen, A. (eds.) Visions, challenges and strategies – PBL principles and methodologies in a Danish and global perspective Aalborg University Press

Learning and time

But wherefore do not you a migher way Make war upon this bloody tyrant, Time? And forfy yourself in your decay With means more blessed than my barren rhyme? [Shakespeare Sonnet 16]

If you ever have the time, please visit the authorship of Albert Camus. I first meet Camus as a young college student reading The Plague (La peste) as part of a course in existential philosophy. I quickly became fascinated by his clear and yet poetic style, that seemed to join the mundane and ordinary with a cosmic depth of profound questions and insights. The first years with Camus was undoubtable years of existential wonders and philosophical nots, climaxing with a price winning student paper and eventually ending with an experimental article on Camus’ moral philosophy (that, here almost 20 years later, still rests in my desk drawer). Slowly over the years, my interest in Camus changed. The philosophy became of much less concern to me, and his The Rebel: An essay on man in revolt (L´homme révolté) I found tiresome and highly speculative. Instead the esthetic and lyric value grow on me. It had always been there, but about halfway into my most intense relationship with Camus this element was taking over. The stunning beauty in his simple and yet alluring descriptions, the phrases that in an instance set the mise-en-scène, gave the mood and pleaded a question, all at once as one and the same. The opening passage in The First Man (Le premier homme) says everything there is to say about Camus poetic talent and grace. Today I read him as the great author he is. An author who excel in rhythm, colour, form and style, while telling engaging and contemplative stories with universal appeal. The existential philosopher Camus, that I was first introduced to, has slipped into the shades, and now rests in the background. If it is me, leaving

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the desperate search and revolutionary mind of youth behind, and maturing into the slightly nostalgic and content art museum visitor of someone approaching 50, I don’t know. Regardless, I would like to draw your attention to a novel written in the late 1930’ called The wind at Djemila (Le vent à Djemila). It is an absolutely stunning account of Camus visit to the ruins of an ancient Roman city in the mountains of northern Algeria. The landscape and the remains of the culture once there blend together, inspiring the visitor to thoughts and marvelous. Camus opens with one of his many remarkable and memorable verses: “There are places where the spirit dies so that a truth may be born which is the spirit’s very negation.” In the late 1930’s my grandfather, then a young man, now in 2021 an elderly man at age 99, went to Berlin on a sports scholarship. Despite being small in stature, he was quite an athletic, and on a clear path to be part of the Swedish national team for the Summer Olympics in 1940. His prime discipline was long jump, and that skill had now taken him to 6 months in the German capital. Imagine spending 6 months in Berlin just before the war breaks out. Quite an experience on all accounts. As part of the visit, my grandfather participated in a competition at the newly built Olympic stadium, a most remarkable and memorable architectonic accomplishment at the time. Visiting Berlin today, some 80 years later, you should take the chance, and buy yourself a ticket to a Hertha Berlin home game. The team play at the Olympic stadium, and even though the stadium was renovated in the mid 00’s, the architecture is still impressive and unforgettable. Back in the day, the stadium was one of the prime examples of the theory of Ruin Value (Ruinenwert). Obviously, this architectural movement is closely associated to the Nazi regime and their head architect Albert Speer, but the origin is older than that. The idea is that ruins have an esthetic value. It can be enhanced by using natural materials, and to allow for time (and human negligence) to shape and bring this quality out. The esthetic value then come to reflect the greatness, or majestic nature of the culture that produced the ruins in the first place through an parable with the ruins ability to stand the test of time by being natural culture if you will. The theory was inspired by the ruins of ancient Greek and Rome, and the Nazi’s thought that the monumental remains of their architectural achievements would eventually be the same kind of testament to the greatness of the Third Reich. About 4 years ago I went on a trip with my wife and our daughters. We drove to Berlin. From there to Prague and Budapest, and eventually we came to Vienna. What an absolutely stunning city Vienna is, and we all fell in love at once. One of our daughters is a horse fanatic, so obviously we had a visit at the

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Spanish Riding School (Spanishe Hofreitshule). After the visit, if you stand at the square Michaelerplatz with your back to the palace you can rest your eyes on an architectural anomaly. It is called the Looshaus, after the architect Adolf Loos [had he been named Albert, instead of Adolf, this story would have been perfect], and it is currently housing a bank, Raiffeisenlandesbank. The reason I call it an anomaly is because it looks like nothing else in the square, and like nothing else of what you see in the center of Vienna. In Vienna the buildings are to a large extent built during the nineteenth century, culminating with Franz Josef 1 replacing the city wall with a grand boulevard. The houses are beautiful, and poetically refined with all kinds of ornaments and decorations, like the windows, which are dressed with garlands and such beautifications. But not the Looshaus. The windows here are naked, and in its time the building became known across Vienna as “the house without eyebrows”. The Looshaus, built in 1910–1912, is one of the first examples of a new kind of architecture; a modernism, sometimes also known as functionalism, of which Loos wrote an essay called Ornament and Crime (first published in French as Ornement et Crime, and later in German as Ornament und Verbrechen). I suppose the title pretty much says it all. One of the people reading that essay was the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and he explicitly named Adolf Loos as one of his admirations. There is a definite similarity between the young Wittgenstein’s thoughts on clean, straightforward reason, with it’s despise of rhetoric and misleading and bewildering decorations, and Loos’ simple and functional architectural beauty. On a more practical and mundane (and less speculative) level the house Wittgenstein himself designed for his sister (with also can be seen if you visit Vienna) bare clear resemblance to the style of functionalism. Today, once in a while, as I lecture on introduction to theory of science I show a picture of the Looshaus. It serves as an esthetic account of paradigms, and in particular the paradigm of the Vienna Circle, later turned into logical positivism. Although the representable value might be a question for the forgiving nature of the students’ interpretation, it is my hope that the actual beauty of the Looshaus might stick as something remarkable and memorable. And, that this stunning beauty, together with the story of physical placement and atmospheric acumen might set the scene for a similar involvement as a stroll amongst ruins or a run at a colosseum. Here at the end, let me apologies for the tone and content of this last response of mine. I guess the question of learning and time, made me think of Shakespeare and Keats. I suspect that, that is all I have to say…

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When old age shall this generaon waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. [Keats Ode to a Grecian Urn]

Arkaitz Letamendia—Popular Learnings and Alternatives in the Digital Age

What is learning? The question of what learning is can be tackled from very different points of view. I propose to do so from the perspective of political sociology and, more specifically, considering the processes of political conflict, and social movements. The idea that I would like to emphasize is that learning processes, as dynamic social processes, are affected by profound structures, or cleavages, which define power relations and resistances. The notion of cleavage, originally proposed by Lipset and Rokkan (1967), refers to social divides or fractures of profound, structural character. The special characteristic of these divides is that a substantial part of social conflict, both manifest and latent, takes place around them for long periods of time (Aguilar 2011). These systemic structures, or cleavages, can be of a socioeconomic, political or cultural kind: capital-labour, centre-periphery, or sex-gender conflicts are some of their most characteristic expressions in the contemporary world. These deep divides cut across the many aspects of a society, including areas such as education and learning. By cutting through these fields, systemic structures define sets of opportunities, both for collective cooperation and for conflict. In this intersection between learning and profound divides of confrontation, social actors immersed in these fields are conditioned, partly at least, by systemic constrictions. Yet not everything is constriction. As I will argue, the active role of different social actors –from educators and students to activists, intellectuals, and anonymous transmitters of popular culture– can influence the direction of the dynamics of learning and education. The agency of these actors, in the form of critical thought or the autonomous transmission of knowledge and popular practices, has the capacity to block the automatic reproduction of the mechanisms of systemic

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 D. Kergel et al., Learning in the Digital Age, Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35536-4_4

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power, and to build alternatives. The consideration I propose, then, is based on a structural perspective that attends to the embedded threads that run through and condition learning and education. But in this perspective, likewise, human agency is able to escape from total systemic determination and to cause change. To go into greater depth in this consideration, firstly it would be useful to clarify the notion of learning on which it is based. Learning can be defined as the act of constructing knowledge in communication processes (Kergel & Heidkamp-Kergel, 2020). This conceptualization alludes to two basic elements: to the ways in which knowledge is constructed, and to its communicative processes. With regard to communicative processes, Arnett (2020) distinguishes between acquiring information, and communication. Communication is conditioned by relational, contextual and experiential frameworks. That is to say, it is a collective and dynamic process, in which meaning emerges through social practices that acquire communicative significance. The construction of knowledge, on the other hand, refers to matters such as who and how elaborates it, the kinds of learnings that are produced, and the cultural frameworks in which this takes place. As we shall see, both communicative and knowledge construction processes have historically been pervaded by the profound systemic structures, or cleavages, referred to above. These structures generate asymmetries of power and resistances, and give rise to conflicts, struggles and alternatives that permeate the forms and contents of learnings, contributing to keeping active their profound mechanisms of change. Throughout this process, social movements can be found at a point of intersection between systemic structures and learning processes. Social movements can be defined as a kind of collective action sustained and maintained over time that has arisen in situations of socio-political conflict (Tarrow, 1994). In this regard, social movements may be considered, on the one hand, as the expression in public places, at the level of popular mobilization, of the profound structures that give shape to the dynamics of power and resistances; and on the other as agents that emerge from specific contexts of political and socio-cultural learning, and which at the same time aspire to introduce modifications in the reproduction of such contexts. In this way, learning processes, systemic structures and social movements can be linked and studied together. Below I propose to examine these phenomena and their interactions from various angles. Firstly, I will look at the relationship between collective learning processes and the cultural contributions of the social movements. Then I will investigate the structural roots of the conflicts that give rise to these movements, and the establishment of autonomous and alternative spheres of collective learning. Finally, I will look in depth at the way in which

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the social movements make visible profound structures of power and conflict, and their impact on social learning processes. Let me begin, then, with the first of the perspectives considered, focussing on the cultural contributions of social movements.

Social movements, collective learning processes and cultural transformation A first perspective that can be taken in order to tackle the relationship between learning processes and systemic structures is via the cultural contribution of the social movements. As Martínez et al. (2012) see it, the social movements can be understood as non-discriminatory and non-hierarchical schools of learning: non-ordinary schools for learning to imagine the possibility of other, alternative worlds. In this regard, learning to think and imagine other worlds collectively requires a socio-political framework, described by Benford and Snow (2000) as a process of framing, which can be radically different from the officially institutionalized one. The contributions of the feminist, LGTBI, anti-racist or ecological movements in this area link up directly with specific epistemological debates. So, feminist epistemologies (Nicolás, 2009) problematize knowledge constructed historically by and for the heteropatriarchy, and insist on visibilizing the sex-gender system as an analytical category in knowledge production (Esteban Galarza, 2003). Other perspectives, such as decolonial thought and “epistemologies of the south” (De Sousa Santos, 2009), problematize knowledge elaborated by Western countries from a colonial hegemonic position and emphasize the centre-periphery perspective. These epistemologies place the spotlight on knowledge constructed by communities and people situated on the political periphery of what Wallerstein (2004) calls the world-system. For its part, ecologism and its struggles give rise to symbolisms and knowledge linked to caring for and respecting the natural environment (Bárcena et al., 1998). These struggles offer democratizing knowledge and dynamics, in that their activities escape from purely utilitarian economic logics. These epistemologies, linked to the activity of specific social movements, can leave their imprint on learning processes and on the educational systems of different countries. So, in the cases when this has occurred, the progressive implementation in educational systems of non-racist, non-sexist, or non-homophobic values and perspectives could be considered to be a tangible achievement of the social movements and their ways of seeing the world. It is important here to

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highlight the directionality of the process described: as Tejerina (2010) says, the dynamics, struggles and demands of the social movements -considered as a kind of independent variable- are those that manage to produce and introduce alternative values and cultural changes—which could be considered as the dependent variable. To put it another way, in this context the social movements become subjects of social transformation, agents of change that promote specific forms of progress and cultural transformations—values and knowledge that may, in the end, be learned and transmitted through countries’ education systems. In this process, the social movements, thanks to their capacity for agency and change, affect societies’ profound structures of symbolic production. However, as well as promoting certain cultural values and transformations, the very emergence of the social movements may be considered in terms of alternative collective learning. As stated above, profound systemic structures, or cleavages, organize relationships of power and of conflict at the macro level. Based on this organization at the macro level, there emerge at the micro level socio-cultural processes of personal identity construction and collective action, which are learned and transmitted. In fact, the acquisition of a collective awareness that identifies and defines the members of a social movement as subjects of transformation is a process that connects directly with experiences of autonomous sociocultural learning. Furthermore, this is a process which, as we will see, can be traced historically, as with the process of formation of the social movement of the working class.

The historical roots of the “cultural transmission chains” of the social movements Throughout the nineteenth century, together with the introduction of industrial capitalism, the social conditions were established that gave rise to the emergence of a growing number of wage-earning workers. This determining factor at the macro level, defined by the capital-labour axis, made possible the distinction between the objective conditions of exploitation of the working class –the class in itself – and the subjective conditions in which individuals acquired awareness of their structural situation—the class for itself . The subjective conditions for acquiring class consciousness were fed by experiences learned and shared at the micro level by workers in the factories and neighbourhoods where they lived. The theoretical development of this distinction, and the construction of the collective class self-consciousness, is what allowed Marx and Engels (1997) to situate the working class as a subject of potentially revolutionary social transformation. The

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construction and acquisition of a collective class consciousness is thus fed by interpretations and experiences of day-to-day occurrences. These personal experiences combined with traces of local culture learning, and established a kind of “cultural transmission chain” of an inter-generational character. The cultural transmission chain can be identified in the early formation of the English working class, according to E.P. Thompson (1992). This author emphasizes the cultural component and the collective learning that the first generations of industrial workers adopted from already existing local customs and traditions. This is the case, for example, of “rough music”—a ritualized expression, using homemade instruments, of popular hullabaloo and community control, customary in different English towns up until the nineteenth century. In the early formation of the English working class, the incorporation of these kinds of traditional community practices was vital. These ceremonial events of popular culture, learned by and transmitted from generation to generation, were incorporated and reformulated by the first workers’ organizations. The blasphemies and ceremonies of the first clandestine trade unions –such as the Luddites– arose from the transmission, influence and adaptation of traditional rituals such as this rough music. In this way, a link was set up between the learning of popular local practices, with which their members felt collectively identified, and the activity of the working class social movement, projected towards the future. This collective learning, based on local experiences and transmitted to the practices and activities of the social movement, establishes a cultural chain connecting past, present and future generations. In this context, the construction of a strong collective identity becomes possible, as does the ability to communicate to the world political ideas and alternative values. Systemic structures, then, shape relationships of power, control and conflict at the macro level. However, at their margins, subjective experiences and collective constructions also arise at the micro level –forms of human agency and alternative learning models– which in the long term can short-circuit the automatic reproduction of the system, and produce change.

Precarity and the rupture of the popular learning chain in the neoliberal era The inter-generational cultural transmission chain therefore made possible the learning and development of an autonomous, alternative culture that acted as the basis for the emergence of collective working-class action in the nineteenth century. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, working class struggles expanded internationally. In the structural framework of modern industrial social

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conflict, the self-aware working class achieved labour and social rights. However, the emergence of neoliberalism from the 1970s, together with a new surge of individualism (Wacquant, 2020), reset the patterns of social conflict. One of the areas in which this reconfiguration has been most clearly expressed is in the bases of the learning of popular autonomous mobilization culture. The rise of neoliberalism brought social and political defeats for the traditional working class; but from its ashes arose youth subcultures like punk, reggae and rap (Hebdige, 2004). In this scenario, the autonomous construction of alternative fields of communication and socialization made possible the creation of a shared “hidden transcript” (Scott, 2003). This hidden transcript or discourse was learned and transmitted through autonomous circuits, both in a latent and a manifest way. In these circuits, cultural expressions of dissidence and resistance were incentivized in the form of non-conformist musics and styles, in opposition to existing forms of domination. In the most recent era of precarity of the early twenty-first century, however, the autonomous cultural transmission chain is becoming damaged. Precarity, understood as a process both of working and of living (Kergel & Heidkamp, 2017), impacts directly onto the capacity to learn and build collective and alternative cultural transmission spaces. This deterioration, and uncertainties in terms of society, labour and life itself –which vary according to gender, class, ethnicity and age–, bring an inability to build long-term projects. The combination of temporary and unstable jobs with uncertainties in terms of living situations causes an incapacity to build stable and strong collective consciousnesses in the long term. In this context, the growing number of people who belong to destabilized subaltern classes, socialized in constantly changing working and life experiences, find it difficult to develop a stable shared collective identity that is self-conscious and based on their structural situation. Therefore, we find ourselves in front of a new and potentially explosive class in itself, the precariate (Standing, 2011)—but not with a class for itself, one that is self-conscious. In this regard, the breakage of the autonomous, inter-generational cultural transmission chain can be connected to the absence of a strong collective class identity in the precariate. The long-term erosion of the historical perspective in the inter-generation chains of learning has an impact on people’s capacity to consider themselves subjects belonging to a unified class who share a socioeconomic condition. Autonomous spheres of learning –in customs, in jobs, in neighbourhoods– are encountering difficulties connecting past and future generations in the era of neoliberal precarity. Thus, the rupture or strengthening of the cultural transmission chain emerges as a factor to be emphasized in all these processes. All this brings us to the fact that one can learn to be a subject of transformation,

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and identify oneself as such, collectively—but if this collective learning is interrupted over the long term, just as it happens in the precarity era, the construction of transformative stable identities may also be affected.

Popular learning and mobilization practices within social conflict Something else that is learned, apart from the construction of transformative collective identities, is the mobilization pattern with which conflict is expressed in public. The explicit patterns of social conflict and forms of mobilization are learned and transmitted collectively. Repertories of protest, by which the social movements mobilize in the street, are cultural creations learned in the struggle (Tarrow, 1994). So, groups of activists that join mobilizations incorporate protest tactics (demonstrations, acts of civil disobedience, blockades, strikes) that previous generations have developed and implemented, and they apply them to the demands of the present. This collective learning does not happen invariably: as socio-cultural and political contexts evolve over time, specific forms of mobilization also evolve. Each new generation of activists contributes idiosyncrasies and practices that have arisen in specific and changing cultural frameworks. These variations over time allow evolution and change in repertories of protest, which would otherwise remain invariable. A concrete example of the learning and evolution of protest practices can be seen in the disobedient refusal to stand which the African American activist Rosa Parks made on an Alabama bus in 1955. Later, hundreds of activists reproduced this action in other contexts. This disobedient action of “sit-in”, situated within the framework of the US civil rights protest movement, could be considered as an innovation in forms of mobilization—called a tactical innovation by McAdam (1983). This kind of novel protest action is fed by what has already been learned –values, practices, demands, identity– but it goes further. By innovating in terms of mobilization practices, the protest action produces systemic uncertainties and opens hitherto unexplored pathways in the struggle, acting as an example to learn for future activists. Furthermore, thinking in dynamic and interactive terms about power and resistances, as considered by McAdam et al. (2001), the authorities also learn from the novel tactic that activists use and adjust their responses to the challenge. Repression, by means of police or legal actions, is based on already existing methods of controlling protest, and innovates in its actions in order to face new challenges. In terms of conflict dynamics, then, both the social movements and the authorities

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learn from their own practices and those of their opponents, evolving and adapting their practice according to circumstances, as if it were a game of chess. In this way, activists, authorities and the general population learn and interpret the actions and parameters of the conflict in which the struggles take place, causing changes over time.

Learning, conflicts and visiblization of power structures In summary, we can see how in all these dynamic processes of conflict, shaped by profound structures that define relationships of power and of resistance, the social movements are closely connected to different forms of popular learning. The learning, teachings and demands of movements such as the labour, feminist, ecologist or anti-racist movements, among others, can end up leaving their impression on the political and cultural values of a society if its dynamics are powerful enough. As has been seen, the introduction of new forms of seeing and interpreting the world, the maintenance of the inter-generational cultural transmission chains, and the autonomous transmission of alternative practices and forms of mobilization are some of the factors that will determine the direction of these processes. If successful, the demands of the social movements will end up affecting the political and cultural values of societies and therefore having influence on perspectives such as those based on respect for the environment, for ethnic and national minorities, or on equality of opportunity among genders and other social groups. The constantly changing working and living circumstances in the era of neoliberal precarity impede the construction of stable transformative identities; nonetheless, the persistence of power structures brings inequalities and conflicts from which incentives to popular mobilization arise and will keep on arising. The movements’ dynamics and practices thereby help to visibilize structural faults. They also make possible cultural transformations that affect the forms of learning and the different spheres of education in societies, where teachers, students and other social actors interact. In this way, inequalities of gender, ethnicity/race and social class can be made more visible. This does not mean that profound power structures (whether capitalist, national, class or gender structures) and structural inequalities automatically disappear; but at least these dynamics and practices can incentivize cultural and educational values that can attenuate them.

What is learning in the Digital Age?

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What is learning in the Digital Age? Learning has been defined by Kergel and Heidkamp-Kergel (2020) as the act of constructing knowledge through communication processes. By adding the condition of digital age to this definition, the meaning of what learning is changes significantly. This is for a specific reason: by changing one of the means through which knowledge is received, transmitted and elaborated, as is happening currently with the spread of digital tools, one result is that the development of learning processes and their contents also change. The theoretical and practical effects of this process are varied and complex. I propose to tackle this question by focussing on a series of specific points which can be used to organize this section. Firstly, I will look at the kinds of practices and symbolic constructions that the digital age favours. The emergence of the logic of hybridization, or of integration, between humans and technology, will be one of the points to highlight here. Hybridization and the culture of commixing involve changes that affect forms of teaching, learning, creation and cooperation. Some examples of new practices of academic collaboration and creation, facilitated by digital tools, will be given here. Then I will look at the reconfiguration of social bonds that the digital technologies are furthering. This contemporary restructuring of social ties is occurring within a broader global framework: that imposed by the logic of the capitalist system. This system imposes a series of structural constraints that shape the processes of communication and knowledge creation. The social consequences of these relational reconfigurations and systemic constraints will be tackled in this section. Finally, I will consider a series of reflections on the capacity of human agency in the sphere of learning in the digital era. To tackle all these matters, I start with a series of recent publications that have studied these issues from different points of view. So, let´s begin with the theoretical question of hybridization in the digital age and its effects on learning processes.

The logics of hybridization and integration in the digital age One of the most notable effects of the contemporary spread of digital tools is related to the logic of hybridization between humans and technologies. This is a process that can be traced from the second half of the last century. In the 1960s, McLuhan described the process by which the linearity of print, unilateral and monist, gave way to the discontinuity of the mechanical era—discontinuity

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represented by the appearance of television (McLuhan & Fiore, 2008). The contemporary digital age transcends the mechanical era of the twentieth century and establishes new communicative conditions. In this regard, we can talk about the emergence of a digital turn. As Rachwal proposes (2018), speaking critically, this turn presupposes a clearly differentiated duality between the old analogue world and the digital world. According to this author, some of the characteristics that define this digital turn are the introduction of a new universe composed of discreet information –bits of ones and zeros– and the establishment of finite, precise and clean values. In this context, the digital era reinforces symbolic principles such as those related to immateriality. Through specific experiences, such as the ever more frequent videoconferences, or virtual presence in meetings, “bodiless presence” becomes more feasible. Thus, the idea of non-existence, communicated by digital existence, emerges. Rachwal (2018) problematizes the unequivocal distinction between digital natives –born in the digital age– and the older digital immigrants, socialized in the pre-digital universe. According to him, the idea that the digital tribe produces its own living space, independent of the space occupied by the analogically mediated world of the old generation, is reductionist. Rather, he states, what is actually being created is a hybridization between the digitalized world and the analogue one. What is more, looking at the matter even more closely, certain graphic digital technologies, such as immersive virtual environments, tend to unmake the distinction between reality and its representation. In this way, unequivocal duality, the differentiated division between the two realities –the actual and the virtual–, is questioned. The problematization of binary oppositions can be taken even further with regard to the context of the digital age. The theoretical criticism of binary oppositions, of “unilateral duality”, is based on the work of Laruelle (2010) and his ideas about “non-philosophy”. These ideas advocate “non-duality”: that is to say, they propose a philosophical perspective that does not impose binary oppositions as the only conceivable way of structuring reality. Commixture and hybridization are recurrent motifs according to this viewpoint. The cyborg figure put forward by Haraway (1995) –the hybridization of human and machine that problematizes binary constructions– fits well into this perspective. Following this line of thought, Rachwal (2018) considers that the clearly defined distinction between human consciousness and technology tends to fade away in the digital era. Currently, together with the general spread of digital prostheses among humans, technology seems to be something more than a mere tool used by people. Rather, technology seems to be starting to be a constitutive element of human beings, of human consciousness itself.

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The logic of hybridization, of commixture, has been applied to the field of education and learning in the context of the digital turn. This turn, according to Kergel and Heidkamp (2018), can be understood in two ways. Firstly, as an analytical strategy for debating the process of digitalization that is affecting society as a whole. Secondly, as a description of the digitalization process itself. According to the first point of view, the digital turn makes it possible to focus on the role that digitalization plays with regard to the social reality—for example, with respect to education, learning or teaching. This viewpoint assumes that the social reality is defined, to an ever greater extent, by digitalization. The clearest expression of this process can be found in the emergence of social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), which symbolize the digitalization of social relationships. This digitalization of relations, via the social media, would give way to the construction of identities that are more individualistic. According to the second perspective, the digital turn refers to the historical process that leads from the “Gutenberg Galaxy” that arose with the invention of the printing press, to the contemporary digital age. Today, the media landscape is undergoing extensive changes, and this affects society’s practices in general, as well as fields of learning and education –such as schools and universities– in particular. Kergel and Heidkamp (2018) highlight a case that can be useful in order to interpret the way digitalization can make teaching and learning in higher education progress: the move from the logic of individual authorship to group authorship. The concept of the individual author, which comes from the Gutenberg Galaxy, establishes an academic hierarchy between the author-writer and reader-learner. This hierarchy is based on a unidirectional orientation, in a strict distinction between the author, who provides the knowledge, and the reader, who is provided with teachings and influences. The emergence of collective authorship within the framework of the digital turn, however, is multi-directional and shows potential for polyphony through a decentralism and a pluralism permitted by the participative structure of the Internet. It should be pointed out that initiatives of this kind already existed in the pre-digital era; for example the case, from a libertarian perspective, of collective books such as Q by the Luther Blisset collective at the end of the 1990s (Blisset 1999). Anyway, it is also clear that in the current digital era of the twenty-first century, experiences of collective authorship are more accessible and global. The spread of digital media facilitates and incentivizes these kinds of group practices. The best example of this is the appearance of Wikipedia from 2001, which is composed of collaborative articles by different individuals who are both writers and readers, authors and learners. The consequence of this process is the propagation of texts which remain in constant flux, conforming a kind of “textual instability” (Kergel & Heidkamp, 2018).

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As a result, then, in the digital turn context the text can no longer be considered as something immutable. The cases of collective authorship mentioned involve a democratization of production, distribution and consumption of knowledge. They enable a new relationship, one that is more interactive and dynamic, between the author and the reader. In this process, a transition is produced from the previous logic of Copyright to that of the non-commercial Creative Commons, which offers a legal structure to what Kergel and Heidkamp (2018) call “remix culture” of the digital age. This idea of the remix can encourage a culture of collaborative and participative creation, and boost critical practices in the fields of learning and teaching. So, the logics of hybridization, cultural remix and textual instability modify the socio-communicative landscape and influence educational and learning processes in the digital era. However, the depth of these changes has been problematized by authors such as Telléus (2020). As this author poses, in the sphere of education, the digital age tends to promote superficial changes: education is furnished with different tools –or versions of previous tools–, but these are modifications which do not penetrate profoundly into learning practices. To change something profoundly –in its practices, in understandings of the world, in lives– a new way of thinking needs to be set free: a form of freedom linked to the process of learning. An example of this would be an act of judgement that offers an element that can change the present: that is to say, a conscious responsibility that connects the role of the understanding and the action. Thus, the digital turn would only bring changes on the surface of learning, principally in terms of technological advances for communication and production processes. In any case, this development could influence non-technological aspects, such as collaboration, creativity and other kinds of group dynamics. Telléus (2020) proposes, from a theoretical perspective, two levels of potential impacts of the digital turn on our forms of life: epistemological and ontological. At the epistemological level, the digital turn would be altering both communicative tools and means of thought, providing us with a new language. The impact in this field would come from the spread of the physiology of the digital, guided by electrical flows, algorithms and binary logics. So it would be possible to talk about the rise of “digital thinking”, expressed by a gradual transition from the writing of words and sentences on a sheet of paper, to mobile images and icons on screens and in 3D formats. This digital transition would influence the interdependent relationship between patterns of thought and contents of thought—affecting, in this way, collective mental practices and processes.

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At the ontological level, the impact can be seen in the dimensions of time and space. In the spatial dimension, Telléus considers the emergence of the “physicality of the digital”, which runs in parallel with a decline in the anthropomorphic universe—a process of replacement characterized by the rupture of old links, of classical physical space. So, we are attending the emergence of a digital reality that is becoming ontologically accepted, and in which experiences such as post- and trans-humanism are made possible, in which the figure of the cyborg and hybridization emerge. In the dimension of time, according to Telléus, the digital age imposes the subjective sensation of the constant present. Previously, pre-digital narratives told a story by means of a sequence of incidents, which could connect experiences of the past and projections of the future. Now we are experiencing a change in the flow of time, which tends towards a continuous standstill in the present. This makes possible the imposition of a visualized, immediate space, where history becomes image. This contributes to a social process in which images acquire ever greater prominence in our lives, that is to say, it contributes to the process of intensification of the iconosphere (González Ibáñez, 2015). The integration of digital technologies into our lives, then, happens in terms of symbolic aspects as well as physical, spatial and temporal ones. This is an issue that has been studied not only theoretically, but also empirically by authors such as Shcherbachenko and Nowakowski (2018), by means of contemporary examples of digital learning. Based on the specific experience of “mobile learning”, these authors point to the implementation of applications that take into account the user’s specific context—a context that integrates specific attributes of time and space. That is to say, they consider that in learning practices using mobile devices connected to the Internet, there is a tendency towards the integration of applications that offer information about the spatial and temporal situation of the user: specifically, data about these users’ physical activity and geographical situation, as well as about calendars of learning and their progress. This information about physical and temporal contexts involves a more integrated interaction between the user and the application, and can even promote an active involvement of people in the learning process and in the construction of knowledge in the digital age.

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Digital technologies and the reconfiguration of the social bond in the framework of global capitalism This greater integration, in physical, symbolic, spatial and temporal terms, between humans and digital technologies that we are observing, therefore modifies forms of learning and brings new parameters of social interaction. It opens new alternatives and possibilities for human cooperation, creation and experience. However, all these processes happen in a broader structural socioeconomic context: in a global ecology of systems dominated by the capitalist system (Jessop, 2011). In this context, Rendueles (2013) warns about the dissolution of direct sociality in the digital age, which gives rise to the emergence of “cybersociality”. According to this author, one of the palpable consequences in the global digital capitalist framework is the deflation of our expectations. That is to say, he considers that digital tools do not resolve the problem of the increasing fragility of the social bond in modernity or the problem of the fragmentation of the postmodern personality. In fact, the digital era obscures the process of the destruction of direct community bonds via the dissemination of digital-based social prostheses. According to Rendueles (2013), this contemporary process is comparable historically to the mass administration of psychopharmaceuticals, which did not bring an end to the experience of industrial alienation, but rather made it less conflictive. The contemporary technologies of the digital turn, he states, create a reduced social reality, not an increased one. In this regard, he points out that the Internet has not improved our sociality in a post-communitarian environment, but has rather reduced our expectations with regard to the social bond. “Cyberfetishism”, then, masks capitalism’s programme of social destruction and makes it acceptable, and even attractive. It establishes expanded digital communities and connections, but this is incompatible with mutual, direct, personal care, which is the material basis of social bonds. The global framework in which the digital age’s dissolution of social bonds occurs is, as has been stated, a capitalist one: capitalism imposes certain conditions, such as market reasoning and the utilitarian logic of profit—ogics that affect other social systems, such as the educational one. This capitalist conditioning has been studied through the “ecology of systems” model by Jessop (2002). In this model, the different social systems, even though they have their own logics and sets of rules, are contingent: they display a relational, changeable and interactive nature, in which some systems influence the others, to a greater or lesser extent. This author proposes that in the interaction among the different social systems, there is a historical tendency towards an “ecological domination”: that is to say, a greater structural and strategic capacity of a specific social system,

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in a self-organizing ecology of systems, to imprint its own logic of development on others. The system that, in recent centuries, has globally imposed its logic of development on the other social systems –including the educational and learning systems– is the capitalist one. According to Jessop, a series of specific characteristics have contributed to this historical process. These include the complex and flexible internal structure of capitalism; its potential for reorganization and adaptation; and its capacity for spatio-temporal compression and distancing, aimed at resolving its internal contradictions. In this way, the capitalist system imposes its logic on other social systems and spheres of life, guiding the reproduction of the system in the broadest sense. Thus, the primacy of the logic of the accumulation of capital, over and above other systems and principles of socialization, is established. The ecological domination of the capitalist logic affects directly the educational system and learning dynamics. Trifonas (2017) proposes that, in today’s digital globalization, education can be considered as a nexus between the changing field of technology and the market forces of globalization. He warns of the “economizing of educational reason”. This economizing would be instrumental, with the root of technology being a utilitarian skill-based competence. Here education is based on competencies, rather than on the invention of a creative “poiesis”. The goal of the system, in this context, is to add to the cultural archive of education information that the learner can make use of as an economic actor in the workplace. This author poses that the final consequence of this process is a lack of intellectual altruism and the establishment of hegemonic cultural mechanisms that direct the raison d’être of technology and pedagogy towards the incentives of capital—rather than towards purely educational imperatives. All this strengthens private interests that guide the progress of humanity and science, and which affect the collective production of knowledge. In this scenario, acritical scenarios crop up, which decontextualize and dehistoricize the content of what is being learned. The alternative to this scenario, according to Trifonas, would come from the intellectual effort to emancipate consciousness from the ideology of the curriculum and its commercial implications, emphasizing the relationship between knowledge and power.

Human agency and learning in the digital age The digital age in a capitalist framework, as we have seen, structurally conditions learning and educational processes, but it does not determine them completely. People’s capacity for agency introduces particular biases and interferences in the

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automatic reproduction of the mechanisms of the system. In this regard, Paulsen (2020) proposes that the impact of digitalization in the sphere of education –a digitalization that modifies the premises of learning by changing its communicative infrastructure– depends, in the end, on how educators choose and use the new technologies. That is to say, he denies the “unconstrained determinism” of education in the digital age. This is due to the fact that the cultural frameworks of teachers and educators mark the teachings they give with their own characteristics and idiosyncrasies. These frameworks have been created by the social contexts, historical periods, personal situations and values of the educators. Hence teachers, as human actors who have been culturally moulded and who have a capacity for agency, (re)create, modify and respond to their media environment, which is currently digital. According to these cultural frameworks, Paulsen considers three ideal types –types which can be combined and modified– of teachers: engineers, who focus on the production of teaching results (which is linked to the traditional education model); gardeners, who focus on facilitating the self-development of students’ skills (by mean of games, projects and learning practices); and challengers, who promote reflection and questioning with respect to ways of being in the world, emphasizing questions of attitude, knowledge and existence with others. The role of these three kinds of ideal types of teachers is developed in an educational environment that has experienced significant changes with the arrival of the digital world and the Internet. Pre-Internet teaching was based on a clear distinction between the classroom and the outside world. The outside world was communicated by means of “representation media”, like textbooks, the board and the “all-knowing” teacher. The system was compartmentalized: the school, on the one hand, where each teacher acted in a particular way; and on the other hand was the students’ home with their respective circunstances and reproductions of social class and inequalities, which teachers had to struggle against. With the arrival of the Internet and the digital era, teachers and students use digital media in their school time, to interact among themselves and with others from outside. So, a more open communication is established in the interaction between the inside and the outside of the educational environment, by means of “interaction media” such as Twitter, Skype, Facebook, and so on. Now, the inside/outside distinction is diluted (Paulsen, 2020). In this context, Paulsen proposes that the three ideal types of teachers filter the conditions imposed by the digital era in different ways. In the three cases what tends to happen is an initial rejection of the introduction of new technologies, which are nonetheless later accepted and incorporated, although differently in each case. So, according to this author, the response of the engineer type of

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teacher at first is frustration at losing control of the situation due to the introduction of tools that she or he cannot handle well. This first reaction later gives way to the incorporation of the digital media, and finally to a recovery and intensification of control over students outside the classroom. Looking at the gardener type, this kind of educator at first shows ambivalence—she or he wants to protect the pupils from the risks of the Internet, but at the same time respects the new options it offers. This first stage is followed by the use of the new digital media to facilitate pupils’ self-development, combining the analogue palette of creation with the manifold digital possibilities. Finally, these digital media are incorporated by the teacher. In the case of the challenger ideal type, the first moment is one of frustration when she or he sees that in the Internet world –where users browse constantly from one subject to another– the pupils’ attention decreases. Later, this kind of teacher tends to incorporate digital interaction into her or his educational methods, since it makes possible polyphonic participation. Finally, the teacher ends up using the Internet as a means to confront students with a “challenging otherness”, that is to say, this teacher uses the Internet as a place to contrast ideas and set up debates—with people from other socio-cultural and geographical contexts. In this setting, the teacher acts as a mediator. Paulsen’s proposal can act to facilitate a final reflection. The capitalist system, as we have seen, imposes a series of utilitarian structural conditions in the contemporary digital age—an era that is introducing technological advances and the development of new educational and learning parameters. To this structural conditioning, however, new possibilities are added, such as those related to the logic of integration, hybridization and the remix culture, where novel experiences of digital collaboration and new social realities arise. At the same time that the univocal distinction between humans and technologies is blurred, the material bases and the patterns of social interaction are reconfigured. In this regard, it could be considered that all these structural conditions and reconfigurations imposed by the digital world set up clear standards with regard to human behaviour, that is to say, they determine social action. Given a determinist perspective, educational behaviour and learning processes are condemned to develop according to the logic of socioeconomic structures that set the path to follow in the digital age. However, it is important here to take up, once again, the perspective of the human capacity for agency and transformation. Following the non-deterministic view of Paulsen (2020) applied to education and to types of educator, it is crucial to highlight the way in which each actor in particular (re)creates and understands socio-cultural phenomena and processes, including education and learning. This process of active recreation would be more important than the way in which actors understand technology in itself. That is why it

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is problematic to speak about “the impact of digitalization on education” in the singular, from a univocal perspective. Teachers, students, educators and social actors in different fields receive, create, reformulate and transmite knowledge. The teaching and learning of knowledge –since they cut across historically contingent cultural frameworks– and the values of the different social actors –who introduce their particular biases– are in constant evolution. Therefore, social actors’ capacity for active creation and agency provide us with a valuable theoretical and practical possibility, enabling an escape from the unidirectional determination of the system. Capitalist structural conditioning, which imposes its own logic, faces the varied interpretations and actions of people who, individually and collectively, reformulate its standards. Human agency, capable of (re)creating what it learns and teaches, is therefore a possibility that opens a way to the emergence of socio-cultural transformation mechanisms. In the digital age, too, this possibility enables an understanding of cultural alternatives and resistances; and these alternatives help to explain the non-authomatic reproduction of the system over time. The (re)creation of teaching and learning, by different actors in a society, thereby makes new worlds and future scenarios possible. These future scenarios are just that, projections, and therefore still unteachable; but simply by projecting them they can act as a symbolic beacon to learn for present and future generations.

What goes beyond Learning? That which is newly created is what goes beyond learning. That is to say, I consider that human creativity –the capacity of people to generate innovations and produce new things– is the key to responding to the question of what goes beyond learning. To clarify this proposal, in the first place, it is necessary to distinguish between “learning to be creative” –which would be a social, cultural and educational process that educators and teachers influence directly– and the idea of “creating” something new, which, by being new, cannot yet have been learned. Put another way, it is possible to learn to be ingenious and creative; but the creation of a new idea, object or practice is something that arises as a novelty, and therefore which cannot yet have been learned. In this section, I look at the second meaning, focussing on creativity understood as the human capacity to create ideas, practices or works that can transcend and surpass what has been already learned. To develop this consideration, I will focus on a specific case of social practice, in order then to look deeply at how the creative process goes beyond what has

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already been learned. The specific case study I propose is that of creativity applied to forms of protest; that is to say, the process by which people innovate in forms of mobilization (a kind of social practice), and create new ways to protest. As has been stated above, forms of protest can be defined as collective actions that people learn in contexts of mobilization, conflict and struggle (Tarrow, 1994). These collective actions are carried out with the intention of introducing modifications and changes in the reproduction of the system’s values and material bases. For this reason, I consider that an in-depth look at the way in which creativity is produced in this sphere –that is to say, how new forms of social protest are created, ones that innovate based on already existing practices and knowledge, and which later on may be implemented by future generations of activists– could be useful in order to inquire into its relationship with individual and collective learning processes. So, in the first place let me consider a theoretical approach to the relationship between creativity and forms of social protest; a relationship from which arise innovations of the social action kind, which go beyond collective models already learned and cause them to evolve. A point to emphasize in this relationship is that of human agency, in terms of creativity. That is to say, the consideration that certain people, through the capacity for cultural agency, reformulate the guidelines of political action –including forms of collective protest– that they have learned. By these reformulations, activists provoke modifications into the margins of existing social practices. These modifications end up generating new forms of collective action. That is to say, in this process people create tactical innovations (McAdam, 1983) within the practices of the social movements. I propose that creativity here is an indispensable element that makes it possible to innovate forms of protest and other kinds of collective practices that go beyond those learned previously. In order to examine more closely the role of creativity with regard to the development of forms of social protest and collective action, let me look now at the socio-cultural mechanisms that influence this process; a process that, as I will argue, brings innovations to social action based on what has already been learned, going beyond it.

The systems model of creativity and social protest The notion of creativity supposes new ideas and actions that go beyond those already learned. This notion can be looked at from different theoretical perspectives. I will do so based on the proposal by Csikszentmihalyi (1998), who sees creativity as an idea or action that is new and valuable, and which requires a social

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evaluation that considers it as such. Forms of protest are collective kinds of action, and as such, experience social innovations and assessments. The generation of new and valuable forms of collective action, according to this viewpoint, is a process that requires both creativity and appropriate popular evaluation. The specific way in which this process happens can be tackled by means of the “systems model” applied to creativity. So, Gardner (1995) and Csikszentmihalyi (1998), based on the socio-cultural character of creativity, propose a specific model for tackling it: the systems model. According to this model, in creative works a dialectic and interactive process is produced among three elements: the individual talent of people who bring forth new or valuable actions; the domain or discipline in which this creative work takes place (whether this be artistic, like painting or literature; scientific, such as chemistry or mathematics; or the domain of forms of protest that I look at here); and the field or social environment that assesses the work. According to these authors, the creative phenomenon begins with individuals, but it is the favourable contextual disposition of the domain and the field in which this phenomenon occurs that allows the dissemination of new ideas and practices. The three elements –domain, field and individual talent– of this model of creativity can be specifically applied to forms of protest as well as to other kinds of social practices. This can be seen in the light of the first of the elements of the model, domains. These, as Kuhn (2012) proposes, are defined by a series of structures and practices in which individuals are socialized, with paradigms defined with specific symbolic systems. Generally, these refer to systems with high degrees of organization and rules, as in the cases of art and of science. Sometimes they can also be systems that are not so organized or highly regulated, as with methods of protest. Forms of protest, although they are not so highly regulated, have their own paradigms: the repertoire of democratic, modular protest (Tilly, 2007), offers a series of learned protest practices –demonstrations, strikes, acts of civil disobedience, and so on– whose symbolism can be recognized by the whole of society. The second of the elements of the systems model is the field in which the creativity takes place. According to Gardner (1995), there are cases in which a domain shows a highly organized structure, for example in sciences such as mathematics or physics. In these cases the field is composed of judges and institutions who asses the creative idea, determining whether it is valuable and new or not. In other examples, where the structuring is not so elaborate, such as the case of protest methods being looked at here, it is more difficult to identify specific creative phenomena. In this regard, there are three points to highlight, specific to protest practices: the inevitable conflicting political interests –with respect to

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which actors perform the creative protest, what their ideology is, who assesses it, the role of the hegemonic media; the long processes during which innovations are produced in this domain; and the difficulty of identifying a single, essential creative moment. All these specificities make it difficult to consider innovations in protest in the same terms as other creative innovative processes, such as creative scientific theories or pieces of music. Therefore, the distinction between domain and field for the case of innovations in protest practices, as Gardner states, may not be so useful. However, innovations in the methods of political protest do happen. This is shown, for example, by the emergence of Audiovisual Cultural Artefacts of Protest (ACAP, Letamendia et al., 2014) in the digital era; these are collective performances with a dissenting intention, recorded for dissemination in the new social digital space in order to raise awareness about certain demands. Likewise, historically the first workers’ strikes, at the dawn of industrial capitalism, were innovations of collective action at the moment when they were created; and the same can be said of the first demonstrations in the early nineteenth century, in England (Tilly & Wood, 2010). For this reason, although in these examples there is no judge or institution that evaluates the efficiency and originality of the new forms of collective protest, there does exist a social evaluation with respect to the new method action: if the new protest tactic is not incorporated by people or movements into their repertoire of action when they find out about it, it soon disappears. If, on the other hand, members of organizations within the social movement consider the new form of mobilization to be suitable for their context, and legitimate and useful, then it is possible they will incorporate it into their repertoire of protest. That is to say, if ever larger groups of people support and incorporate the new original protest method into their repertory, the collective action innovation will spread. For this to happen, popular credibility and social impulse are necessary. In this way, popular legitimacy plays the role of “judge” in the field, deciding whether the creative innovation in the form of social protest is, or is not, appropriate and feasible. The domain and the field therefore have to be suitable in order for a creative phenomenon –such as a new protest method– to spread. However, completing the third element in the systems model of creativity, the actors who generate these creative ideas by means of their talent, are individuals (Csikszentmihalyi, 1998; Gardner, 1995). That is to say, although the socio-cultural circumstances need to be favourable, it is creative individuals who devise and implement innovations in each domain, ideas that go beyond what has been learned before. In this regard, Gardner (1995) relates human creativity to divergent thinking, that is to say, to kinds of mental constructions that differ from the conventional. Just as intelligent

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people show convergent thoughts by means of which they find the correct – and conventional– answers to specific problems, creative people tend to make different associations when faced with a stimulus or problem. Some of these unconventional associations are peculiar and possibly unique. From this perspective, divergent thinking is a cognitive mechanism that makes it possible to explain changes in each of the domains where it takes place. The best known cases are talented figures who have revolutionized their respective disciplines, such as Albert Einstein in physics, Maria Montessori in education, or Pablo Picasso in painting. The creative works of these talented individuals introduced fundamental innovations and changes in their domains, causing modifications in the paradigm that has existed up until that time (Gardner, 1995). In the case of the domain of repertories of protest, since we are dealing with collective actions –and therefore carried out by groups of people– there is no tendency to highlight talented individuals as creators of an innovation. For this reason, in the cases of innovative protest actions, generally it is not feasible to identify a single individual as the “inventor” of the creative initiative, even if there were one. It is not possible, for example, to identify the “inventor” of ACAPs of the digital era, or of the factory strikes of the nineteenth century. However, what can be identified is the specific social movements –composed of different individuals with capacity for agency– that promote innovative protest actions and the reasoning behind them. Of the diverse individuals within these movements, some of them devise unconventional and original –divergent– solutions and alternatives to collective practices under circumstances of social conflict. Therefore, although these are anonymous activists, and we never find out their names and surnames (unlike the cases of innovations in the domains of science or art, where individual authorship is recognized), what this model allows us to deduce is the key role of the agency of creative individuals, who generate new ideas and practices. These innovations are based on popular learnings, on already existing collective protest practices. But these creations finally transcend the teachings received, in order to establish new experiences of social action.

Creativity in social practices and what goes beyond learning Therefore, human creative agency becomes an essential element, an element that is able to transcend what has been learned and create new social practices and ideas. We have seen this with the changes in forms of socio-political mobilization: the divergent thoughts of certain people, in terms of social transformation,

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together with favourable domains and fields, become the socio-cultural mechanisms that reformulate what has been learned, introducing original changes. These original changes, if successfully put into practice, can shape the development of forms of collective action. Without these creative initiatives, without human cultural agency, this process could not be dynamic. So, while the system tends, by definition, to reproduce itself and its mechanisms and logics of control and power, people’s creative and transformational agency –a kind of “magic” ability that makes it possible to create original ideas and practices based on what has been learned before– emerges as a disruptive and inventive mechanism of alternatives. Hence the creative mechanism is able to generate short-circuits in the reproduction of the system, since it makes it possible to divert the direction of the logic imposed by capitalist structural interests. All these creative short-circuits –in which original individuals, given favourable socio-cultural contexts, create innovative ideas and practices based on what already exists– are indicators that the system and its logic are not eternally invariable. Thus, social action, as we have seen in the case of the forms of collective protest, is learned. What is more, this very popular learning is the basis on which it is possible to create new practices and ideas. Learning is, then, the seed of that which will transcend it—the original and unique seed of the new idea or the new practice, which is created. Creativity, then, emerges as the socio-cultural mechanism that makes possible the foundational conception of new practices and new worlds: what goes beyond present learning, the future alternative that cannot yet have been learned.

Learning and Time Learning in our societies, in the digital age, merges with a constantly accelerating time. So, contemporary learning processes take place in a social regime of accelerated time, which affects different aspects of our lives. To examine this, it is worth referring to the work of Hartmut Rosa (2012), who has studied the cycle of acceleration in late modernity, based on three dimensions: technical acceleration, the acceleration of social change, and the acceleration of the rythm of life. The first of these dimensions, that of technical acceleration, is linked to the emergence of new technologies—as happened historically with the steam engine, the telegraph, the automobile, and more recently with computers and the Internet. Rosa argues that this technical dimension contributes to a range of changes in social practices, in the structures of communication and in the very forms of life. Internet, as well as the increasing velocity of communications exchanges and the

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virtualization of economic and productive processes, opens up possibilities for new forms of social interaction and identity. Identities that have arisen in the digital era, such as YouTubers in the Internet (Del Amo Castro et al., 2018), or precarious subjectivities in precarious societies (Briziarelli & Armano, 2017), would form a part of these new experiences. According to Rosa (2012), technical acceleration takes place along with the acceleration of social change. Social change unfolds in the form of modifications in structures and in social models, as well as in the evaluations of social action. This acceleration of social change brings a “compression of the present”—a process that Harvey (1990) has also interpreted by means of the idea of “space–time compression” of the postmodern cultural logic in the framework of neoliberal capitalism. This process brings, in turn, an acceleration of the rythm of life. This is explained by the phenomenon of the ascendancy of capitalist production. That is to say, in a competitive capitalist society, there is no point of equilibrium: a competitiveness is established that condemns people and organizations to constantly ascend and readjust, or if not, to move backwards. In this context, as Rosa argues, staying the same, immobile, means belonging to the category of falling behind. The cycle of acceleration proposed by Rosa, then, connects the dimensions of the technical, of social change, and of rythm of personal life. What is more, this author considers that people feel constrained to follow the fast pace of change they are faced with in their social and technological world—for example having to update constantly the list of emails or mobile messages, which have represented technical progress with regard to traditional, physical mail. People have to attend daily to this growing number of messages in the digital era, in order to avoid missing out on potentially valuable connections, and retain their opportunities within a competitive society. However, says Rosa, in a world in constant change, for people it is difficult to define what are valuable connections and opportunities. So, accelerated social change brings an accelerated rythm of life around it. Finally, new forms of technical acceleration will be necessary to satisfy the demands created by the accelerated processes of day-to-day and productive life. In this way, the cycle of acceleration appears as a closed and self-propelling system.

Social acceleration and alienation in the digital age In the framework of late modernity, the cycle of acceleration brings new forms of alienation. In this context, Rosa (2012) has identified five areas in which this

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occurs. Firstly, there is an alienation from space. This author considers that there is a profound and structural distortion in the relationships between a person and the world; that is to say, a distortion of the ways in which a subject situates her or himself in the world. Currently, in our accelerated society, this distortion is reflected in the fact that physical and social proximity are tending towards separation; those who are close socially are not necessarily so physically, and vice versa. In this process, the proximity and social interest are ever more separate from spatial proximity. The second area, according to Rosa, is alienation from things. The tendency not to repair objects and the things around us is at the root of this kind of alienation. The things we produce and then use or consume, make up, to a degree, our identity. In consumer societies, there is a strong tendency to replace rather than repair objects, since the first option is cheaper than the second, and by not being able to manipulate or repair things, we become alienated from the objects that surround us. A third area is alienation from our actions: the opposite of being alienated is “feeling at home”, for example, in a comfortable and familiar environment, accompanied by certain people, and framed by certain pleasant activities. Rosa proposes that two processes are fuelling alienation in this respect. Firstly, alienation with regard to some technological tools and processes that we are unable to make our own—like a computer that sometimes performs strange and unexpected operations. Secondly, there is an estrangement with regard to life’s big decisions, to the unknown, in a rapidly changing setting. This would be, for example, the case of a student in higher education, who would have to find out and understand what she or he wants to do in future in order to matriculate for a university degree; but since there is a lack of knowledge, of information, and constantly changing social expectations, important decisions like this become more complicated. Fourth is alienation from time. Rosa considers that, although we can objectively measure time (by means of a pendulum, for example), the human experience of time is a subjective phenomenon. Hence the subjective paradox of time emerges: that is, the inverse qualities of the time of the experience and the time of the memory. This is the case of experiences and things that please us greatly—for example, a trip during which we visit different countries. These are intense experiences, in which time passes quickly. What is established here is “short time” in lived experience. In parallel, explains Rosa, when the day ends, the sensation is that the day has been very long. The intense experience of the day is transformed into “long time” in our memories. Furthermore, in ordinary situations of personal experience –such as a working day in an office, or when we are stuck in our car in a traffic jam– the opposite happens. The sensation in

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a jam or the office, is that of long time; but at the end of the day the sensation is of “not having done anything”. In late modernity, Rosa poses that the classical forms of experience of time, which move from short time to long time and vice versa, tend to be replaced by exclusively short motifs. Currently lived time passes quickly—browsing the Internet, playing video games, flicking through television channels, or watching a thriller or videos on YouTube. In these personal experiences, it may be that there are many stimulations, but they are reduced in our memories and tend to be erased. This process is useful in the accelerated society, because this kind of experience –that most time is achronological and useless– prepares us for what is constantly new and unexpected. As Rosa suggests, this is a trend that was already identified by Walter Benjamin by means of the distinction of the concepts of Erlebnissen –episodes of experience– and Erfahrungen. This second concept refers to experiences that leave traces, to experiences that are connected to our identity and history, and which tend to transform who we are. Benjamin suggested that humans tend to be ever more rich in quantity of experiences (Erlebnissen) but poor in transformational experiences (Erfahrungen). The contemporary digital era could be accelerating this process. Fifth and last, according to Rosa, is alienation from oneself and others. This author proposes that alienation is disintegration, the erosion of the feeling of connection among people. In the framework of social acceleration, people tend to fail when integrating episodes of action and of experience into the totality of a life. Consequently, he says, people are ever more separate: they are more and more disconnected from the times and spaces of their lives, their actions and their experiences; and also more separate from the things with which they live and work. All this brings self-alienation: alienation from the space–time dimension, from one’s own actions and experiences, from companions with whom we interact, and finally profound alienation from oneself.

Accelerated time, resistances and learnings Therefore, the cycle of acceleration brings new experiences of alienation, and as we will see this dynamic affects learning processes. However, in this context, resistance also arises. We shall now look at how this accelerated time conditions specific cases of cultural learning, examining two specific fields: the arts, and political resistances. In the field of the arts, the historical role of music may be illustrative in order to look at this matter. For this, let me look go back to the historical context of

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modernity two centuries ago. So, the goal of modernity was to develop “total” works of art, able to encapsulate and reflect the essence of their time (Del Amo Castro & Letamendia Onzain, 2015). The works of Beethoven, his musical symphonies –especially the third, the Eroica– can be considered as examples of this: “total musical works”, artistic reflections of a historical time of political revolutions and of its profound development. Learning, in the historical context of these kinds of total artworks of modernity, was arduous and profound; it connected the creation of music with the essence of its time. The master, who learned, taught and created art, music and refined culture, was the role model. Learnings occurred during a long, slow time, which made it possible to look deeply into artistic and musical knowledge and innovate within them. Together with the acceleration of the rotation of capital (Harvey, 1990), and the arrival of the cycle of social acceleration in late modernity (Rosa, 2012), the rythm of music has also speeded up. It is an identifiable process in the last decades of the twentieth century. In this way, in the late twentieth century, punk, industrial and electronic music expressed the noise and the growing social velocity of their own time (Del Amo Castro & Letamendia Onzain, 2015). However, this noise was attempting to communicate something intense; it was aiming to be a noise with a message, even if what it was communicating was a lack of communication. Thus the “sound of noise” was created. This noise arised from the collapse of the idea of progress and of future, which appeared explosively in the crisis at the end of the 1970s—made explicit for example in punk’s accelerated slogan “No future”. The social and political defeats that the neoliberal policies inflicted on the old working-class culture and organization resulted in a fertile (sub)cultural creativity, which made it possible to reconstruct new relational experiences and autonomous popular learning. These new experiences could be symbolic and imaginary solutions (protest styles, signs of revolt), but they could also boost the construction of self-managed experiences, of Do It Yourself (Bennett & Guerra, 2019). In a time of acceleration and of a growing feeling of alienation, fast and direct music (like punk) emerged: the slogan of “Keep It Simple, Make it Fast” (Guerra & Moreira, 2017), also expressed well this kind of accelerated cultural experience. An experience based on autonomous and alternative learnings, direct and simple, connected with fast musical styles, which confronted the status quo. In the digital era of the twenty-first century, accelerated capitalism has resulted in the fragmentation of historical time. Together with the postmodern logic (Harvey, 1990), and the intensification of the iconosphere (González Ibáñez, 2015), cultural products fragment and become empty of political content. In this regard, the musical narration of the complete album is split: isolated songs arise,

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which are accessible on digital networks, away from the context provided by the coherent narrative of the album. In this way, artistic, cultural disconnection is stimulated in the era of the ultra-digital connection (Del Amo Castro & Letamendia Onzain, 2015). In these circumstances, the alienation to which Rosa (2012) refers could find fertile ground to develop. Alienation within social acceleration context, however, also faces resistances. Let us look, now, at the case of actions of political resistance and protest, which, as has been said, are expressions of social action, learned during the struggle itself (Tarrow, 1994). On this point, one could consider the contemporary emergence of what I call “spasmodic time” (Letamendia, 2020). Spasmodic time is characterized by the short term, and by accelerated sequences of discontinuous time, which sometimes give rise to explosive experiences of human collective activity. Spasmodic time permeates and shapes actions of political resistance in two ways. Firstly, by means of an increase in the visuality of social action, through ever more symbolic and self-expressive collective actions, which circulate well in the digital medium (Letamendia Onzain, 2018). Secondly, by means of the instantaneous activity, viewing and dissemination of resistance actions, which connect with the accelerated time regime of the digital age. This process makes possible an “aestheticization of resistances” in the digital era: a greater importance of the visual and the symbolic in the forms of social action and of protest, which may end up by emptying popular actions of political impact (Letamendia, 2017). However, if this aestheticization of collective action is interpreted from a point of view of “symbolic effectiveness” (Itçaina, 2017) –emphasizing the communicative alternatives and new possibilities that open up in the digital age– then resistances will be able to find new options for transformational agency in this scenario. In the accelerated digital age, learned collective action, which arises over the short term and which happens in spasms, is destructured, but at the same time is destructuring for the authorities. This collective spasmodic action, if sufficiently powerful, can give rise to a “Great Event” (Letamendia, 2020). The Spanish indignados, the Occupy movement, the 8 March feminist strike, the French gilets jaunes, and the Catalan 1 October self-determination referendum and Tsunami Democràtic, are examples of Great Event. They are massive, explosive, instantaneous events that arise over the short term and are coordinated via digital social media. They are products of a spasmodic time. The short-term time frame and the instantaneity in our accelerated societies come into confrontation with the prolonged time frame, the long term, of the popular learning of the historical social movements. However, the contemporary constitution of the social action in an ephemeral, accelerated time, gives the

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action a destructuring potential, a potential that is unexpected by the system. The potential for this spasm of mobilization to be powerful enough to transcend its ephemeral nature and acquire a historical and transformational character, is the condition that makes possible the emergence of the Great Event (Letamendia, 2020). I propose that this Great Event, characteristic of the digital age, is able to counter some of the forms of alienation described by Rosa (2012), within the social framework of accelerated time. The Great Event carries within it two major contradictions of the accelerated digital age, which affect areas of alienation from a dialectical perspective. The first is a physical and social contradiction: that of the effort to bring people physically together in a great act of mobilization, in a period that has a tendency to disjointing and to individualism (Wacquant, 2020). The second contradiction is temporal, since spasmodic collective action aspires to transcend its ephemeral nature in order to become a historical event whose material and symbolic consequences are prolonged over time. The emergence of the Great Event, with respect to the new kinds of alienation and social acceleration, can have various consequences and offer alternatives. Firstly, this kind of spasmodic resistance demonstrates a transformational capacity: by being unpredictable and taking place across short-term historical time frames, it is difficult for the authorities and the system to foresee their development and impact. The authorities have not been able to learn, by means of gradually acquired experience, how these actions will unfold within the framework of the political struggle; they have not yet had time given that these are explosive, unpredictable popular spasms which are created instantaneously and generate uncertainty with regard to their strength. Secondly, spasmodic collective action can, as has been stated, easily dissolve. Since it does not have historically rooted long-term structures, the temporal uncertainty is high. In case of accelerated dissolution, the potential that these forms of mobilization and resistance have for learning and teaching may be diluted and will not be transmitted to generations of future activists, or to the streets. However, the memory of these experiences of resistances which have arisen in the accelerated and digital social sphere may be stored in images, sounds, videos, words and digits in the global cultural archive. The memory of experiences of resistance can thus find new formats and tools to preserve the popular memory, in terms of popular agency, that can be leaned by those who come after. Short accelerated time is the historical context in which spasmodic collective action appears. Yet short time is not a totally closed system; it has within it the possibility of a new scenario, of a different regime of time. A Great Event, like the occurrences on the day of the Catalan self-determination referendum, the

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Occupy movement or the international feminist strike, can be considered to be a collective “dealienating” experience with respect to time. That is to say, it can be seen as a profound joint action produced by the collective agency of each one of the people involved, by individual and collective creativities, which can stay in the popular memory and have a presence over time, in the long term. This presence in the memory is what lets human action, even in the context of the accelerated digital age, go beyond the mere surface of the constant present, and leave a legacy that can be learned by others in the long term.

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Michael Paulsen—the Plateau of Learning in the Anthropocene—How to Relate Differently to the Earth

Introduction: The Anthropocene and learning We live in a strange time. On the one hand, we have developed advanced forms of civilisation, justice, democracy, helpful technologies, sciences and countless theories about the world we live in. In Hegelian terms, history has come to an end, in the sense that all further progress will only imply adjustments of the existing institutions, not genuinely new institutions. On the other hand, the very same human practices have led to a situation where we are on the verge of destroying—and thus externally self-negating—the earthly basis of life. This tells us that something must be wrong with our institutional nexus. By the very same operations by which we have built up an agrilogistics civilisation (Morton, 2018), we have advanced ‘forgetfulness of being’ (Heidegger, 1954), or what in this context could more aptly be termed ‘earth forgetfulness’ (Ziethen & Paulsen, 2022). This double situation is captured by the idea that we now live in the Anthropocene age (Chakrabarty, 2015; Paulsen, 2019). The Anthropocene signifies an epoch in Earth’s history in which human activities have become dominant, with effects on all strata of the life-critical zone slightly below and above the surface of the earth (Ellis, 2018; Latour, 2017). This does not mean that humans have become masters of the earth; rather, it implies negative effects and unintended consequences (domino effects), with deteriorating living conditions in the form of, for example, global warming, decreasing biodiversity and mass extinction (Tønder, 2020). Yet this has also led to reconsiderations of who we are and given us a new look at our past and future on earth. We now acknowledge that agriculture, urbanisation, civilisation, democracy and science have been developed in a unique climatically stable period in Earth’s history, beginning

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around 11,500 years ago, called the Holocene by geologists and the precursor to the Anthropocene (Ellis, 2018). Further, we acknowledge that this has now been replaced by climatic instability and changing earth conditions due to human activities. All this means that we begin to acknowledge how ‘earth forgetful’ the practices we have developed throughout the Holocene have been (Paulsen, 2021a). Thus, the Anthropocene means that we now live in a time of earthly catastrophes, due to our own activities and ways of life (Morton, 2018), but it also means that we now are strongly forced to learn to relate differently to the earth and thereby create ‘a new earth’ (jagodzinski, 2021). In this text, I want to analyse what this demand means through asking what kind of learning is called for by the Anthropocene and what learning processes the school of tomorrow should prioritise. I will deal with this through assessing four kinds of learning: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Reactive learning Intraactive learning Interactive learning Transactive learning

I deal with each of the four types in the following sections. As indicated by the terms, all four posit learning as something active—that is, as something that can only happen if someone A does something, and this positively changes what A can do in the next steps. Yet it would be too hasty to conclude that the four kinds are merely variations of one and the same abstract understanding of learning. Rather, they make learning into something different in each case, including what activity means, who can learn and how one can learn. Also, they have different educational implications. Thus, they can be understood as actualisations of the more fundamental multiplicity and capacity of learning attributable to humans and other life creatures, and the world as such—or what Bergson called ‘the creative evolution’ (Bergson, 1998)—but also, more concretely, to the plateau of learning made available in the early Anthropocene.

Reactive learning Reactive learning means adaptation to external demands. Learning is here trigged by something external to a learner, demanding a change in what the learner does (her behaviour and actions). The content of this change is determined by the

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What needs to be learned

Fig. 1 The arrow of learning in reactive learning

external demands. The ‘arrow of learning’ therefore goes from ‘what needs to be learned’ to ‘the learner’ (see Fig. 1). Assume a walker is coming to a deep lake for the first time. If she walks into the lake, she will drown (at least, if she is a human and the lake is sufficiently big and deep). If she instead adapts her behaviour to the lake in such a way that she can continue but not drown, this will probably mean that she learns to swim (or something equivalent). If, then, some days after, she comes to a new lake and again begins to swim, this will not imply that she learns something, insofar as she just repeats the same swimming action as last time (which, on the other hand, does not out rule that she, through such repetitions, begins to learn other things, but that’s another story to which I will return later). Thus, reactive learning is identical to changing what one does in such a way that the learner adapts to new demands. Whether or not the learner can succeed with this depends on the capacity of the learner. Yet the scale by which success is measured is external to the learner and is defined by the external conditions—in the example, the nature of the lake and the concrete environment. At the same time, the learner is only activating the learning process because she accepts the external demand. In principle, she could reject to learn to swim, and simply die. Thus, reactive learning signifies a process in which someone is confronted with, accepts and adapts to an external demand in a way not done before and remembered by this someone. This someone can be a person, a human being, a cat, a person, a collective, a community. I call this reactive learning because it is a reaction to something externally given, and the content of the reaction must be such that it corresponds to what it reacts to. The demands can be straightforward, such as ‘do as someone else is doing’, or the demands can be non-straightforward, as in ‘find out what to do by solving this wicked problem, or you are doomed’. In the Holocene school, a peculiar form of reactive learning has been developed and installed. The core of this form is that a teacher articulates external demands that students are forced (by punishments or rewards) to accept and try to adapt their behaviours and performances to. A teacher requires, for instance, that students shall be able to recite the factors of seven the next day. If they can meet this demand, they will get a reward; otherwise, they will be punished. In

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such teaching, the teacher (or her boss, politicians, etc.) is the one who decides what shall be learned, while the student’s role is only to accept this and change his or her behaviour accordingly. Holocene animals, like dogs, cats, elephants and monkeys, have been treated in a similar manner, depending on their acknowledged capability to understand and accept external demands and change their behaviour accordingly (in circuses, farms and private homes). Plants, too—such as wheat, rice and potato—have adapted their doings to meet external demands from human beings, who have rewarded the plants that adapt best to human needs and punished those that have been called weeds, that is, plants that do not adapt to human needs (or adapt in strange ways, show up in ‘wrong’ places and cannot be controlled because of their rhizomatic drives). Simultaneously, human beings have adapted their behaviour in the Holocene to domesticated animals and plants. As Yuval Noah Harari (2014) argues, it is not simply that human beings have become masters of dogs and cats, wheat and rice. It also functions the other way around: the dogs and cats have nudged their owners to change in favour of the animals, and likewise, wheat and rice have succeeded in nudging humans to take care of them and secured their global spread. The calamities of the Anthropocene are external demands (yet simultaneously products of external self-negation) that force us to change our doings in such a way that they will harm the life-critical zone less. Yet, this will only happen if we (1) understand the demands of the Anthropocene, (2) accept to change our doings and (3) are capable of this. Some regimes suppose that early Anthropocene people will not by themselves understand and accept the demands. Therefore, such regimes try to enforce the demands by interpretating the demands and nudging people to change more and faster. Hereby, this speeds up processes of needed reactive learning. Yet reactive learning is not identical to cause-and-effect-relationships (Cassirer, 1944). The external demand does not cause the reactive learning process, it only demands it. Thus, reactive learning imitates and creatively transforms cause-and-effect relationships. The external demand looks like a cause, and the reactive learning process carried out by the learner looks like an effect. But still, reactive learning is only happening if the learner understands and accepts the external demand and activates the needed change. The reactive learning process is therefore an active response to the internal interpretation and acceptance of the external demand. Thus, the external demand is a sign. A learner thinks, for example, that to survive she must cross the lake, and in order to do this without dying, she must

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learn to swim. But other interpretations are also possible. It is only because the learner fears death and thinks she must cross the lake that the demand is recognised and accepted. At the same time, the content of the demand is not just something imagined by the learner. What is demanded is conditioned by the real deepness and character of the lake (Bryant, 2014). But acceptance must be distinguished from interpretation. The acceptance is, in itself, a decision of the learner, functioning as a necessary condition of entering a reactive learning process. In the example, it is fear of death that motivates the acceptance. It is like in Leviathan, by Hobbes, where the political regime is only accepted because there is, in the state of nature (as an alternative), ‘no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ (Hobbes, 1651, p. 78). Or, put differently, a society based on reactive learning is based on fear of death. It does not need to be so. One can think of external demands that we understand and accept, not because we fear that we will die if we do not change our doings to meet these demands, but because we feel inclined by the externalities to change and do something positive, such as to help others. Take, for instance, the ethics of Levinas (1996). When I encounter another human being, according to Levinas, the face of the other is a sign that, before any other sign, demands that I not kill the other (as a first and most fundamental message and condition of any further talk with the other as another). This demand breaks into my egoism from outside; it is not my interpretation of the other that demands it—it is the other, in herself, in her radical otherness, as an irreplaceable and exposed, naked, singular being that addresses and singles out me, and thus makes me into a subject, awaiting my answer. It is up to me whether I accept the ethical claim and thus take the responsibility on myself to take care of the other, or else I reject the claim. Because the other is radically different from me, to take care of the other is an odd kind of reactive learning wherein I cannot never completely meet the requirements of the external demand (that is, never fully understand the other, because in that case, the other would just become ‘other for me’ and thus ceases to be a real other). What I can do is only keep on trying to learn (i.e., take upon me) how I can be there for the other. To be there for the other, as a kind of odd and infinite reactive learning process, happens (I would suggest, extrapolating from Levinas) when I accept and take the responsibility of the other upon me. Not only when I encounter human beings but all kinds of radical otherness, and can find out limited ways of taking care of them. A response to the Anthropocene could therefore be to take upon us the responsibilities of other living creatures that we encounter and to begin to take

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care of these. The characteristic of such learning is that we do not try to change the others but instead accept the demand to be there for the others and to try to change ourselves. Yet externalities do not only call us not to kill them. They also address us in other ways. The lake does not only demand that we should not kill it. It also invites the learner to drink the water of the lake (without emptying it), enjoy its beautifulness or learn to swim to enjoy life in the water. Reactive learning, therefore, needs not to be driven by fear of death or the call to protect the lives of others; it can also be driven by the invitation to adjust oneself to joyful life with others. In addition, reactive learning can be driven by encounters with narratives (i.e., demands that are structured as chronotopical complex signs). When we encounter new narratives, they might lead to changes in our lives. This does not mean that narratives change the learner directly and in an unmediated way. Rather, they put a demand on someone to understand the narrative in a certain way, accepting its demand and changing one’s life accordingly. Such narrative learning has three necessary aspects, which Ricoeur (1981) calls prefiguration, configuration and refiguration. When I encounter a new story, I do not encounter it with empty hands. Rather, my understanding is already shaped by the world and stories I grew up with. The same goes for the inventing of a story: it is also shaped by the world of stories that the inventor grew up with. This is the prefiguration of the narrative, meaning that the story is based on a world outside and before the story. When, for instance, I encounter the narrative of the Anthropocene, I can understand this in different ways, depending on which world and which other stories I grew up with and accepted as part of my world understanding (for example, southern Indian stories or cold northern winds). Yet a story has also its own content and structure, its own tradition, its own chronotopical dimensions and capacity to impress an audience, depending on how it is understood. This is the configuration of the narrative. Finally, there is an ‘after moment’ transcending the story, namely the further thoughts of the audience and how they might, after the encounter with the story, understand the world differently. This is the moment of refiguration that realises the ‘demanding power’ of the narrative. All are necessary aspects of a narrative reactive learning process. Without a prefiguration, the reactive learning process would not be possible. And only because the narrative consists of something internal that has a demanding power (tells something) can it give rise to specific demands. Only if someone understands, accepts and begins to change accordingly as a response to such demands—that is, refigure her world—is the reactive learning evolving.

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There is something mysterious, though, about reactive learning. It happens when we change our doings due to recognition of external demands, motivated by fear of death, care of others, narratives and invitations to make oneself able to participate in joyful life. But how is this possible? How do we change ourselves? What are the limits? We fear punishments and are motivated by rewards, joy and responsibilities, but this says nothing about how we change. Thus, there is a mystery within reactive learning. Or to paraphrase Spinoza (2021) and Deleuze (1990): We don’t know what a body is capable of. We don’t know what a body can do. This leads us to intraactive learning.

Intraactive learning Intraactive learning is identical to the unfolding of inner potentials. The learner recognises some possibilities within herself that need to be unfolded to become activatable. The learner might be supported from outside to this recognition, and also in her efforts to unfold inner potentials, but the unfoldment itself is carried out by the learner. This means that the arrow of learning goes from ‘the learner’ to ‘what needs to be learned’ (see Fig. 2). Assume that there is a learner who wants to swim, but cannot swim, but has an innate talent for swimming. Assume that this learner begins to study swimming, looks at other swimmers, reads books about swimming, practises swimming, participates in swimming courses, thinks about how to swim and talks with swimmers about how they have learned to swim. Assume, finally, that through these activities, the learner gradually begins to learn to swim, better and better, and thus unfolds her immanent potential for swimming. How does this kind of intraactive learning differ from reactive learning? First of all, by being an act not necessarily grounded in external demands. There may be external demands but need not be so. Something already existing as a potentiality only needs to be progressively unfolded to become activatable. Thus, in the beginning, the learner cannot swim because her potential for swimming has not yet been unfolded into something activatable. Through practising and other activities, she unfolds her swimming potential, meaning that this potential becomes

The learner Fig. 2 The arrow of learning in intraactive learning

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more and more activatable, making her able to swim better and better. Such a learning process is not necessarily an adaptation to the environment. First, it is an internal unfolding of her potential, regardless of whether it fits or does not fit with anything externally given. Obviously, to learn to swim is to adjust and adapt one’s body to an aquatic environment. True. But this is the reactive part. The intraactive part only has to do with the unfolding of inner potentials. Thus, intraactive learning functions not on the plan of actuality (as reactive learning does) but on the plan of potentiality (Koefoed, 2009). The scale of measurement of intraactive learning is therefore not a question of external adaptation but a matter of the degree of internal unfoldment of one’s potential. The intraactive learning process goes in the direction of making one’s inner potential activatable. Whereas reactive learning imitates a causal structure, intraactive learning imitates a teleological structure. Thus, the intraactive learning process is directed towards an internal purpose or goal (e.g., to become a good swimmer). And whereas reactive learning ‘stops’ when the learner reiterates the same doings that she has already performed and stored as part of her repertoire, intraactive learning ‘stops’ when the learner reiterates the activation of an already activatable potential, without the further unfolding of this potential. This becomes clear if we look at another example, well-known in the history of philosophy, and made especially (in)famous by Descartes, namely reason (rationality as such). The unfoldment of one’s reason moves forward as an intraactive learning process, insofar as the learner happens to possess a potential for reasoning—yet, to begin with, only as a potential that needs to be unfolded and made activatable. As Descartes (1954) argues, reason is like the sun; when unfolded, it can illuminate any object, as one and the same reason, independent of which objects it is applied to. In Plato’s dialogue Meno (2012), Socrates initiates a dialogue with a slave who has no knowledge of mathematics. Socrates does not give any answers to the slave but only ask questions that provoke the slave to begin to think for himself. To begin with, the slave does not reason very well and has no interest in the dialogue. But as the dialogue progresses, the slumbering reason in the slave begins to awaken, and he becomes more interested. At the end, he begins to ask and answer questions independently of Socrates. What is at stake here is that the slave unfolds his potential for reasoning. What Socrates, through his indirect method, achieves is to provoke the slave to start an intraactive learning process. When Socrates again turns to Meno, the slave seems to continue for himself his intraactive learning process, now without Socrates and without any goals or guidance other than his own awakened interest in knowledge as such,

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independent of any external standard. This is what is meant by starting to think for oneself. It is also this model of Socratic teaching that one finds in Rousseau’s Emile (2010), giving rise to the progressive idea of education as gardening and facilitating the natural development of a child’s own innate interests and talents, protecting the child against the confusion and alienation of the contingent demands and temptations of modern culture and society (that tries to make the child into something other than who she is, understood in her own potentiality). Thus, the child is treated by the teacher as a seed that must be nurtured and challenged appropriately, in a suitable environment, to develop and unfold her own potentials harmonically and independently. The emphasis is put on the artful creation of a suitable environment for the child, given the best conditions for intraactive learning, which is the opposite of the repressive school system in which the teacher demands certain changes in students’ behaviour. Instead of demanding that students change, the teacher, as a gardener, tries to change the environment to fit with the learner. As Aristotle (1989, 028a–1048b) made clear with his distinction between actuality and potentiality (energeia or entelechia, coined by Aristotle, and dynamis in Greek), different things change as a kind of intraactive learning in the direction from potentiality to actuality. The oak tree, for instance, is immanent, as a potentiality, in the acorn, just like reason in the slave. This is also the background for Aristotle’s theory of learning through creative imitations (Beck et al., 2014). For example, a child can learn to play the flute by imitating more masterful flute players. According to Aristotle, the child does not copy the master; rather, the child unfolds her own talent in the direction of the more unfolded talent of the master. Likewise, the master can support this development because the master has unfolded the same talent and can therefore comprehend where the child is in her development and give her appropriate guidance. According to Aristotle, this also applies to moral teaching and learning (Aristotle, 2000). By being together with good people, the child can imitate role models creatively—that is, unfolding her own potentiality for being good through practising goodness in the direction of the better people who surround her. But also, it is possible for a learner to advance further or differently than people surrounding her by unfolding her potential in the direction of her own images (of, for example, good acts and deeds). In modern learning theory, this is explained as anticipatory learning (Bråten, 2007). When a child, for instance, sees adults using cups, the child learns to use such things, too, by imitating the uses of the adults, but the child also goes further, extending and changing the cup movements of the adults in different directions. Also, when a teacher shows

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students something and hesitates‚ it can be observed that students continue the movements of the teacher, anticipating what they comprehend the teacher is going to do or say (Bråten, 2007). Yet we must be careful here. When the acorn unfolds, it moves from potentiality (a potential oak tree) to actuality (a fully blossoming oak tree). But once it has become an oak tree, it cannot from day to day shift between actualising its oak-actuality and something else. This is different from the flute player, who can actualise her activatable potentiality for playing on the flute on a Sunday, but also chooses not to actualise it this specific day. This actualisation is, strictly speaking, not part of the intraactive learning process because, in principle, it can be done again and again without changing the activatable potentiality (or if it does, it becomes an element in an intraactive learning process). However, one could put this in more speculative terms, saying that the oak tree could choose not to actualise its potentiality for being an oak tree on a single Sunday, but that this isn’t likely because it loves so much to be an oak tree that it doesn’t want to not actualise its potentiality. There is no reason why an oak tree should not actualise its potentiality when it can. Yet oak trees are different from humans, which led us, in the Holocene, to overlook the complexity of oak-life on its own relevant scales. Thus, it might be that an oak tree makes decisions and changes itself in different ways than those we in the Holocene have seen as able to make decisions and self-change. For instance, an oak tree might shift sex and become a female tree after living as a male tree for more than a hundred or even a thousand years (McLendon, 2017). The upshot is that many things possess innate powers and change as intraactive kinds of learning (Bennett, 2010). In the Western history of ideas, both because of and despite Aristotle, intraactive learning, especially as an unfoldment of reason, has been ascribed exclusively to human beings. Western humanism (from Plato to Hegel) relies on this assumption (Paulsen, 2021b). Humanistic learning theories, therefore, tend to be dismissive of reactive learning theories like behaviourism because the latter overlooks the extraordinariness of human beings and reduces humans to stimulus–response organisms that adapt to their shifting environments, without any internal entelechy. In opposition to this, humanistic learning theories argue that learning is an internal process in which the human being, by its own free will, unfolds its own unique potentials (Beck, 2014). The educational consequence of humanism has been the development of a ‘school’ (cf. the Greek meaning of this word as ‘a place of leisure’, ‘holding back’ both practical-political life and natural behaviour) in which humans can unfold their exclusively human potentials. Thus, intraactive learning, understood humanistically, can be seen as the educational basis of the anthropocentrism that

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has marginalised all other life forms on earth and made nature into a mere background and scene for human unfoldment. Yet it does not need to be so. It is possible to recognise intraactive learning outside of the human kingdom. But even further, the Socratic idea of dialogue as a device to trigger intraactive learning, but also to initiate contact in between intraactive learners forming philosophical communities, can be applied to interactions between human and more-than-humans. This will turn intraactive learning into a third kind of learning, namely interactive learning.

Interactive learning Interactive learning happens when someone increases their perceived possibilities through interacting with something else. This includes two (or more) interacting learners who expand each other’s horizon of possibilities by gaining insight into each other’s horizons. What is going on here is not that the learner changes her behaviour to adapt to an external demand; neither is she just unfolding her inner potentials. Rather, the learner is acting upon something else, to learn from these self-initiated experiments with the environment. The interactive learner is changing herself by changing something other than herself. As an iterative process, the arrow of learning in interactive learning moves back and forth between the learner and what is learned (see Fig. 3). Assume someone wants to paint a picture. She begins with the colour red on a white canvas. She is curious about what the red colour can do, either alone with the white canvas or together with other colours. What the painter is doing is not only unfolding her own inner talent for painting; neither is she just responding reactively to an external demand. What is at stake is that she is doing something with something else, and hereby explores the possibilities of this otherness: what can it do? One could say that she tries to unfold something else’s potential. She does not change this ‘something else’ just to change it: she does it to expand her own knowledge. And she therefore also does it gently: there is no reason immanent in this kind of learning process to destroy the otherness.

The learner Fig. 3 The arrow of learning in interactive learning

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Of course, when a clumsy child tries to find out what an ant can do, it might destroy the ant, but this is not a necessary part of the interactive learning process. It might also be that the child, out of an unacknowledged psychic trauma, kills the ant on purpose, but again: this is a contingent motive, not necessarily inherent to interactive learning. In a strange way, it might be that some interactive learners, modern scientists for example, do not care about the life of ants or other creatures that they investigate. So, even if interactive learning does not have an inbuilt destructive motif, it is compatible with destructiveness and technical earth-forgetfulness. While some kinds of reactive learning put restrictions on the learner, demanding that she take responsibility, be there for the other and only change herself to become able to care for the other, not trying to change the other, interactive learning does not have such restrictions. It is therefore telling that interactive learning in the Holocene has become the motor of modern science and its attitude, including the idea of human beings as defined by their own activities rather than their responsiveness. Let us go back to the painter as a less destructive version of interactive learning. When the painter finds out what the colour red can do (some of its potentials), she also finds out what she can do with the colour red. Thus, her recognised possibilities are expanded. She expands her ways of being-in-the-world, her practical life that does not only include her but also the colour red; thus, she finds out what she can do together with others. It is this model of learning that is articulated in neo-humanistic Bildung theory, when, for instance, it is said that Bildung is the interrelation of self-production and world appropriation (Humboldt, 1903). Bildung here means self-education through specific ways of appropriating the world. Thus, a learner might interactively learn to swim. In that case, she, for instance, explores the possibilities of the lake: what can it do in relation to her body? Can it, for example, hold her body if she places her body in a certain way on the lake (in order to float)? Through acting upon the lake, she interacts with the water and tries to find out what it can do. Hereby, she appropriates, and produces, a world in which she can swim and simultaneously make herself into a swimmer. Of course, such interaction can also be dangerous. The lake can kill her, which might be the result of an odd learning process in which the learner finally realises that the lake has this power. This also goes for narratives. If we only learn from narratives through a response to the demands these put on us, this only implies reactive learning. But if we go into dialogue with a narrative, we don’t just work out an answer to it; we also begin to ask questions of the narrative, interact with it and perhaps try to understand what questions the narrative is an answer to, compared to what

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questions our own way of living is an answer to (Gadamer, 2013; Ziethen & Paulsen, 2022). Thus, if I read the play Antigone by Sophocles (1999), I first just read what happens: that Antigone wants to bury her brother, even though Creon, the king, has forbidden this burial; that Ismene, the sister of Antigone, tries to persuade Antigone not to complete the burial, but that Antigone holds fast to her belief and buries the brother anyway, but then is caught and sentenced to death by Creon, but then commits suicide, which causes her fiancé, who is the son of Creon, to also commit suicide, which further leads Creon’s wife to commit suicide and Creon, finally, to regret. The essential plot of the tragedy Antigone is not hard to understand and has been understood by spectators and readers for almost 2,500 years. But then we begin to wonder: what is the play actually about? What questions does the play answer? Perhaps we begin to study the many thoughts about this which have been developed. And we realise that the play is a subtle masterpiece that reflects many deep layers of questions concerning life and death, family and state, human nature, destiny, the relationship between the sexes, the city and politics, traditions and beliefs. Thus, after having read the play, and perhaps when we begin to read it again, it invites a dialogue about both the play and our own lives. Are we acting as Antigone? Or as Creon? But also: we might begin to think that the play is an answer to questions we have not paid deep enough attention to, but which now begin to worry us! Thus, we might begin to study the play and our own lives interactively, going back and forth between questions of the play and questions that our own way of living seems to be an answer to. Through this, we might reach a deeper understanding of both, but also, perhaps, experience unexpected changes in our outlook on life. In that sense, an encounter with a narrative can be dangerous. On the other hand, as mentioned before, interactive learning can also be destructive with regard to the otherness that one tries to learn with and from. If, for instance, one tries to find out if a lake can make dirty laundry clean again, this appropriation might decrease the lake’s power to facilitate a good aquatic environment for creatures living in the lake. The Anthropocene age—and world—can be seen as a result of a global interactive learning process in which we humans, throughout the late Holocene, tried to find out what the earth can do, including what fossils and other things can do for us as resources, but without thinking much about the unintended consequences and long-term effects, nor about how this destroys many living creatures, species and vital life conditions. It is like we have been occupied by what the earth can do for us but not attentive to what else the earth can do or need. Instead

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of meeting the earth as a dialogue partner that we can interact and learn from, we have mainly seen the earth as an object and a slave that can do something for us, if we manipulate or force it to do so. We have not asked, in accordance with reactive learning: what do we need to do for the earth? And we have not intraactively unfolded our potential for being earth-caretakers but rather our potential for being earth-conquerors. And finally, we have not developed and applied symbolic interaction to find out, cautiously, how we can live well with each other, humans and more-than-humans on this earth. What is at stake in symbolic interactive learning is that, instead of trying to change the other in order to obtain knowledge, I make changes in a symbolic medium between me and the other (Mead, 1934). This has the advantage that the other is not altered or destroyed. Thus, experiments can be carried out symbolically. This opens up a space of freedom. It becomes possible to learn from each other, and about each other, without directly changing each other. When, for instance, I am not hungry, and I meet a creature I can eat, a symbolic medium accessible to both of us and which we are able to code and decode with signs makes it possible to exchange each other’s understandings of the world, our self and the other (also letting me know how I am for the other). Through such media, it becomes possible to exchange dreams, imaginaries, alternatives, ideas, worries, negations, values, beliefs and knowledge, but also to negotiate and select collective actions. Out of such activities arises the possibility of intercultural learning, in which people can try to be together as colleagues, willing to correct and be corrected by each other (Garfield, 2002). Yet, in the Holocene, such media have mostly been developed and applied to interactions between humans. One could then expect that peace and understanding between humans would have been the result. But obviously, symbolic interaction can also give rises to an endless number of conflicts, misunderstandings, threats and violence. The invention of new media thus has transformative powers; they can change the whole environment, both what is possible and what is impossible, fostering new capacities (Tække & Paulsen, 2021) and therefore giving rise to all kinds of learning, including interactive learning. But in itself, such developments of new media incarnate transactive learning (outlined in the next section). One might wonder if it would be possible, in the Anthropocene, to (1) develop new kinds of transformative media that could foster dialogue, interaction and thus interactive learning between humans and more-than-humans, but also (2) avoid the destructive use of such media.

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What is learned

Fig. 4 The arrow(s) of learning in transactive learning

Transactive learning Transactive learning occurs when different things act together and transform a domain of what is possible and impossible. This might also (re)distribute who can act and learn and who cannot. Thus, transactive learning happens in encounters of differences that give rise to new differences of what is possible and impossible. It is not simply that the one learns from the other and the other from the one; in that case, transactive learning would be reducible to two processes of interactive learning. Transactive learning is more ‘learning together’ than ‘learning from each other’ (collaborative rather than cooperative learning). Likewise, it is not identical to two or more intraactive learning processes happening simultaneously only by accident. What is opened up by transactive learning is a new and transcending space of (im)possibilities of what we can do together. Whereas intraactive learning unfolds an immanent potential that it makes progressively reactivable, transactive learning transforms what can and what cannot become reactivable. It creates new (im)potentialities per se, which can be made reactivable in further learning processes. This means that the arrow of learning deviates into digressions, which can be very hard to picture (see Fig. 4). Transactive learning is an event that transforms what is (im)possible as such. This means that it cannot be measured with a beforehand scale. This is different from other kinds of learning. Reactive learning is measured on the basis of whether the change in one’s doings meets an external demand. Learning means, here, the realisation of an already actual possibility. Intraactive learning is measured based on to what degree an internal potentiality is unfolded. Here, learning means the unfoldment of a given potentiality. Interactive learning is measured on the basis of how much someone’s practical life—that is, ways of being-in-theworld—is expanded through knowledge about what this someone can do with something else. Learning means, here, expanding the range of what is possible. In transactive learning, the border of possibilities is also moved—not only as an expansion but as a transformation of what is possible and not possible. Transactive learning goes, therefore, to the ground and alters the ground of being—the

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virtual capacities of the world (Deleuze, 1994). Because of such transformation, the scale to measure transactive learning cannot be set up in advance. This, however, does not mean that there is no scale. It only means that the scale co-evolves with the transformation. Only retrospectively is it possible to tell what was possible and not possible before, and what is now gradually becoming possible and not possible. In his book I Work Like a Gardener, Miró (2017) explains: ‘For me an object is alive; the cigarette, this matchbox, contains a secret life much more intense than that of most humans. I see a tree, I get a shock, as if it where something breathing, talking’ (Miró, 2017, p. 25). What is expressed here is a combination of reactive and interactive learning, or what one could call careful and responsive interactive learning. The otherness that the painter is ‘shocked’ by is alive and breaks in from the outside, to the painter, by its intensity and aliveness. But an extraordinary painter like Miró is taking this up and transforming it into paintings that lead into a transactive learning process, crossing the existing border of what is possible and not possible, changing the grounding capabilities of the world and bringing out new kinds of comprehensibility and incomprehensibility. Miró does not say that he explores colours or objects interactively; rather, he is shocked by their vivacity and intensity, which he connects with, transforming him and his artworks into something new. Further, Miró explains, ‘Stillness strikes me. This bottle, this glass, a large stone on a deserted beach—these are motionless things, but they set in motion great movement in my mind’ (Miró, 2017, p. 26). What happens is not in the object, nor in the painter, before the encounter. With a term from Deleuze (1994), we can say that what happens is a resonance between differences that produces new differences: new ways of perceiving, acting and creating. One could say that it is Miró who is the learner in the transactive process, but this would not take enough account of the indeterminate aspects of the transformative encounter. One could just as well say that the intense object that strikes Miró is the active part, but this would also be inadequate. The bottle is, after all, doing nothing in itself; it is a motionless thing. But the same goes for Miró. Only in connection with striking and shocking objects that come alive and move him does he become able to create. This gives him force to create. Miro continues: ‘A finite and motionless object, suggests to me not only movements but movements without end. This is translated in my canvas by... sparks flying out of the frame, as if out of a volcano’ (Miró, 2017, p. 28). It is worthwhile to notice here that the object suggests something to the painter, thus acting upon the painter, but also that what is suggested by the finite object is something infinite, thus something absolutely transcending, that is further translated in the artwork, which also transcends itself by sparks flying out of the frame: a whole

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series of transcendence and difference. It ‘produces a series of things, one giving birth to another’ (Miró, 2017, p. 34), the artist being as much a medium as one who works with a medium. And finally: It doesn’t worry me if a canvas remains in progress for years in my studio. On the contrary, when I’m rich in canvas that have a point of departure vital enough to set off a series of rhythms, a new life, new things, I’m happy. I think of my studio as a kitchen garden … I work like a gardener or a winemaker. Things come slowly …. So, I’m always working at great many things at the same time …. It doesn’t matter if the image is destroyed. Art can die; what matters is that it scatters seeds on the ground … from which other things will spring. (Miró, 2017, pp. 36–46)

‘From which other things will spring’: this is the core of transactive learning. If intraactive learning is the summer and interactive learning is the fall, reactive learning is the long and difficult winter and transactive learning the spring, when new and unexpected things grow up and spread. The educational implication of transactive learning is hard to fixate because it would be a teaching that does not create a fixed and controlled educational space, but rather what Kaustuv Roy (2003) calls irregular and nomadic spaces. Here, teachers are not fulfilling specific roles, and students are not demanded to learn specific things. Rather, the task of the teachers is to ongoingly connect to the already existing irregular and nomadic spaces of the world, in which differences flow, grow and can be experimentally put together differently to find and create new fruitful resonances that produce new differences in the form of new ways of perceiving, acting and creating. Teaching here becomes an activity in which one tries to make new things grow, like in the studio of Miró. The teacher thus becomes a sorcerer who combines things, including putting herself at risk and trying to create fruitful encounters that can give birth to new seeds, new thoughts, new ways of becoming, new life, including opening up these encounters for what is often, in the conventional school, treated as deviant, inappropriate, problematic and disruptive. But, as noticed by Miró, however full of shock, tension and intensity this is, it might also be a long and slow process that gives birth to different, odd affects, feelings, energies, failures and troubles. The most unproven and needed experiment today, in the Anthropocene, could be to invite more-than-humans into an educational, transactive learning process as potential co-actors, trying to make new resonances between humans and morethan-humans that can open up for new ways of coexistence from which other things will spring, thus creating a new earth—one not necessarily limited to the classroom or the school, and not necessarily at once, but slowly and with seeds

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that spread, transcending the educational borders, like sparks flying out of the frame, as if out of a volcano, as movements without end.

Discussion: How to relate differently to the earth Four kinds of active learning have been outlined, indicating that (1) we can learn by changing ourselves in response to otherness that demands that we change (reactive learning); (2) we can learn though unfolding our innate powers (intraactive learning); (3) we can learn by acting upon and with something else, expanding our possibilities and outlook (interactive learning); and (4) we can learn through being part of encounters wherein differences resonate and transform what is possible and impossible as such (transactive learning). Together, these four make up the plateau of learning in the Anthropocene (meaning they are thinkable and applicable today). But what do the four say about the possibilities and needs for learning to relate differently to the earth in the Anthropocene? First, reactive learning in the Holocene school, in which external demands come from the mouth of a teacher, directed towards human purposes and demanding students change in accordance with societal standards, has become problematic in the Anthropocene as too anthropocentric. The calamities of the Anthropocene are external demands that force us to change our ways of living into versions that are less harmful to the life conditions of the earth. This could lead to an eco-totalitarian state demanding that citizens behave within limited boundaries. Yet, the external demands are signs that can be interpreted in different ways and accepted and rejected on different grounds—albeit it is the real earth that demands (Paulsen, 2019). Thus, we can choose how to accept and respond to the external demands of the Anthropocene. Basic motives, such as fear of death and effort towards a joyful life, lead in different directions and bring unalike social contracts. If we respond to the Anthropocene out of fear, what we look after is only, in the end, our own survival. If we care for a common joyful life for both humans and more-than-humans, this sets a direction for reactive learning towards finding out how we can co-develop a joyful life together. Extrapolating from Levinas, we witness today that the life of the earth breaks through our Holocene world horizon as the radical otherness of the Anthropocene, questioning our anthropocentrism and calling us to become earth-caretakers and be there for other life forms on earth. An example of this is the rewilding movement (Jickling et al., 2018; Paulsen et al., 2021) and more concretely for example new architecture, which is made not solely to serve humans. Fig. 5 shows, for example, a house where the building is slightly raised off the ground to create space

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Fig. 5 Rewilding

underneath that will allow a free environment for small animals and invertebrates to move around. Another example is the ‘Wild on Purpose’ movement (www.vil dmedvilje.dk), which will ‘make nature wilder, richer and more diverse [and] create habitats for plants, fungi and animals [and thus] make a difference to nature [and] biodiversity’. This implies an endless reactive learning process of respondence and fulfilments, but also the creation of new narratives that might possess the power to help us to refigure our ways of living. This sums up the capacities of reactive learning in relation to learning to relate differently to the earth. Put in a nutshell, reactively speaking, we could begin to listen more carefully to what other life on earth demands and try to discover how we can change ourselves to please and fulfil these demands. From https://futurearchitectureplatform.org/ Second, intraactive learning, and thus the awareness of the immanent powers of things, has been mostly acknowledged in the Holocene as possessed by humans, and the focus has been on powers such as reason and autonomy (rather than joy and connectedness); at least, this has been the case in Western humanism (Paulsen, 2021). This also means that within this humanism, highly advanced forms of intraactive learning have been developed from Plato onwards. Yet it does not out rule that other beings possess innate powers that can be unfolded and actualised. Thus, a way of learning to relate differently to the earth, which

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is called for by the Anthropocene, is to pay heed to the unfoldment of intrinsic powers of things other than humans. And this is already happening: philosophically (e.g., the emergence of new philosophies like new materialism, political ecology and speculative realism), aesthetically (e.g., Anthropocene exhibitions, eco land-art experiments and aesthetic laboratories for ecology), educationally (e.g., wild, dark, eco and Anthropocene pedagogies) and in other areas as well. All this is happening as a response to the Anthropocene, and it includes new kinds of intraactive learning in which human beings are not necessarily at the centre. This is, of course, an odd kind of intraactive learning because, first of all, it does not involve that we as human beings unfold our own potentialities but instead care for and pay heed to the innate potentialities of other species. One example of this comes to the fore in the 2020 documentary My Octopus Teacher. In this documentary, Foster dives every day for a year, at the same spot, where he comes to know a young octopus for almost its entire lifespan. To begin with, Foster does nothing other than visit the den of the octopus. He repeats the same activities day after day. But, as he explains, when you do the same thing again and again, and visit the same place, you begin to notice a lot of differences. In addition, you shift from being a visitor to being a part of the environment, which is a huge difference. After many visits, suddenly the octopus makes contact with Foster, and a relationship of care and curiosity develops. Every day, Foster learns something new about the capacity of the extraordinary octopus. But also, he learns something about himself, his fragility and potential power in connecting to and being joyfully part of an environment, forcing him to come into contact with powers dwelling within himself. This envisions a kind of intraactive learning and schooling, as called for by the Anthropocene, that point towards learning to relate differently to the earth, in this case taught by an octopus teacher (Fig. 6). From the Netflix movie My Octopus Teacher Third, interactive learning in the late Holocene has been overwhelmingly earth-destructive, earth-forgetful, technical and marginalising more than human creatures. The Anthropocene is, first of all, the result of our interactive attempts to find out what the earth can do for us, as a resource and instrument to fulfil our human purposes. Yet it does not need to be so. An alternative could be symbolic interactions in which we try to find out, carefully and dialogically, what we can do together with others and what others can teach us. Hermeneutically speaking, such interactive learning can open up a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world through connecting us with questions and answers to important issues other than the questions and answers upon which we base our own lives. Meeting a landscape, for instance, as part of a dialogically interactive learning process, means that we begin to wonder what questions the landscape is an answer to and

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Fig. 6 Attention to the powers of other species

compare this to what we think our own way of life is an answer to, which further makes us wonder if our life is truly based on the right questions and whether we have understood them well enough (Haraway, 2016; Hedin, 2018). An example of this is the practice of creating ‘feltscapes’, developed by landscape researcher and visual artist Cora Jongsma (see Fig. 7). Together with humans and more-than-humans, she works out cartographic maps of felt of the changing microrelief of agricultural parcels in specific locations. This microrelief, arisen through time and maintained in the present day, is created by farmer activities on land and can be seen as earth writings on the surface of the land, showing the connections between humans and the earth (AiR, 2021). More precisely, a feltscape is a depiction of the landscape that is constructed out of several layers of wool which have been made into felt, using water and soap. The stratification is created in the interchange between the making process, research into the landscape’s history and visual experience. In doing so, a parallel is created between the making process of the feltscape and the making process of the landscape itself. (Zulien, 2019)

From https://feltscape.blog/ This parallel makes it possible to reach a deeper understanding of both the landscape and our relation to the earth. Through the practices that Jongsma

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Fig. 7 New media of interspecies dialogue

develops, she invites farmers and others into felt-mediated dialogues about how we influence the landscape and how the landscape influences us (Zulien, 2019). Through the maps, our cultural activities on the landscape become visible. The slow production of felt maps opens up embodied empathy and understandings of the way landscapes evolve and change. Thus, the felt maps are tools of dialogue, making it possible to reach deeper understanding. The maps demonstrate how humans and landscapes are entangled. They can also help to improve our abilities to read a landscape, and farmers and others might then reach a new and deeper understanding of our connectedness to landscapes (Zulien, 2019). Such kinds of non-destructive interactive learning might help us to learn to relate differently to the earth and are furthermore, when applied to potential dialogues with morethan-human creatures, a kind of relating that is different from the earth-forgetful way of interacting with the earth. Fourth, such new dialogues can also be supported by the development of other new technologies that mediate interspecies interaction. If this happens, it would revolutionise the earth, transform what is possible and not possible and thus bring out transactive learning that (re)creates a new earth. Another example of this is the experiment ‘m/other becomings’, curated by the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology. In the curatorial statement, it is said that the project will

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take a closer look at the im/possibilities of mothering, not as essence, but as troubled practice … We want to ask what it means – and may come to mean – to make, to mend, to make space for kin in spite of and against the social reproduction of sameness and compliance, and the (bio)politics of gendered and racialized violence. We want to explore reproductive futures and how life sciences give an opportunity to transform and challenge our ideas and possibilities of reproduction and the maternal. (LaE, 2021)

By way of such experiments, we could learn to relate differently to the earth through educational transactive learning in which more-than-humans are invited, as co-actors, to seek out new resonances and productive differences between humans and more-than-humans. This could open up new ways of coexistence from which other things will spring and thus create a new earth, one with different possibilities and impossibilities than here in the early Anthropocene, where so many are marginalised and restricted in their potentiality and capacity (Fig. 8). From: http://www.labae.org/past#/mother-becomings

Fig. 8 m/other becomings

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Conclusion: Education for a new earth Together, the four kinds of learning to relate differently to the earth point towards a new multidimensional imperative to become earth-caretakers. This ideal could guide future education to counter former earth-forgetfulness. The dimensions of such an educational imperative would be: 1) Life-centred education: create educational activities that are nonanthropocentric and oriented towards fostering awareness and strengthening of the life conditions of the earth. 2) Joyful education: create educational activities in which both humans and more-than-humans can participate, aiming at developing different kinds of joyful life together. 3) Cautious education: create educational activities in which humans are supported to listen cautiously to what other living beings ask for, have to say and can teach us. 4) Inviting education: create educational activities in which more-than-humans are invited as co-actors, with intrinsic capacities that are recognised and released. 5) Situated education: create educational activities as part of an earthly environment in ways that allow for more-than-humans to build up trust, make contact and appear. 6) Dialogical education: create educational activities where the question is not what the earth can do for us, but what we can do together with others and what they can teach us. 7) Transformative education: create educational activities that seek new resonances between humans and more-than-humans from which new and different life can spring. 8) Careful media education: create educational activities in which new media for careful interaction between humans and more-than-humans are developed and applied. Yet these imperatives, centred around the inclusion of more-than-humans in educational activities, raise more questions than answers. How are we going to realise these utopian ideals? How should we become earth-caretakers? What exactly is meant by ‘more-than-humans’? What about our survival and standard of living? Should we no longer learn to produce and handle resources through our global world economy? What about the society we have built up in the Holocene? Are these imperatives not a matter of ethics more than learning—and thus, simply a

References

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matter of choices and values rather than processes of learning? Or the other way around: if it is a matter of knowledge, learning, and changing our world understanding, are such changes something we can choose and then just carry out? Or are they more like an event, part of a zeitgeist that happens with us, whether or not we want it? And so forth. However, the task of this text has not been to answer these questions, but more modestly to (1) explore the plateau of learning in the Anthropocene and (2) point to educational responses to the Anthropocene that could be possible through this plateau, answering how we can learn to relate differently to the earth than we have done in the Holocene. That this leads to more questions than answers is not necessarily a disadvantage. Perhaps it is the best thing we can do in the situation we stand in today, to stop and ask ourselves questions like these instead of continuing without asking deeply enough what kind of learning we are aiming for.

References AiR (2021). Retrieved 19.02.2021 at https://www.air-assens.dk/the-artists/artist-1/. Aristotle (1989). Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vols.17, 18, translated by Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1933, 1989. Aristotle (2000). Nicomachean Ethics. Cambridge University Press. Beck, S., Kaspersen, P. and Paulsen, M. (2014). Klassisk og moderne læringsteori. Hans Reizels forlag. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press. Bergson, H. (1998). Creative Evolution. 1907. Trans. Arthur Mitchell. Mineola, NY: Dover. Bråten, S. (Ed.). (2007). On being moved: From mirror neurons to empathy (Vol. 68). John Benjamins Publishing. Bryant, L. R. (2014). Onto-cartography. Edinburgh University Press. Cassirer, E. (1944). An essay on man: An introduction to a philosophy of human culture (Vol. 52). Yale University Press. Chakrabarty (2015). The Human condition in the Anthropocene. The Tanner lectures in Human Values. Deleuze, G. (1990). Expressionism in philosophy: Spinoza. Zone Books. Deleuze, G. (1994). Gilles Deleuze Difference and Repetition. Athlone. Descartes, R. (1954). 1704. Rules for the Direction of the Mind. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 50 Ellis, E. (2018). Anthropocene. Oxford University Press. Gadamer, H.G. (2013). Truth and method. Bloomsbury Academic Garfield, J. L. (2002). Empty words. Oxford University Press. Harari, Y. N. (2014). Sapiens: A brief history of humankind. Random House. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble. Duke University Press.

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Hedin, G. (2018). Det antropocæne landskab. I Jordforbindelser. Udgivet i forbindelse med udstillingen Jordforbindelser: dansk maleri 1780–1920 og det antropocæne landskab. Aarhus Universitetsforlag. Heidegger, M. (1954). The question concerning technology. Technology and Values: Essential Readings, 99, 113. Hobbes, T. (1651). Leviathan. McMaster University Archive of the History of Economic Thought. jagodzinski, j. (2021). An Immanent Pedagogy of In|Difference: Redirecting Education to a Deterritorialized. In Paulsen, M., jagodzinski, j., & Hawke, S. (red.) (2021). Challenges for Pedagogy in the Anthropocene Era. Palgrave Macmillan. Jickling, B. et. al. (2018). Wild Pedagogies – touchstones for re-negotiating education and the environment in the anthropocene. Palgrave. Koefoed, O. (2009). Begivenheden og den kollektive læring. I Paulsen, M. & Klausen, S. H. (red.) Filosofiske perspektiver på kollektiv læring. Aalborg Universitetsforlag. LaE (2021). Retrieved 19.02.2021 at http://www.labae.org/past#/mother-becomings Latour, B. (2017). Facing Gaia. Polity Press. Levinas, E. (1996). Basic philosophical writings. Indiana University Press. McLendon, R. (2017). 3000-Year-Old Tree Has a Sex Change. Retrieved 19.02.2021 at https://www.treehugger.com/ancient-tree-has-sex-change-4865907 Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society (Vol. 111). University of Chicago Press. Miró, J. (2017). I work like a gardener. Chronicle Books. Morton, T. (2018). Being ecological. Penguin Books. Paulsen, M. (2019). Understanding the Anthropocene world: contemporary difficulties. Proceedings of Pragmatic Constructivism, 9(2), 16 21. Paulsen, M. (2021). Cautiousness as a new pedagogical ideal in the Anthropocene. In Rethinking education in light of global challenges: Scandinavian perspectives on culture, society and the Anthropocene Routledge. Paulsen, M. (2021b). From late Holocene to early Anthropocene educational thinking: humanism revisited. In Rethinking education in light of global challenges: Scandinavian perspectives on culture, society and the Anthropocene Routledge. Paulsen, M., & Tække, J. (2021). A New perspective on education in the digital age: Teaching, Media and Bildung. Bloomsbury Academic. Paulsen, M., & jagodzinski, j., & Hawke, S. (red.),. (2021). Pedagogy in the Anthropocene. Palgrave Macmillan. Plato (2012). Meno. https://marom.net.technion.ac.il/files/2018/09/Meno.pdf Ricoeur, P. (1981). Hermeneutics and the human sciences: Essays on language, action and interpretation. Cambridge University Press. Rousseau, J. J. (2010). Emile, or, on education. (Vol. 13). UPNE Roy, K. (2003). Teachers in nomadic spaces: Deleuze and curriculum (Vol. 5). Peter Lang Pub Incorporated. Sophocles (1999). Antigone. Cambridge University Press; Annotated edition Tønder, L. (2020). Om magt I den antropocæne tidsalder. Djøf forlag. Ziethen, M. og Paulsen, M. (2022). Dannelse i den antropocæne tidsalder. Not yet published manuscript. Zulien, M. (2019). Making Landscape with Felt. In Australian Magazine Felt Issue, 23, 2019.

Samuel Nowakowski—Hybridization, a Matter of Place, Time, and … Towards the 4th Dimension of Training—the Disturbances of Time and Space Introduction Hybridization is the operation of crossing two different species or varieties and thus obtaining a new individual with unique characteristics. Our life is itself hybrid since it is naturally the result of multiple influences. In today’s world, when we talk about hybridization, it is very quickly that the digital component comes into the picture. We often find in the literature on distance learning the expression “hybrid training”, or expressions quite similar (such as bimodal teaching, integrated learning, blended learning, blended learning, …) for a simple reason that is that they have a common characteristic, the use of technologies. Here is the definition given by Charlier, Deschryver and Peraya: “the intentional introduction into a device of innovative factors: the articulation of face-to-face and distance supported by a Computer Environment for Human Learning”.1 Hybridization can be simple (each component of the course is used independently), in series (the components follow each other in a specific order) or in parallel (the components allow the same task to be carried out), also systemic, with components which mutually support and refer to each other. Very often it is assisted by tutoring, coaching or mentoring, as well as collaborative activities and can be characterized by the emergence of communities of practice.2 Numerous studies carried out to date on hybrid training devices have shown their merits. The key points put forward are the increased flexibility in teaching— learning, an equivalent or lower dropout rate compared to other devices, a more intense sense of community than in face-to-face classes and lessons. online and 1

Téluq (Université à distance du Québec à Montréal). ÇA MANQUE PAS D’R: épisode 32 (07/01/2021) L’enseignement à distance, ça ne s’improvise pas http://ife.ens-lyon.fr/kadekol/ca-manque-pas-dr/episode-32.

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© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 D. Kergel et al., Learning in the Digital Age, Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35536-4_6

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improved learner outcomes. At this stage, it seems important to us to return to the initial conditions of this learning.

At the beginning,… The existence of learning communities probably predates civilization. One of the distinguishing characteristics of human beings is that they are storytellers. And we are certainly the only species that can tell each other stories. Today, in this great adventure in the heart of cyberspace that has been an integral part of our lives for twenty years, it can already be interesting to go back in time. … Humans have always needed to occupy at least four different spaces in order to learn. This is David Thornburg,3 in the 90 s, who shows in his book Campfires in Cyberspace that he has always believed that humans have needed to occupy four different spaces in order to learn. These four spaces are, the campfire, the cave, the oasis (watering holes), and the lab (Life). A little later, the designer Rosan Bosch will transpose these abstract metaphors to the physical arrangements of spaces. She imagines six physical learning environments that are often cited as references for the typology of spaces, whether online, remote or face-to-face.

Correspondence of the typologies of spaces and French translation Archiclasse. (MESRI)

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Campfires in cyberspace. https://homepages.dcc.ufmg.br/~angelo/webquests/metaforas_ imagens/Campifires.pdf.

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Campfire designates any space for reflection in a small group, a place of cooperation, collaboration. A place where students can learn to focus while interacting with others. • Stage designates everything is a space of communication, a place of presentation to the group. The place of debate, the forum, the Agora, the “public square”. A civic place where everyone exchanges, gives their opinion and learns to listen to that of others. • Cave designates any space for reflection, individual concentration. A quiet place, not necessarily isolated, where one can proceed to the interiorization of what has been observed or experienced. • Oasis refers to any meeting place, an informal space where we dialogue between peers, a place of passage where learning takes place through conversation. A space where social interaction makes it possible to advance in understanding. • Lab designates any place of experimentation, where knowledge is demonstrated, also the place where what we have learned is put into practice. It is the link between theory and practice, it allows you to learn by doing. • Sources refers to all places of information, documentation allowing research, knowledge centers, whether through newspapers, books or digital resources.

These spaces dedicated to learning have their correspondents in cyberspace Cyberspace is to be seen as a space of interaction between humans. With the glow of the original campfire replaced by that of the computer screen, the stories told around this modern fire are as compelling as those told around the old fire. In addition, cyberspace refers to the origins of the network and obviously follows in the footsteps of digital and internet pioneers. Cyberspace is this new frontier, rich in possibilities, to be cleared and explored, the breeding ground for many hybridizations. Under these conditions, arranging digital spaces or not presupposes an articulation between the educational activities, the envisaged interaction methods and their staging in connection with the educational intentions. Overall, the resulting hybridization relies on integration rather than separation.

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But what do we mean by hybridization? ... « As a fertile mix and in variable proportions of different training modalities, face-toface and at a distance, but also between transmissive teaching postures and postures more linked to the support of learning». (Charlier, Deschryver & Peraya, 2006).

For example, Université Laval defines hybrid training as a “training system that includes, in varying proportions, training activities offered in the physical presence of students and the teacher as well as distance training activities, synchronous or asynchronous”. As a fertile mix, a hybrid course tends to move away from a traditional model where students are gathered weekly in the same classroom for a period of 3 h for the duration of a session. A hybrid course, creating the conditions for a porosity that brings the classroom into the home, aims to give students and teachers greater flexibility with regard to places, times and different teaching methods. and learning. In a hybrid course, in a time dedicated to the classroom that is reduced, but never entirely eliminated, is organized around activities that challenge the well-known distribution around the three units of time—units of time, of place and action (theorized in 1630 by the Abbé d’Aubignac in his “Pratique du théâtre”). The hybridization of a course thus creates a fertile mix of different places, different times and different actions. The organization of such a device then includes at least a certain number of activities and distance sessions according to a distribution accepted by most researchers and universities, namely comprising between 20 and 80% of distance course sessions.4

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Website université Laval à Québec: https://www.enseigner.ulaval.ca/ressources-pedagogiq ues/developper-un-cours-en-formation-hybride

But what do we mean by hybridization? ...

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The hybrid course … a rigorous organization in a reorganized time.5

Developing a hybrid course is therefore an exercise aimed at fundamentally rethinking the instructional design in order to optimize the spatial and temporal learning experience. Unlike traditional teaching, which alternates the two quadrants simultaneously (lessons and homework) and at a distance (application exercises, revisions). The switch from simultaneous teaching to a-simultaneous teaching imposes a “pedagogical leap” associated with a change in the teacher’s posture. He must accept a certain “letting go”. This change is essential if we can speak of hybrid education. The remote synchronous quadrant of the diagram is then adapted to the synchronous interaction time, whether for regulations between the teacher and a group of students or synchronous working times for group work between students. This entire process requires the teacher to resort to a deliberate approach aimed at revising the structure, the teaching activities and the allocation of time devoted to the different modes of attendance.

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Réflexions autour de l’hybridation. Site consulté le 26/01/2021. https://prodageo.wordpr ess.com/2020/12/07/reflexions-autour-de-lhybridation/

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Places, spaces, times and actions

A question of spaces Distance learning platforms are the spaces that include the functionality necessary to manage (design, administer and tutor) an online course. These platforms are not all equivalent and depending on the design choices or the principles that guided them, are carriers of educational values. For example, the Moodle platform in place in many establishments is based on socio-constructivism. In this, the platform must be at the service of learning and must be chosen according to the objectives of the training systems. Ergonomic, it must be a welcoming space adapted to different modes of teaching and learning. It must be designed to arouse the desire to connect with it, provide the necessary conditions for learning and offer different paths and allow freedom of action for both learners and teachers.

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A matter of space—The platform, a hybrid organism

The platform is itself a hybrid organization including or not a certain number of functionalities at the service of teaching, learning but also the management of training and the progression of learners in their learning.

A question of time and its measure Communication and collaboration tools play an essential role since they make tutoring possible, facilitate the work of tutors and allow the construction of a real learning community. They are subdivided into two categories: • Synchronous tools. Allow real-time communication between geographically distant people: instant messaging (chat), audio and video conferencing, ...; • Asynchronous tools. Allow exchanges staggered in time and space: electronic mail (e-mail), forum.

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A matter of action Simultaneous teaching (synchronous, in class), with its classic modalities: supervised lessons and homework. All the students do the same activity and the teacher keeps pace with the work. A-simultaneous teaching (asynchronous, in the classroom). Students work in relative autonomy around complex tasks or group work, they can follow a work plan or be in a mutual teaching operation. Distance learning (asynchronous, out of class) includes all out of class activities. Synchronous, non-classroom teaching, which is now accessible through virtual classroom tools.

And always time and space ... While the achievement of learning objectives remains the priority, the multiplicity of possible combinations in hybrid mode calls for thoughtful and systemic educational planning. Designing a hybrid course is not the simplistic idea of just building a website, uploading class presentations there, and asking students to view them. And where will we find the Campfire, the cave, the oasis, the lab?….

Our answer in a digital learning platform6 Our answer is called KOALA, for "Knowledge Aware Learning Assistant". Based on the observations above, in the idea of giving meaning to the action of each, we make ours the statement of Van Jacobson in 1995, "How to kill internet? It’s easy, just invent the web. The educational platforms are not immune to this. We sought to introduce a new logic of definition of the authority, the states and the exchanges of roles between the actors of the educational act. Our guiding principle is to work on the notion of commitment to all by proposing a space that facilitates commitment by enabling cognitive engagement, behavioral engagement, social engagement and emotional engagement. The goal is then to lead to emancipation, the re-enchantment of the educational act and the well-being in learning and teaching. Based on these observations and on the experience of previous projects and the challenges of the early twenty-first century of a learning society, we have developed a new platform that allows us to return to the sources of the Internet. 6

https://www.koala-lms.org.

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KOALA is a space for facilitating engagement by installing a new dynamic of the occupation of the learning and teaching space. KOALA will promote accessibility, continuity and porosity where the other platforms enclose. We thus have a vision that goes from centric to a-centered, from a-symmetrical to symmetrical. KOALA leaves a place on the periphery and puts another approach to the Authority. Access to educational resources, the realization of learning activities, the exercise of the educational relationship are built within the spaces that everyone wants to invest, and that it will appropriate in its own way. KOALA is thus a living space that guarantees socially and physically situated actions. It promotes an action that fits in a lived and proxemic space and redefines the articulation between private / individual and the collective at the level of each user. Moreover, KOALA authorizes the indeterminacy of the conditions of realization of an action: invention, freedom, autonomy, capacitive environment and potential of situation. In order to provide an answer to our questions, KOALA thus opens up a renewed approach to digital support that allows us to integrate the recommendation of content adapted to the needs, contexts, objectives of learning and training of each according to its needs. KOALA is then an ecology of the learning experience.

Before the conclusion In the early 2000s, a group of computer scientists and engineers from Geogia Tech worked on a project called Aware Home. They imagined a “human-house symbiosis” in which many animate and inanimate processes would be captured by a complex network of “context-sensitive sensors” integrated into the house and by the connected objects worn by its occupants. This project emphasized trust, simplicity, individual sovereignty and the inviolability of home as a private domain.7 In 2021, is this pursued ideal still in order? With nearly 4 billion of the 7 billion people online, the tangled dilemmas of knowledge, authority and power are no longer confined to the workplace. So what hybridizations? Those that promise us a future in which our living spaces will no longer be exclusively personal spaces, but also, via high-speed digital connectivity, schools, medical practices, offices, gymnasiums … Or a responsible hybridization that takes into account the specificities of each, the availability in order to allow the most lasting and sustainable learning possible? 7

De Shoshana Zuboff, L’âge du capitalisme numérique. 2020.

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To finish Hybridization is not juxtaposition, the succession of the same teaching activities in the presence and at a distance, alternating common and different places and times. It is a fertile mixture in which the activities and interactivities of the pupils at a distance must help to prepare the activities and interactivities in class and thereby give meaning to the presence. Activities in the same place must initiate those that will be done at a distance by the students and thereby provide themselves with the means to carry a presence at a distance. For hybrid training to be effective, teachers are expected to demonstrate adaptability, openness to regulations and to acquire the capacity to explain their pedagogical choices. With regard to institutions, they must be open to the informal, to emergence, to innovation, to the collective, to knowledge of action and to diversity. As for the learners, they must demonstrate a good capacity for expression, commitment, self-confidence and benefit from the support of those around them to be able to work in good conditions. Presence and distance, places and time are therefore in interaction, complementary and in any case, are not necessarily and only dedicated to the transmission of knowledge but also to learning in autonomy, to the development of transversal skills, to the interactions of learners even at a distance. (Zoom, Teams and the others must be put at the service of activities). So it is a meaning of hybrid or hybridization to be avoided. It is that of wanting to transpose what we were doing in remote presence (or even trying to do remotely what we were doing—too much—in presence, to transmit). Hybridization is a fertile mix for the quality of learning.8

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Espace Facebook de Marcel Lebrun.

Tadeusz Rachwał—on Learning and Changing

Learning Learning is sometimes rhetorically compared to a kind of growth—a growth of knowledge, a growth of the mind, a growth of ourselves. What seems to be inscribed in the idea of growth used in the context of learning is a kind of change which does not really change something into something else, but in some natural way improves or enlarges that something, still keeping that something within the limits of what it is, within the limits of what has become known, thought, or written about as identity. David Leonard finds the notion of growth crucial for humanist education, and sees in it a drive which as it were motors human self to be a whole, a closed and finished unity: “Human thinking and learning are driven by the growth of the self as a whole, mature, and complete human being, who has a strong character and an ability to make decisions that positively influence others” (Leonard, 2002, p. 86). The pairing of thinking and learning in Leonard’s statement hints at the possibility of the two being in some way tied to each other, the tie being necessary for thinking’s growth to a predetermined whole, maturity and completeness which figure here as teleologically delineated extensions. These extensions, in turn, endow a human being with an ethically marked potential of making good decisions. The growing self appears in the above quoted Leonard’s statement as a doubly finished kind of object which is both whole and complete. These two notions are accompanied by that of maturity, a category whose name verbally, and literally, signifies physical growth to “finishedness,” a completion of some kind of development. Thinking and learning we, our selves, become as it were thrice finished, perhaps in the manner Plato’s mimetic artists are thrice removed from reality The pairing of thinking and learning also embraces and conflates the division into natural and cultural “production” of the self which

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 D. Kergel et al., Learning in the Digital Age, Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35536-4_7

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Jean-Luc Nancy sees as strongly cooperative in the work of finishing, the work of carrying out and completing, one of whose names is also that of executing: Phusis and technê – one could say “birth” [“éclosion”] and “art” – are two modes of accomplishment and are, in this respect, the same (but not identical) in their difference: the same as concerns accomplishment in general, as putting to work or carrying out [l’exécution]. (Nancy, 2000, 118)

Learning may thus be understood as the execution of growth supported by educational technology whose end is completion of a human being, the process which somehow welds the duality of body and mind into a unity which terminates, at least in Leonard’s reading, with wholeness and maturity. Among numerous senses of the word maturity there seems to be lurking not only, as I have already noted, a physical growth to the state of being full-grown—a ripening of sorts—but also readiness for being consumed and, considering the use of the term in finances, the arrival of the time of payment of a bill or a bond. The latter two senses are quite explicitly reminiscent of the temporal dimension of maturing, exactly of its end which, in the case of learning, is not easily determinable. The Polish word for graduation exam is matura, and its frequently used synonym is egazamin dojrzało´sci (maturity exam) which, literally read, may mean an exam for being ripe (dojrzały). The exam is taken mostly by young people at the age of about 18, which coincides with the official age of adulthood. Though ripening seems to be a gradable kind of process which, in the case of some kinds of fruit, makes the fruit sweeter and more delicious, an excessive continuation of ripening leads to decay, waning, and an end. This kind of end, needless to say, stands in opposition to the ideas of fullness and completeness, and it seems to be exhausting the biological metaphor of learning as growth which, however, continues to be used in various visions of what is variously termed as lifelong learning, or permanent education, two terms which glue living and learning, literally ascribing its end to the end of an individual. This end, needless to say, shares the paradox of ending with autobiographical writing which, in order to be perceived as complete and finished, should reach, as Georges Gusdorf phrases it, beyond ones death: “In narrating my life, I give witness of myself even from beyond my death and so can preserve this precious capital that ought not disappear” (Gusdorf, 2014, p. 29). Some kind of living on, of survival, seems to be also, though sometimes implicitly, at stake in the conception of learning as a growth to completion of one’s being, of growth to the point of ripening which finalizes our identity.

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John Dewey, for whom growth was almost synonymous with learning (cf. Stitzlein, 2016), problematized the finality of growing and ripening trough a critique of what he termed ‘fulfillment’: “The fulfillment of growing is taken to mean an accomplished growth: that is to say, an Ungrowth, something which is no longer growing” (Dewey, 1916, p. 50). The neologism ‘Ungrowth’ may well mean a kind of death, though it seems to be referring to having become mature or ripe, and thus of having seemingly exhausted the potential of growing. However, he sees this assumption of the end as misleading, because the termination of growing is only provisional and it is clearly ascribed to non-adult humans who, however, wish to continue the process of growing after the “Ungrowth”: The futility of the assumption is seen in the fact that every adult resents the imputation of having no further possibilities of growth; and so far as he finds that they are closed to him mourns the fact as evidence of loss, instead of falling back on the achieved as adequate manifestation of power. (Dewey, 1916, 50)

Dewey, of course, realizes that he is applying “an unequal measure for child and man,” the growth of adults being a free and independent extension of infancy and childhood in which there is lurking a nostalgia for loss which is no longer recoverable, and which promotes the continuation of growth which is now controlled from within rather than from without. Moreover, though empowering, the growth, or growing, to maturity is a process over whose loss the adult mourns, the mourning being simultaneously an incitement to somehow continue the infant’s natural potential. The chief traits of immaturity are dependence and plasticity for Dewey, yet their passivity does not involve a full subjection to the external control and shaping. Infants are not simply helpless because their dependence is in fact constructive and—crucially –promotes growth: Yet if helplessness were all there were in dependence, no development could ever take place. A merely impotent being has to be carried, forever, by others. The fact that dependence is accompanied by growth in ability, not by an ever increasing lapse into parasitism, suggests that it is already something constructive. Being merely sheltered by others would not promote growth. (Dewey, 1916: 50)

The growing which takes place in adulthood is an extension of the growth promoted in childhood, of what Dewey calls “the power to grow” (50). This power is also a constructive social capacity carried by dependence which ripens in the unification of the infant dependence with adult independence. In adulthood, the two are growing together into a democratic unity. What in nature ends with decay,

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continues to ripen in the process of a lifelong learning into a kind of oneness in which culture supplements the initially natural growth of babies.

Time Dewey’s complex relationship between infancy and adulthood also complicates the relationship between past and present, thus also complicating the idea of history as magistra vitae. What we should take from history in learning, Dewey claims, is not what it produced—ts facts and artefacts—but rather what produced them, which “what” Dewey calls, seemingly simply, “life”: The study of past products will not help us understand the present, because the present is not due to the products, but to the life of which they were the products. A knowledge of the past and its heritage is of great significance when it enters into the present, but not otherwise. (88)

The present entering the past is a backward movement, an escape from the present to something already created by others in order to avoid the encounter with what he calls “the crudities of the present”—a regression of sorts which is a movement which does not occur in natural growth and ripening. The rhetoric of growth and ripening also embraces the crudities which can be related to the state of rawness, and raw products may be only mistakenly taken for ripe ones because ripening, like learning, is a process rather than a state: And the mistake of making the records and remains of the past the main material of education is that it cuts the vital connection of present and past, and tends to make the past a rival of the present and the present a more or less futile imitation of the past. Under such circumstances, culture becomes an ornament and solace; a refuge and an asylum. Men escape from the crudities of the present to live in its imagined refinements, instead of using what the past offers as an agency for ripening these crudities. (88)

The end, or the finish, of learning is thus an illusion, in fact the illusion which is responsible for petrification of both life and culture as an already accomplished, or ripe, historical past which, for Dewey, seems to be an ornamented tomb of growth, the already mentioned evidence of loss, and the object of mourning. Mourning the past as the evidence of loss is a deprival of the possibility of growth, of the possibility of continual ripening in the present, which possibility is inscribed in learning and in education not as a loss, but rather as a survival

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of the past—as a survival which translates life into learning from others, also from the dead who constitute an agency which makes it possible to believe, like Dewey, “that education is a process of living and not a preparation for future living” (Dewey, 1971, p. 87). The idea of survival in, and through, learning may take us, perhaps surprisingly, to Jacques Derrida’s thinking on mourning and survival, to his writings usually taken to be quite distant from pragmatism. In the introduction to Derrida’s last review, Jean Birnbaum aptly writes about him as a learner of living “who always wanted to present himself as a schoolboy” (Brinbaum 2007, p. 16), as a lifelong learner of sorts who wants to survive as a schoolboy, as an immature, unfinished and unripe learner who has entered into the present, as Derrida phrases it, “like that uneducable specter who will have never learned how to live” (Derrida, 2007, p. 32). If, provisionally, we assume that learning and living may be somehow synonymous—something which can be quite straightforwardly inferred from Dewey—the failure to learn to live is also the failure to learn to learn. What Derrida may have learnt seems to be to survive which he finds to be “an originary concept that constitutes the very structure of what we call existence, Dasein, if you will. We are structurally survivors, marked by this structure of the trace and of the testament” (Derrida, 2007, p. 51). The testamentary past which survives through traces rather than through historical artefacts, also through Dewey’s “past products” which can never be fully transported to the present as presence, as objects which are ripe enough to be consumed or become any solid basis, or foundation, of learning. Jim Garrison notices the affinity between Dewey and Derrida, thus, though implicitly, revealing a pragmatic dimension of what has become to be called deconstruction: Dewey and Derrida both make the metaphysics of presence tremble. The consequence is a cultural catachresis that extends to the site of cultural reproduction – education. If there are no fixed essences, then there is no fixed human essence. Without a fixed essence (eidos), education has no ultimate, immutable, and eternal fixed telos that represents the perfection (entelecheia) of the process of education. There is no arche of timeless immutable foundations of education. (Garrison, 2003: 359)

In a sense Dewey and Derrida ontologize learning, though it is approached through the ideas of survival and living rather than through the foundational idea of being. Derrida’s “own” discourse, his numerous books and texts, do not simply “are”—they survive, and, as he says in the already mentioned interview, Everything I say—at least from “Pas” (in Parages) on – about survival as a complication of the opposition life/death proceeds in me from an unconditional affirmation of life. This surviving is life beyond life, life more than life, and my discourse is not a

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discourse of death, but, on the contrary, the affirmation of a living being who prefers living and thus surviving to death, because survival is not simply that which remains but the most intense life possible. (Derrida, 2007: 52)

The notion of lifelong learning is in some sense a tautology. The conflation of learning and living is made even more misleading by the Deweyan metaphor of growth which may be called, after Garrison, “a cultural catachresis” (see above). A consequence of this is another conflation, this time that of learning and education, clearly seen in frequently interchangeable uses of lifelong learning and lifelong education. The distinction is not a clear-cut one and can be variously approached, the complexity being increased by the notion of adult education for which, as Paula Guimarães and Licínio Lima note, they have been two core ideas: They are concepts that may be tackled by more pragmatic conceptual approaches, by those of a humanistic tendency, and even by those linked to radical pedagogy. […] As such, they are ideas that see education and learning as inclusive, varied, and complex processes. These diverse and diversified processes have served as a counterweight to the predominance of those of a formal, strongly school-based nature, which have dominated the thinking and intervention in AE [adult education] in what Canário calls (2001, p. 86) ‘the contamination of the school-based form’. (Lima and Guimarães 2001: 28, quotation from Canário, 2001: 86).

In Dewey’s vision of learning as living there lurks the possibility that institutional embracement of learning is also an intervention into life which Canário sees as a threat coming from state policies contradicting this Deweyan trait: the establishment of permanent education policies (despite the importance of nonformal education formats) developed a tendency to extend the school form to people’s life. Instead of permanent education there was permanency of education (school mode) that invaded domains and contaminated activities which up to then were not covered by school. ... Finally, and completely contradicting the conception of education as a process of ‘learning to be’, broadening the school form to all times and spaces helped to undermine the human acquisitions achieved via a non-school route, based on experiences undergone. (Canário, 2001: 47, I quote from Lima and Guimarães 2001: 121)

The phrase used in the above quotation with reference to education is “learning to be,” thus bringing us to the already mentioned ontologization of learning whose institutionalization through schooling attempts at covering, or contaminating, the authenticity of undergone experiences which seem to be constitutive of being. Such an emancipatory approach to learning is, in more general terms, also a critique of institutionalization of life and, needless to say, of the authenticity of

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identity which, through institutional schooling, can always be suspected of having been politically manipulated be some dystopian Big Brother, not only of an Orwellian descent. Though Ivan Illich’s idea of deschooling society only briefly refers to Dewey, his remarks on schooling’s power to alienate learning from life bring in the suspicion that what we learn through institutional practices of education is not even to learn how to learn, but rather to internalize and naturalize our being taught. “School,” as he wrote in his now slightly forgotten book, “makes alienation preparatory to life, thus depriving education of reality and work of creativity. School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught” (Illich, 1971, p. 67). Illich’s critique of schooling, quite evidently meeting at some point Foucault’s bio-politics of institutional disciplining of individuals, is not so much a critique of schools in general, but rather a critique of the compulsory dimension of schooling—“the age-specific, teacherrelated process requiring full-time attendance at an obligatory curriculum” (Illich, 1971, p. 25)—the curriculum being more constraining than the place in which it is implemented. This alienating compulsion is discernible in various critiques of teaching whose ascription to the figure of teacher makes learning and teaching two separate fields of activity, perhaps the most well-known of them being Pink Floyd’s call to leaving “us kids alone” so that we do not experience the “dark sarcasm in the classroom” and are no longer thought-controlled. This educational oppression and protest against impressing ideas on tabulas rasas of innocent minds was a theme present in numerous literary renditions of teaching in which various equivalents of Gradgrind’s square forefinger from Dickens’s Hard Times point to curricula of facts, and nothing but the facts, and to the master–slave relationship between teachers and learners. What is implicitly involved in Illich’s idea of deschooling is a figurative transformation of breeding into growing, with learning being the domain of experiencing rather than that of becoming knowledgeable. Teaching as breeding, in Illich, figures as a kind of sizing, of squeezing individuals to fit “into the niche” which they have been taught to seek. “People who have been schooled down to size,” he wrote, let. unmeasured experience slip out of their hands. To them, what cannot be measured becomes secondary, threatening. They do not have to be robbed of their creativity. Under instruction, they have unlearned to "do" their thing or "be" themselves, and value only what has been made or could be made. (Illich, 1971: 30)

Learning under instruction, schooling down to size, obstructs creativity, simultaneously making the learner himself or herself measurable, and thus finished,

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which process Illich envisions as unlearning of creative participation in “unmeasured experience.” This experience, or experiencing, seems to be the area of creative learning in which learners should take part separately from schooling. What Illich seems to be standing strongly against in his educational vision is the inclusion of two kinds of knowledge within the domain of schooling—the knowledge resulting from pedagogy and educational resources, and the knowledge, which he calls wisdom, which is “based on experience in any kind of exploration. … Schools package these functions into one role—and render the independent exercise of any of them if not disreputable at least suspect” (69). The experience gained from “any kind of exploration” is hardly measurable and assessable, and its contingency cannot follow any predictive methodology. Yet, this kind of experience seems to be constitutive of individual uniqueness of learning, an unguided construction of something which evades totalization into an object which functions as an exchangeable element within the paradigm of institutionally “curricularized” learning material which propagates what is demanded and thus inscribes itself within the broadly understood economic system regulating the state. In the economic dimension, Illich’s deschooled learning experience is useless, because it is not demanded, and thus is a misfit object within the logic of supply and demand: A society committed to the institutionalization of values identifies the production of goods and services with the demand for such. Education which makes you need the product is included in the price of the product. School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is. (79)

Schooling protects social reality from change and innovation by way of stimulating the need for what is, which is simultaneously posited as what should be. The experience of the school-learner is an expected and scheduled experience which, unlike the experience gained contingently from “any kind of exploration” (see above), can be treated as a threat of destabilization coming from the individuality of its effects. Such two kinds of experience are also readable in Dewey’s philosophy, in which a singular experience—which he calls “an experience”—is a living kind of experience endowed with an emotional dimension (cf. Kaminsky: 320). The emotion associated with “an experience” is responsible for its unitary uniqueness—it makes an experience into something complete. “Such an experience,” Dewey writes, “is a whole and carries with it its own individualizing quality of self-sufficiency. It is an experience” (Dewey, 1934, p. 35, I quote after Kaminsky: 320).

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Though Dewey writes about the concept of an experience in the context of aesthetics, he simultaneously insists upon the necessity of theorizing art and its reception in connection with other experiences, and not in isolation within “a realm of their own” (Dewey, 1934, p. 10). An experience seems to be crucial in what might be called, after Jacques Rancière, a partition of the sensible, though one which supplements the seemingly partitioned, or distributed world, with what Dewey sees as an emotional fulfillment associated, with the “intensest life”, with “the moment of passage from disturbance into harmony” (Dewey, 1934, p. 17). For Rancière, the partition/distribution [partage] of the sensible is “the system of self-evident facts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it” (Rancière, 2004, p. 12). This self-evidence seems to be commonsensical and objective, and what it offers is a vision of a finished world with all its parts having been defined and positioned, an already well policed world in whose construction schooling, needless to say, plays an important part. What we are schooled to think is the proper partitioning and distribution of the world and of ourselves, a finished distribution whose end, or finish, as I have already noted, strongly troubled Jean-Luc Nancy. A crucial question which he asks in his book concerns the seemingly unproblematic problem of the finish of finishing: “We think that to be is not to half-be [être-à-demi], but to be fully present, perfect, complete, finished, and, every single time, final, terminal, done. The whole problem, if there is a problem, is of knowing if the execution, the finish, is finite or infinite, and in what sense of these words” (Nancy, 2000, p. 118).

Beyond learning Dewey’s notion of an experience is rooted in his critique of the idea of a finished world which, as finished, is not a space which offers any further growth and change. The finished, in a sense, stands beyond learning. The same holds also for the chaotic world, for a “wholly perturbed” one, both such worlds being located in the realm of possible worlds: There are two sorts of possible worlds in which esthetic experience would not occur. In a world of mere flux, change would not be cumulative; it would not move toward a close. Stability and rest would have no being. Equally is it true, however, that a world that is finished, ended, would have no traits of suspense and crisis, and would offer no opportunity for resolution. Where everything is already complete, there is no fulfillment. (Dewey, 1934, 16-17)

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Fulfillment as an effect of resolution is also a learning effect, a recognition of something as a whole, though one which comes into being through the activity of the subject who is thus also posited as the agent of the experience, in fact of an experience, which does not come from systematic schooling, and which is emotionally tied with the subject as a unique participation in the partition/distribution of the sensible world. Between “a finished world”, and a “wholly perturbed” world, there is, for Dewey, “a world made, after the pattern of ours” in which “moments of fulfillment punctuate experience with rhythmically enjoyed intervals” (16–17). Such moments are, temporarily, the moments of the present. They are also enjoyable moments, because, as Jack Kaminsky phrases it, “[t]here is a gestalt wholeness in which what went before is intimately tied to what will come later” (Kaminsky, 1957, p. 319). This meeting place of past and present is in a sense our own, a wholeness created by ourselves which we experience, or enjoy, as pleasurable because what one experiences makes one “a being wholly united with his environment and therefore fully alive” (Dewey, 1934, p. 18). What is at stake is a situation in which the present is not abandoned either to the past or to the future—to history or the precariousness of unpredictability which we routinely practice—but one of exceptional “happy periods of an experience that is now complete because it absorbs into itself memories of the past and anticipations of the future” (18). Such an experience figures in Dewey’s Art as Experience as “an esthetic ideal”, and though we seem to have somehow drifted away from the notion of learning, it seems that this ideal form is an experience embedded within what he calls “everyday making of things” as “germs and roots in matters of experience that we do not currently regard as esthetic” (12). In the light of the already discussed idea of “power to grow” (see above) which incites learning, the germs and roots—which in Dewey’s text on aesthetic experience also figure as “active seeds” —grow both in the garden of art and in the garden of learning, though in the former case they “follow the course of their growth into the highest forms of finished and refined art” (12). In the aesthetic experience, if we stick to Dewey’s metaphor of growth, art turns out to be the ripest form of that growth, one which stands above both maturity and infant immaturity. Growth is a constant building and rebuilding of the present, an enclave between past and future which cannot be simply delimited as presence, as something which has already been learned. In other words, the present is not present as any kind of object which can be historically looked back at and thus schooled. This space of the present is the space of learning of what Dewey sees as being “fully alive,” a “life that is truly life” in which “everything overlaps and merges” (18). Such a kind of presence is thus not an easily identifiable entity,

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it absorbs both the past and the future and takes part in the growth of an individual who is as it were reaching out of his or her unitary self towards both the society and nature, and becoming the already mentioned being which is “wholly united with his environment. and therefore fully alive” (18). Dewey’s insistence on the necessity of the linkage of art and learning with living, both in his educational and aesthetic philosophies, reflects his conviction of the superior status of intellect over the acquisition of habits and skills of “managing things so as to utilize their energies for recognized aims” (Dewey, 1916, p. 316). It is in fact the breaking of the habitual that makes the experience of life thinkable, and in this respect Dewey seems to be indebted to Charles Sanders Peirce who claimed that “departures from regularity” and “breaking up of habit and renewed fortuitous spontaneity will, according to the law of mind, be accompanied by an intensification of feeling” (Peirce, 2009, p. 180). What Dewey saw particularly crucial in Peirce, was his teleology which was apprehensive of the idea of achievement as a closure of a sense or a meaning, perceiving such closure as restrictive. “The theory of Peirce is opposed to every restriction of the meaning of a concept to the achievement of a particular end, and still more to a personal aim”, he wrote, also adding that it disapproved of the too narrow and too practical conception of ends (Dewey 1981, p. 6). To experience is more than to collect in memory and know, it is not appropriable as an object, and knowing “is only one dimension of experience” (cf. Anderson, 2006, p. 212), insufficient to being wholly alive because it stops the world in its growth. As a supplement to knowing, in the process of learning it is growth that allows for the experience of change and for the renewal of spontaneity which bring us closer to, or in fact make us feel, life. In such moments of growth, Douglas Anderson notes, “we feel the most alive”. Such a feeling, he claims, “accompanies the extension of our faculties and our human interrelations” and calls it “the joy of life” (Anderson, 2006, p. 173). The experience of this feeling cannot be scheduled, it cannot be institutionally schooled, and what its fortuitousness brings in is a certain precariousness, an uncertainty of the end which involves an openness to risk, an attitude in which there is inscribed what Anderson calls “gambling attitude” (173). For Anderson, this kind of attitude is an expression of the American philosophical spirit reflected not only in pragmatic philosophies of Dewey, James, or Peirce, but one which was instigated by the transcendentalist visions of Emerson and Thoreau—the visions which, very generally, favored nature over culture and embraced the uncertainty of nomadic sauntering over the sedentary security and stability of home. The theme of risk, he writes,

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runs far deeper than the explicit treatments of James and Dewey. The broad motif of American optimism is not, after all, the belief that things are good, but the belief that things can be better. This belief, if it is genuine, is a gamble. It is the decision to commit oneself to a possible future rather than to compromise with a certain present. (169)

A gambling attitude should also be one which is present not only in learning, but also in teaching, as teachers, Anderson claims, are willing to gamble via accepting the risk of confronting both success and failure, in which they “are not so different from creative artists in other arenas” (179). This aesthetic dimension does not posit teachers as makers of learners’ minds in their own image, but translates teachers into learners who only facilitate the creative work of learning. This work implicitly involves a certain deschooling which was an idea dear not only to Illich, but also to Ralph Waldo Emerson who saw in traditional schooling a way of making degenerate victims of society and parrots “of other men’s thinking” (Emerson, 1983, p. 54). A parrot-like repetition is a way of preserving and securing, rather than that of becoming exposed to threats of creation, and though the idea of gambling attitude may be seen as a slightly infelicitous term bringing learning to American Wild West saloons, a desecuritization of learning has been its significant aspect reflected in most of what might be called critical pedagogy. More recently than in Emerson, it is strongly present in Paulo Freire’s critique of “banking” concept of education in which he finds a way of projecting “an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression” which “negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry” (Freire 2005, p. 72). What is thus projected upon individuals is freedom seen as maintenance and defense of status quo which eliminates the risks of liberty involved in creative learning. As regards this, he finds support in Hegel who strongly allied risking one’s life with attainment of freedom: It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; … the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. (Hegel, 1967, p. 233. I quote after Freire, 36)

Banking education, for Freire, is an enslaving education in which the slaves are both the learners and the teachers, and without the risk of loss of ones security of position, obtainment of freedom is illusory. The pedagogy of the oppressed which the title of Freire’s book announces, Gert Biesta notes, “is not a pedagogy for the oppressed where, through a powerful intervention the oppressed are set free” (Biesta, 2017, p. 56). Rather, he writes, “Freire characterises liberation as

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a process of humanization, that is, of becoming more fully human” (Biesta 56, italics added). This becoming is, as in Dewey, also a kind of growth, and it seems to be a natural way of overcoming dehumanization lurking in the banking education which confines and sets limits to the human. and, in this way directs the oppressive powers of the world reducing us to “a concrete historical fact” (Freire 2005, 44).

Digtal learning—everyware The phrase “becoming more fully human” is a slight mistranslation of Freire’s “mais e mais humano” (Freire, 1987, not paginated) in which the notion of fullness does not appear. What the original phrase implies is a constant transgression of limits, perhaps something which Rosi Braidotti recalls in the title of her article ‘Posthuman, All too Human’ (Braidotti, 2006) by way of supplementing Nietzsche’s “Human” (from Human All Too Human) with the prefix “Post-”. What she calls “process ontology” seems to be also hinted at in Dewey’s philosophy of learning as a non-teleological growth seen as a way of challenging anthropocentric humanisms. “This philosophical post-humanism,” writes Braidotti, does not, therefore, result in antifoundationalism. It rather stresses the need for process ontology. Thinking is a nomadic activity, which takes place in the transitions between potentially contradictory positions. It is not topologically bound, especially in the age of the global economy and telematic networks, but this does not make it ungrounded, like a view from nowhere. (Braidotti, 2006, 199)

Dewey’s blending of the past and the future was, as we have seen, a spatial blend of here and there in learning—a gesture which questions the “now” of the human subject in perceiving and learning the world. What is thus also suggested is a certain non-purity of the present, and thus also of the singular presence of the subject confined to being oneself. Commenting on Donna Haraway’s call for new kinships, Braidotti underlines the dynamics of the idea of “radical non-purity” as a means of restructuring “our collective relationship to the new nature/culture compound of contemporary techno-sciences” (199). Nature and technology do not stand in opposition, and what is at stake in the idea of the posthuman is a renewal of human “ties to the non-human ‘others” (199), a regeneration of an affirmative work with difference which Donna Haraway sees as diffractive rather than reflective:

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Diffraction does not produce "the same" displaced, as reflection and refraction do. Diffraction is a mapping of interference, not of replication, reflection, or reproduction. A diffraction pattern does not map where differences appear, but rather maps where the effects of difference appear. (Haraway, 1992, 300)

Karen Barad takes up Haraway’s idea of diffraction and translates it into a methodology which allows for a reinforcement of connections which seem to be standing in opposition. Diffraction, she writes, does not fix what is the object and what is the subject in advance, and so, unlike methods of reading one text or set of ideas against another where one set serves as a fixed frame of reference, diffraction involves reading insights through one another in ways that help illuminate differences as they emerge: how different differences get made, what gets excluded, and how those exclusions matter. (Barad, 2007, 30)

Nature, humans, and technology are not separate entities, and what has become known as digital era is not a kingdom of technology which has become a power dominating both man an nature. Perhaps what is making us posthuman is the digital blurring of the division between us and the machinic, simultaneously reminding us that other relationships, beside reification and possession of nature, can be found. What can surely be learned is to acknowledge an agency of actors, a “nonhuman agency” which “does not lessen human accountability; on the contrary, it means that accountability requires that much more attentiveness to existing power asymmetries” (Barad, 2007, p. 219). Learning such an acknowledgement demands a change of the perspective of learning from interactive and relational to intra-active and agential so as to allow ourselves to be “intra-actively (re)constituted as part of the world’s becoming” (Barad, 2007, p. 206). In his project of post-anthropocentric education Simon Ceder exemplifies an intra-relational view of childhood as a post-anthropocentric arena with the following quotation: “We note that children now live in a complex mixed-up world characterized by high mobility and diversity, digital technologies and divides, blurring boundaries and an increasing awareness to the interdependence of our lives” (Taylor, Blaise & Giugni, 2013, quoted in Ceder, 35). Brad Petitfils extends the idea on all of us, and writes that. Our commodities define who we are as individuals (I am an iPhone. I am a Galaxy. I am a pair of Google Glasses—and you don’t have a pair!); by default, we have become decentered subjects as a result of our consumerist tendencies. It is likely that, from here on into the posthumanist future, individuals will identify themselves through their digital identities before their embodied identities, hence the need for “recentering” the posthumanist subject. (Petitfils, 2015, p. 35).

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The examples given in the two quotations, however implicitly, suggest that digital technology functions as a unique artefact which can be treated in separation from other technological objects. What seems to be at stake in this separation is that other tools and machines have somehow blurred their purely technological status, perhaps through becoming real rather than virtual. Be that as it may, learning in the so called digital age is a kind mutual exchange with both the world, and with technology, and the fact that “technology does have agency” (Ceder, 174), as Ceder writes, is an important issue as regards the educational potential of “augmented reality technology”, not only from the perspective of our teaching, but also from that of our learning, given that the “our” is also augmented by other critters, large, small or otherwise. This, for Haraway, is also a matter of a certain unlearning, or “unblinding” which she suggests as two related turns, the first of which concerns the sun-worshiping stories about the history of science and technology as paradigms of rationalism and the second a refiguring of the actors in the construction of the ethno-specific categories of nature and culture. The actors are not all ‘us’. If the world exists for us as "nature," this designates a kind of relationship, an achievement among many actors, not all of them human, not all of them organic, not all of them technological. In its scientific embodiments as well as in other forms, nature is made, but not entirely by humans; it is a co-construction among In its scientific embodiments as well as in other forms, nature is made, but not entirely by humans; it is a co-construction among humans and non-humans (Haraway, 1992, 297).

If technology is agential and “does something to the human,” as Simon Ceder rightly claims, then learning is also agential, and it does something both to the human, and to technology, and to the world. It is hard to say what this something exactly is, but it is exactly in this inexactitude that “we”, all of them, must learn to somehow nomadically become, though perhaps not prosper. In some paradoxical sense the fact that the digital and the physical are becoming “increasingly meshed” as Nathan Jurgenson puts it, the split into division into being online and offline as well as “splitting so-called ‘first’ and ‘second’ selves creates a ‘false binary’” (Jurgenson, not paginated). Computers can also learn, and neural networking involved in this learning needn’t be a technophilic dream of improving the world in the service of the human. Perhaps, as Eugene Thacker proposes, “biomedia is the message” (Thacker, 91). In a strongly posthumanist vein, he sees in the biomedia not a state, but a dynamic process which “establishes an equivalency between genetic and computer codes such that the biological body gains a novel technics” (91). Since we are learning, more or less, here, there and

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everywhere, Adam Greenfield’s “everyware, ” which he sees as an instrumentation of the actual world, seems to be also us—given that the ‘us’ is also still something to be learned.

References Anderson, D. R. (2006). Philosophy Americana: Making philosophy at home in American culture. Fordham University Press. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Duke University Press. Biesta, G. (2017). Don’t be fooled by ignorant schoolmasters: On the role of the teacher in emancipatory education. Policy Futures in Education, 15(1), 52–73. Birnbaum, J. (2007). “Introduction.” In Derrida, J., Learning to Live Finally—The Last Interview. An Interview with Jean Birnbaum. Translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Palgrave Macmillan, 9–17. Braidotti, R. (2006). Posthuman, All Too Human Towards a New Process Ontology. Theory, Culture & Society, 23(7–8), 197–208. Canário, R. (2001). “Adultos: Da escolarização à educação.” Revista Portuguesa de Pedagogia, 35(1), 85–99. Ceder, S. (2016) Cutting Through Water. Towards a Posthuman Theory of Educational Relationality (doctoral dissertation), Lund University: Lund. https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/ws/ files/6008016/8411680.pdf. Accessed 23 Sept. 2020. Derrida J. (2007). Learning to Live Finally—The Last Interview. An Interview with Jean Birnbaum [translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. New York. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. Macmillan. Dewey, J. (1934). Art as experience. Minton, Balch & Co. Dewey, J. (1971). The early works of John Dewey 1882–1898. Feffer and Simons. Dewey J. (1981–1990). The Later Works: 1925–1953. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston, 17 vols. Southern Illinois University Press: Carbondale and Edwardsville. Emerson, R. W. (1983). Essays and Lectures. Ed. Joel Porte. Penguin Books. Freire, Paulo (2005 [1970]). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. Continuum: New York and London. Freire, P. (1987 [1970]). Pedagogia do Oprimido, Le Livros: Rio de Janeiro, not paginated. https://cpers.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Pedagogia-do-Oprimido-PauloFreire.pdf. Accessed 11 July 2020. Freire, P. (2005 [1970]). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Trans. Myra Bergman Ramos. Continuum. Garrison, J. (2003). Dewey, Derrida, and ‘the Double Bind.’ Educational Philosophy and Theory, 35(3), 349–362. Greenfield, A. (2006). Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing. New Riders. Gusdorf, G. (2014). Conditions and limits of autobiography. In J. Olney (Ed.), Autobiography: Essays theoretical and critical (pp. 28–48). Princeton. Hegel, G. (1967). The phenomenology of mind. Harper and Row.

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Haraway, D. (1992). The promises of monsters: A regenerative politics for inappropriate/d others. In L. Grossberg, C. Nelson, & P. Treichler (Eds.), Cultural studies (pp. 295–337). Routledge. Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society. Harper & Row. Jurgenson, N. (2011) Digital Dualism versus Augmented Reality, Cyborgology, not paginated. https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2011/02/24/digital-dualism-versus-aug mented-reality/. Accessed 12 Oct. 2020. Kaminsky, J. (1957). Dewey’s concept of an experience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 17(3), 316–330. Leonard, D. C. (2002). Learning theories. Greenwood Press. Lima, L. C. and Guimarães, Paula (2011). European Strategies in Lifelong Learning. A Critical Introduction, Barbara Budrich Publishers. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/ 318456141_European_strategies_in_lifelong_learning. Accessed 21 June 2020. Nancy, J-L. (2000). Being singular plural. Trans. Robert D . Richardson and Ann E . O’Byrne, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Peirce, C. S. (2009). Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 8: 1890–1892. Indiana University Press. Petitfils, B. (2015). Researching the posthuman paradigm: The “Subject” as Curricular Lens. In: N. Snaza & J.A. Weaver, (Eds.), Posthumanism and Educational Research, (p. 30–42) Routledge. Rancière, J. (2004). The politics of aesthetics. The distribution of the sensible. Trans. Gabriel Rockhill. Continuum. Snaza, N. (2013). Bewildering eeducation. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 10(1), 38– 54. Stitzlein, Sarah, M. (2016). Dewey on the concept of education as growth. In: M.A. Peters (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory, Springer. Taylor, A., Blaise, M., & Giugni, M. (2013). Haraway’s ‘bag lady storytelling’: Relocating childhood and learning within a ‘post-human landscape’. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 34(1), 48–62. Ventimiglia, M. (2006). “Learning and Teaching: Gambling, Love, and Growth.” In: Anderson Douglas R. (Eds.) Philosophy Americana. Making Philosophy at Home in American Culture. Fordham University Press.

Peter Pericles Trifonas—Notes on Digipedia

What is Learning? Has internet use has altered the ways we process information because it is changing how our brains function in learning contexts? There has been on-going debate around the rapid proliferation of the World Wide Web and how it affects the means and modes of cognition. On the one hand, there is a negative premise that suggests the internet is severely inhibiting the ability for “deep learning” by modifying brain function and is impacting the way we think because of how we interact with information and communication technology (ICT) (Carr, 2008). There is a fear that the cognitive core of epistemological subjectivity is gradually being displaced by the auto-mechanics of the shallow interactions of the “user” with digitized data mediated through an online interface affecting and controlling the type, breadth, and depth of intellectual engagement. For Nicholas Carr (2008), the internet rewires the neural pathways of the brain short circuiting the ability to recall content due to superficial intellectual engagement. So, the experience is considered to be more about “surfing” information rather than analyzing content and understanding it. Sacrificing “deeper processing” and memory retention for the sake of following “a link” to mine data rather than move toward reflection and knowledge building. It is argued that this type of superficial interaction with the internet resets the parameters of brain function to perform a visual type of “scanning cognition” rather than interactive thought that characterizes learning. The ability to remember and learn are negatively impacted according to Carr (2008) because it does not allow time to mentally engage with the information; even though, the physical use of the technology may improve visual and motor skills in users. Dropping levels of reading comprehension and an inability to perform analytical

© Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022 D. Kergel et al., Learning in the Digital Age, Diversität und Bildung im digitalen Zeitalter, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-35536-4_8

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or critical thinking skills are identified as the manifest effects of immersion in the “click bait” of online platforms that fragment the experience of learning. For Carr (2008), the internet compresses the time required by the user to consider retrieved information into micro-seconds. Reflection about what is important to store in long term memory is jammed-up and fragmented by an overwhelming flood of data that we can’t synthesize, know where to put, or even understand. The user is posited to have little or no control of the pace of information transfer and only gets a “wikipedia” version of the information that may or may not be credible data. If the structure and significance of the content does not immediately become clear or relevant, the level of such a form of engagement can become just another link to follow and more about using ICT than learning through it. The younger generation of internet users have been called “screenagers” because of their way engaging information by navigating multiple streams of sensory-laden information at once, while pursuing the desire for instant social gratification in online environments. On the other hand, delimiting the effects of the internet on the brain mobilizes a deterministic view of technology that is overblown. Thus, minimizing the neuro-complexity and agency of a user. Being online frequently requires tracking links through multiple sites, reading hybrid textual structures and engaging diverse visualizations that demand a wider range of cognitive modalities and affective dimensions for learning. The experience is not linear and sequential, but it is based on a heuristics of selectivity because decisions have to be made whether or not to follow a thread that could transforms raw information to usable knowledge instead focusing on the mechanics of “browsing” the internet. The transition demands a different set of skills beyond “point and click” requiring the user to slow down and consider the meaning of the content and its utility. The effects on the brain have been posited as the result of neuroplasticity, or the ability of the brain to alter synaptic pathways and functions to suit the type and form of stimuli it experiences. This point of view alters the conception of learning as transmission or transference of content according to the rehabituation practices of education as cultural and epistemological reproduction. The theory of neuroplasticity explodes the paradigm of the brain as an empty vessel to be filled with knowledge or an unchangeable organ of finite synaptic structures. Experiments done with internet users showed greater activity in the pre-frontal cortex as compared to non-internet users. After five hours of internet exposure, both groups began to show responses in the same cerebral regions. Leading researchers to conclude that even limited exposure to the internet rewired the brains of inexperienced users (Carr, 2008). The theory neuroplasticity developed as a result of various types of “cognitive flexibility” that were observed in the synaptic pathways of subjects that were

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altered because of changes in the circuitry of perceptions (e.g., a blind person whose hearing becomes sharper). Reinforcing the argument that “the medium is the message” and alters the intellectable terms of reception according to its form. The material physiology of thinking is malleable according to the incorporative structures of engagement constituting the “being digital” of the human–computer interaction. There is an element of technological determinism behind the idea of machines rewiring brains. Yet, the process is not one way, or controlling and rigid, for example, leading to an end game that the user cannot affect, escape or imbibe. Not all brains are alike. The relationship can be one a “singularity” conceived as an interactive fusion of human and machine resulting in the birth of new cyborg forms of hybrid subjectivity. The image conveys both a literal corporeality and metaphorical intentionality. Depicting the influence of technology on life in the modern age that is pervasive and invasive—the bio-logical product of scientific reason. Still, there is the potential for agency in online experiences that can free the user from being constrained or manipulated in being digital and move towards a more transactional relation of human and machine. Archives enable a sharing of the memory load and distribute the responsibility for coding, storing, and retrieving information. Open sources promote the possibility of more information exchanges and transactions. The communal approach to knowledge creation is a very powerful argument for shared learning, but it does have some serious drawbacks because of the hyper nature of ICT and the presence of so much data and the glut of pathways to it on the web. The reliance on information resources distributed to facilitate transactive memory reduces the individual’s responsibility for keeping track of information in short term and long term memory and the internet becomes something like a “supernormal” memory. On the one hand, there may be more access to credible and trustworthy sources of information and it can be easier to it look up. On the other hand, there may be more opportunity for misinformation and the spread of false information based on bias and ideology about a particular subject or event. More brain activity is not necessarily required or expected since the type of engagement could be on lower level cognitive skills that do not require recalling, synthesizing or applying information to new contexts and result in saturation or overload. Multitasking is completing two or more tasks at the same time and switching back and forth between them. The simultaneous performance of multiple undertakings suspends and diffract a sustained amount of attention and time on one activity. Different types of multitasking have different types of neuro-cognitive and bio-physical demands. The parameters are not discrete but articulated in

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accordance with the scope and type of performative dimensions. Media multitasking involves the use of a number of devices across platforms to communication and share information. Resulting from the proliferation of technologies and the integration of interfaces in everyday life for productivity and entertainment. The main issue with media multitasking (e.g., using a computer to do cognitively demanding activities while watching television) is that attention is fragmented and concentration on one task at hand reduces the success of the outcomes if it is performance based like writing an essay (Wood et al., 2012). The impetus to enhance productivity and compress time cycles has become part of the social psyche that has resulted in shorter attention spans. The notion that multitasking is a myth because there is a presupposition that it 1) saves time and 2) performance is equal to single tasking may be true. Activities involving lower level performative skills and prior learning can bear some forms of automaticity. But undertakings with higher levels of cognitive difficulty or conceptual abstraction require singletask concentration for even limited performative success. New performative and hermeneutic norms have resulted from and with changes in the forms of work, schooling and social structures that have compensated for their transformation through the integration of ICT (e.g., the use of laptops in classrooms, home offices, online dating, blogs, etc.). The negative effects of multitasking in educational contexts are acknowledged. Wood et al. (2012) studied the use of cell phones and social media during lectures and concluded that those who did not use technology performed significantly better “cognitively” by retaining more curriculum content. Switching attention between ICT and the course did not facilitate higher level learning for students because the activities required conscious awareness and concentration to activate and utilize advanced forms of cognition, their apparati and schemata. The tasks required mental and performative dimensions irreducible to the outcome of automatic and “unconscious” responses achieved through sustained repetition. Resulting in a “cognitive bottleneck” that is characterized as an overload of the user’s capabilities to deal with and process complex information (Wood et al., 2012). There is a risk poorer performance may result because of the change in the medium of delivery and the fragmentation of information in the transition from offline to online ICT. Multiple input streams may reduce the ability of the brain to function efficiently because of its physical limitations to focus on many sources of stimuli at once. There is a greater chance of making mistakes and tasks may take longer to complete in addition to creating stress (Wood et al., 2012). Thus, causing symptoms of “burn out” or inefficiency in learning situations along with doubt and uncedrtainty. But there has been no real effort to address the issue

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of eliminating the conditions that cause negative mental reactions to social situations that require multitasking and cause more harm than good because there may be other factors that are resistant to change in the system itself (e.g., the notion of excellence, productivity and “hard work”). In this case, the argument is ideological and rooted in an epistemology out of which a methodology is codified as a form of pedagogical practices linked to teaching and learning outcomes. The impact of media multitasking on education has been seen over the last decade with the appearance of ICT devices (e.g., cell phones, tablets, laptops) in classrooms and lecture halls. Networked learning was generally assumed to be a “good thing” until the devices became integrated into the social lives of students and dominated their day-to-day interactions. At which point, ICT became a threat because of its propensity to distract users because of the constant incursion of text messages, and the lure of social media (Wood et al., 2012). Thus, the use of digital media has become an unacceptable norm in classrooms unless embodying or facilitating instruction. On the one hand, multitasking may have the ability to impact learning negatively because it can interrupt the flow of thought and impedes the continuity of the cognitive activity. If memory consolidation—the transfer and storing of information from short term to long term memory—is short-circuited. The experience is not educational. The transferability of what is learned from one situation to another cannot happen if the information is forgotten and not synthesized as knowledge. On the other hand, rote learning using short term memory skills in multitasking limits the ability to recall, compile, and analyze. Or, limits the ability to apply knowledge to new contexts. I do support such an analysis, but I think that ICT has created an architecture within social institutions that have integrated its presence as a necessary evil within classrooms. Multitasking has led to a culture of “boredom” in education because the lack of cognitive stimulation as missed opportunities to engage with content leads to superficial learning experiences. It is a vicious circle because ICT provides the means for escaping anything that does not comply with the knowledge we do have. The argument is that multitasking makes us open to irrelevancy and leads us back to aspects of cognition that do not require long term memory for “real learning.” Negatively impacting the ability to perform and succeed at tasks in a “timely fashion.” The ideology that productivity is related to cost saving measures is an economic agenda that is promoted by corporations to accrue profit with reduced effort. Having an employee do two or three things at once—even if it is less efficient and of lower quality—is certainly cheaper than paying a second worker for the same job. The expectations are strictly for meeting the demands of stockholders and realizing profit margins outweigh the need to recognize the limits of human abilities to keep costs down. Our psychological need

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to feel productive may also be invested in the idea of doing many things at once because hard work is not supposed to be easily manageable. In educational contexts, sacrificing “real learning” by multitasking Instagram and Twitter while writing an essay may be due to the fact that we need to seek to some form of distraction during arduous tasks to keep us from abandoning the activity. The “persuasive design” of social media web sites and platformsworks against user desire to escape distraction by providing the means for social gratification that is good for self-esteem. Conscious reflection on the lure of multitasking and compulsive behaviour with ICT while limiting distractions around us can provide a way to potentially change our habits but not make the practice go away.

Learning in the Digital Age Cognitive heuristics are the mental processes we use every day to verify, evaluate, and assess online information for learning in the digital age (Metzger & Flanagin, 2013). These are strategies that reduce cognitive load of information processing (e.g., guidelines, “rules of thumb,” mental shortcuts). Decisions about credibility are made quicker and more efficiently but do not eliminate biases. Heuristics are important in the online sphere because of the real danger of cognitive overload and fatigue that wastes time and effort. In other cases, peripheral conditions or “cues” that trigger heuristics for establishing the credibility of information becomes important to the outcome. There are different kinds of cognitive heursitics according to Metzger and Flanagin (2013) and there are problems associated with them. The endorsement heuristic is dependent upon conferred credibility of a source because of the “bandwagon effect” that bases verifiability on the number of users that support it (e.g., online tesimonials, peer reviews, “likes”), even though it does not confer credibility of opinion. The previous verification system worked well because it was hierarchical and there is control over access and quantity; so, those at the top of the hierarchy possessed power over the distribution of knowledge and the meaning of information. The existing reputation of a website may influence the judgement of credibility, especially if its authority is rooted in an established and well-respected off-line source because of an old media reputation (e.g., CNN, The New York Times, Harvard Business Journal) even though it may contain and promote biased representations. Endorsement works through “likes” and agreements to create popularity via social recommendations (e.g., consumer testimonials, celebrities).

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The heuristic is suspect because the motivation for offering support may be monetary. The abundance of rating sources renders it difficult to verify the credibility of information because the veracity of those individuals and groups that filtered information has been watered down according to bias. Information can also be changed or distorted because of the platform and medium (e.g., wikis, blogs, or twitter). There is also an aspect of surveillance that monitors information and those who use it according to ideological and material hierarchies like capitalism that create a need for endorsement as a form of legitimacy, even though it may be just “hype.” Knowledge becomes commodified in the act of endorsement and information becomes rarified. The scarcity is produced and filtered by few who also set the standards for maintaining credibility, trustworthiness and expertise. Today, the responsibility to critically analyze endorsements has shifted to the user because of widespread ICT and the decentralization of information dissemination through the internet because we are all consumers. The consistency heuristic depends upon the confirmation and trustworthiness of information across many sites. It requires more effort on the part of the user to cross-validate information that impacts them directly; however, there is no guarantee that the information is true or false across multiple platforms. The original gatekeepers are no longer in charge of information dissemination and its authority. Sites may collude to pay users to post reviews and information to create a “false consistency” or have a vested interest in supporting the same information because of business agreements or arrangements, although this may not be made obvious or transparent. For example, Instagram is owned by Facebook and there is a lot of cross-platform collaboration on the site that seems spontaneous but is not, and user information may be shared between them to drive and motivate users into subscribing to both sites and participating on them. This violates the user’s expectation (e.g., the physical layout of a web site are different but the company is the same), even though the design may not relate to the consistency of the presentation. The democratization of the means to post and circulate information has made the user the ultimate arbiter of truth and credibility. Despite finding the same information on many platforms that mimic the consistency of content, the credibility of “facts” is now subject to the user being aware of the knowledge base and its biases, and of sources that produced and circulated it. The architecture of advanced technologies has allowed the manipulation of content which has resulted in a lack of true verifiability of the source and the purpose of the information. The self-confirmation heuristic occurs when the user comes across information that does or does not acknowledge their own values and beliefs. Three factors are: believability, trustworthiness, and expertise. Prior to ICT, expertise

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was associated with individual intermediaries or gatekeepers of knowledge who essentially controlled access to information, not its “appeal” or acceptability. The self-confirmation heuristic is a problem when credibility is at stake because it expresses trustworthiness around socio-political, religious, and economic factors. All of which are based in values and belief systems and not in the verifiability of information. The selective filtering of content is ideological and can create a “social bubble” in which like-minded users seek only what reinforces their own opinions. For politicians like Donald Trump, CNN is an example of “fake news” because the information it provides on its web sites do not jive with the hegemonic values expressed by the policies that the Republican party is endorsing. It infringes on their experience of “the truth” as vested in ideology not facticity. The aspects of information gathering do not relate to its credibility. We need to research the accuracy, authenticity, and trustworthiness of a source to evaluate its validity. We rarely do this unless we 1) have a vested interest (e.g., researching a medical condition and 2) are confident of the credibility because it affirms our values and beliefs. This also leads to a breakdown of discourse online among social groups that seek different types of self-confirmation online in echo chambers and feedback loops reflecting similar points of view. The prominence heuristic relates the credibility of information to search engine results. The number of hits marking popularity may be due to the algorithmic manipulation of rankings that is often paid for to market a site. Prominence is arbitrarily constructed. One of the ways that we evaluate the credibility of information on a site is by looking at fact checking organizations such as snopes.com for verifiability. False information tends to travel faster, further and more deeply in cyberspace because human beings tend to favour its emotional impact perhaps. Politicians like Donald Trump, on the other hand, have taken the opportunity to dismiss the credibility of facts under the label of “fake news” in order to question its trustworthiness. It may seem harmless, but the tangible outcomes can be distorted or manipulated to influence the outcomes (e.g., the editing of the Jim Accosta episode by the White House to revoke his CNN press pass). Prominence on the web does not relate to credibility or factuality. It becomes a question of how we can determine the trustworthiness and accuracy of web content if the same manipulated information is shown on many sites across platforms. Ironically, Metzger and Flanagin (2013) establish their concept of heuristics on the notion that there has been a disintermediation of information through ICT because the process of vetting content has been eliminated or watered down through the proliferation of on online platforms and media. If we were to take another spin on the subject, control of information creates links between knowledge and power that prop up the hierarchical structures of a hegemony by controlling the ability

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to make meaning. Heuristics does not provide an answer to credibility but tries to explain the pragmatics of how we make sense of the information we consume online and what it means to us.

What Goes Beyond Learning? Can people be addicted to the internet? The question is still out? The debate centers around the discrepancy between contradictory findings depending on the site where data is collected (Wright, 2018). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) does not recognize internet addiction as a mental disease. Although, gaming disorder is acknowledged to be a problematic outcome of excessive ICT use. Internet addiction is defined as the negative impact of use through loss of control over the ability to stop. The integration of ICT in everyday life must be examined in relation to human development. But does technology lead to addiction? How does ICT adversely affect user activity outside of the virtual sphere of a digital interface? Other terms are used to describe the same issue as a disorder or a form of pathological activity involving internet use that detracts from engagement in real life (Wright, 2018). It is necessary to take other factors into consideration such as personal circumstances (e.g., family life, socio-cultural factors) and individual characteristics (e.g., gender, personality traits, culture). Addictive patterns can manifest in different psychological and physical patterns that increase in tolerance of negative effects. All of these aspects affect how the individual functions in the world and relates to others. Internet addiction “boot camps” have used ethically suspect and highly controversial methods (e.g., starvation tactics, psychological pressure, and physical punishment) to treat this disorder around the variable of impulse control. Although there are issues with the validity of selfreporting in such studies due to the Hawthorne Effect, or telling researchers what they want to hear (Wright, 2018). Another question might also be asked: What is it about the internet itself that has addictive properties? Or do the activities like gaming, social media use, and access to pornography cause loss of impulse control? Predisposition may indeed be one factor for addictive behaviour. But there are design features are purposefully embedded in digital media interfaces and platforms that are there to keep users online. Persuasive technologies are interactive computing systems designed to change behaviours or attitudes. Some are focused on positive effects rather than ethical implications. For example, web sites or applications that use reward systems to keep users engaged are beneficial if they improve quality of life, like encouraging

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fitness or maintaining health. The concepts employed for behavior modification are simple but effective and principle operationalized by cognitive therapists to change the psychology of subject responses to external stimuli. But persuasive technologies are not always mobilized in the best interest of users. The commercialization of the web may be the main cause for the shift in the purpose of interface design. Given that what we mostly do now on the web is consume media and buy things, internet companies mine personal data for profit. The use of sense triggers (visual and auditory) designed to stimulate responses (e.g., dopamine release) and reduce anxiety (Wright, 2018) is one technique for keeping users online. In other cases, variability of rewards is also effective since the key is surprise in expectations that can lead to habit formation. “Likes” on Facebook are an example that increase engagement through positive triggers. There are recommendation algorithms in YouTube as well as other types of response manipulation, such as autoplay in Netflix, that use sentiment research to potentially affect consumer behavior, engagement, and interaction (e.g., binge watching, previewing programs, creating favourites). Psychological techniques underlie and manipulate how we respond to persuasive design elements, for better or for worse. The longer a user is online the more data is generated that can be harvested by companies for profit. That is why the internet has been called the source of an “attentional economy” ground in sentiment research. Many former technology workers have been speaking against the industry and its adverse impacts on the impulse control and social interaction. Who is right? We come back to the original definition and the question of control. Internet dependence is not an outcome of physical dependence, but it does generate chemical responses in the body that have psychological effects. It is believed the release of dopamine caused by the reward system of the popular social media sites trigger response that promote addictive behavior because more and more “hits” are progressively required to get the same “high.” It therefore becomes a matter of managing reactions to physioloigical impluses causing lack of self-control. Over time, it is thought that the brain may rewire itself to accommodate this behavior (e.g., heavy social media users and drug addicts show the same levels of atrophy in certain neurological regions). There is very little possibility from total withdrawal from digital technology however since it has become so intertwined in our daily lives for work, school, and sociability. It has been suggested that recognizing the difference between habit forming and addictive activities is necessary to move forward in understanding and controlling our internet use (Wright, 2018). Also, we must continue to critique and analyze aspects of persuasive design use in online digital platforms and ICTs to be able to combat their negative effects.

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“Avalanche and Snowflake Theory” is based on the idea that those who engage in “cybershaming” online feel absolved of responsibility because they are only part of a huge group that is participating in the behavior. So, the individual is “let off the hook” based on common sentiment and shared reaction. It has been said that the internet is not responsible for human actions. But the bigger question then becomes, How do you make people on the internet responsible for their words and actions? In the past, anonymity allowed users to post things online that they would never say in a face-to-face conversation. But now, that virtual screen has been replaced by “group think” or “safety in numbers.” Being on the wrong side of an ideological fence means that you will become a scapegoat for all the derision, hatred, and anger that the social media “mob” can generate and does online, because it is condoned by the majority. I don’t think it is human nature to be “evil” or mean or judgmental all the time, but wanting to belong is a driving social force. Often resulting in discourse and actions that contradict the ethics of what is “right” for the logic of what is “popular.” The internet and social media thrive on manifesting “peer pressure” and chanelling conspicuous consumption. On the one hand, posting pictures of our “awesome vacations” to the food we eat and the “beautiful people” in our lives, we make the medium the message and the illusion real. On the other hand, living your life online and posting moments of your private life is a way of exposing yourself to the danger of being ridiculed by others. Not everyone has the same tastes or appreciates the same things, so there will be disagreements that can turn ugly. Some people write from a bad place (jealousy, capriciousness, envy) and it is impossible to stem the tide if it snowballs against you because then it becomes a way to vent negative emotions. For example, the recent case of the actor who faked a “gay bashing” and racist incident online created great sympathy and outrage when fact became fiction. If the incident was indeed real, it would have been inhuman not to feel angry at such injustice and abuse. Everyone supported him strongly online. But when it was proven to be a hoax, the tables turned on the actor and he was shamed and shunned. If anything, the “kangaroo court” of public opinion happens because even the presumption of guilt makes anyone fair game. Let’s not forget that these internet companies rely on advertising for their revenue, so it is in their economic interest to stir up emotions and get users online to cash in on anger and hatred. In the information age of digital surveillance, the public sphere is made up of a lot of crosstalk. Most comments are blatantly ideological and knowing what to say to whom can be very difficult to discern. Trump and his right wing followers call everything that they don’t want to hear “fake news” and dismiss it as lies, rewriting the truth and its facticity according to what they believe is in their interest. It is one way to control public discourse but it also

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divides sentiment along ideological lines and causes all sorts of disagreements and dissension, even hate speech in the social sphere. Yet, those leaning on the left call out and descry those who have questions about race, class, sexuality and gender if their opinions are questioned. I don’t think that the punishment of cybershaming outweighs the crime in some instances, but not in others. Open dialogue in good faith is rare in both online and offline encounters. That is the risk we take if someone succeeds in gathering a physical or virtual “mob” that wants to deligitimate opposing viewpoints. Ideology infuses all colours of the political spectrum. The concept of cyberspace is considered outside the “real life” experience as some undefinable space or bits and bytes where things occur in virtual realm. The internet is considered to be an open universe transcending geo-political boundaries across space and time (Finley, 2018). Communication can be both anonymous and run at hyper speeds. The openness of the structure has been conceived as “uncontrollable” and “unmanageable” (Marwick & Lewis, 2018) and it has allowed for a deregulation of standards regarding online participation, form and content. This negative image is based in a technological determinism that characterizes the virtuality of the online sphere and cyberspace. The internet bridges geographical areas, thereby allowing data to be hosted in one place and be accessed in another (Finley, 2018). This has created problems with respect to security and cybercrime. The plurality of laws in different countries where servers were located created jurisdictional dilemmas. It was therefore difficult to enforce any kind of legality on the web, which has created spaces for cybercrime to fester. The other complication is caused by the perception that any online violations were victimless because of a lack of physical injury. Law enforcement agencies could not cope with the anonymous nature of online interactions in the early years of the web therefore cybercrime was not taken very seriously. As the internet developed and became more pervasive and intrusive, systems of regulation and surveillance have appeared to prevent different forms of abuse and cybercrime among users. Consequently, the web today is very much “controlled” that ever before. International agreements combat cybercrime and instill cybersecurity (e.g., the conventional agreements and territorial jurisdictions), global forces track individuals committing illegal acts online (e.g., money laundering, hate speech, identity theft), and many countries have sophisticated surveillance and censorship technology to monitor users and block content in a manner that is seamless and invisible. Consequently, perceptions around the nature of the internet have been altered beyond its utility as a form of ICT. To the point where we can now consider it to be a highly controlled space that is not open or lawless.

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The range and effects of cybercrime is evolving along with the internet. In Canada, it is defined as an act where 1) the computer is the object of an illegal act or 2) it is used as a tool to commit one. In the first instance, hacking or virus attacks constitute a type of cybercrime while the second, a computer is used “to perpetuate the crime” such as fraud or money laundering. The internet “amplifies” or enhances these illegal acts. That is, it allows for more pervasive and invasive types of criminality like identity theft which can occur much easier, since personal information can be found on the web and also can be more damaging in its immediate and widespread effects. Sometimes, even it is even devastating on a global scale. The growth of the dark web has facilitated this type of amplification of cybercrime by allowing access to information that may be illegal as well as serving as a meeting space for those who would commit illegal acts (Raustiala, 2017). Civil and criminal laws apply to cybercrime (Marwick & Lewis, 2018). On the one hand, dealing with property rights, personal dignity and freedom from injury and, on the other, illegal actions against the state. For example, in Canada legislation has been passed to protect citizens from online crime (Bill C13). Cyberbullying has been a flashpoint for criticism against this law because it was seen by opponents as a way for the government to further intervene in the lives of its citizens; since, there were already provisions in the criminal code for punishing such behavior. The argument was based on the fact that empirical evidence was lacking in the virtual realm that could be fabricated and misleading. Today, cyberbullying is considered a serious offence causing social and health crises and must be eradicated from online interactions on the internet, particularly among children (Marwick & Lewis, 2018). Such victimization can be pervasive and ongoing because of the local and global reach of the virtual sphere. This is an example of the amplification of cybercrime that occurs because of the way the internet is constructed and works across physical boundaries of communication and exchange. Cybershaming is a result of the ubiquitous nature of information on the web and the ability for individuals to hide amongst and in a mob to criticize and chastise without personal responsibility or risk (Marwick & Lewis, 2018). Other cybercrimes are concerned with intellectual property theft and the copyright laws that limit the fair use of content. Civil law is being linked to protecting individual rights in the online sphere, e.g., libel or slander, against information on blogs and social media sites that is not true or factual. The rise of identity politics in relation to race, class, gender, religion, sexuality, etc., is also evident on the internet where communication has been divided along ideological lines with respect to differences between people and political motivations for the

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types of things that are said in blogs and forums on social media (Marwick & Lewis, 2018).

Learning the Digital Future One example of the case for net neutrality is maintaining the independent governance of ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) which had been, until recently, controlled by the United States. In the 1980s, the numbered addresses for a piece of network hardware identified by its Internet Protocol (IP) were paired and replaced by words to locate websites. The “explosion” of internet use was in part due to the greater simplicity of remember names rather that IP codes. ICANN controls the internet because it manages assigned Top Level Domain Names (TLDN) that categorize and control online information through designations such as “.com,” “.org,” or “.ca.” If it is not neutral, the traffic on the web network can be directed to specific sites and censored for the benefit of few, mainly elite and corporations, that would profit from it. The online experience of finding information can be enhanced by this sifting of data sources according to purpose, benefit, or location. ICANN is the technical administrator of the internet that ensures the possibility of equitable availability and access within the web. It looks after the TLDNs that organize the internet by hosts and servers. ICANN was supposed to be non-profit but because it was controlled by the United States Department of Commerce, there were questions about the neutrality of its oversight given that its actions could be in the best interests of that country and the functioning of its economy or state. There were calls for the implementation of multinational and global forms of governance that would be more egalitarian in its management of TLDNs. Ultimately, the United States now sees no need for net neutrality and dismissed it as a protocol for the structure of the internet. The result has been a separation of countries who support net neutrality and those who intervene in the way the web is organized, who can access specific data, and who can profit from this. The case for net neutrality can be made on the grounds that as a safeguard for digital democracy it prevents the corporate manipulation citizen rights and works against the possibility of an economic monopolies. Two issues stand out in the controversy over net neutrality and lead to support the case for it: the “liberalization” of web address and the .xxx debate (Fisher, 2018). ICANN began selling the right to create new TLDNs for a hefty price. The action was criticized as sowing the seeds for a digital divide that will benefit corporations. One of the dangers of TLDNs is the possibility of cybersquatting

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or fraud targeting established companies to exploit and profit from their brand recognition. Something that was widespread in the early days of the internet. A plethora of TLDNs exacerbates the difficulty of maintaining the integrity of categorizing web sites and makes it harder for users to navigate the web. The .xxx debate, regarding its signaling of pornographic content, revealed the power of the domain designation over industry and commerce. It was not a neutral technical issue. It enabled the filtering of adult content and allowed a type of control over access to material that was inappropriate for children, hindered productivity in the workplace, offended religious sensibilities, and led to the exploitation of minors. Ironically, all of these groups were on the same side, supporting the .xxx designation as a TLDN, but were opposed by civil liberties advocates fearing that users would be subject to an invasion of viewing privacy and unfairly judged. The adult entertainment industry objected to the limits imposed on their ability to lure customers to their sites if the specific TLDN funneled users to a category that restricted access. Ultimately, the Bush government pressured ICANN to reject the .xxx domain name because of the lobby groups that threatened to withdraw political and financial support to the Republican party (Raustiala, 2017). Net neutrality was not respected in this instance and information access was politicized in the interests of those who could affect power. The idea of net neutrality has impacted the internet since the 1990s. Its assumptions are that the web should not be influenced by service providers or certain applications. Tim Wu, who coined the term, envisioned the internet as a neutral vehicle to getting information without interference or restriction. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) would not control access to it. Or influence its technical features or digital stream. The reality is that this principle has been violated in many ways by ISPs and search engines through traffic shaping, throttling, and content manipulation. Theoretically, by directing bandwith to “fast” and “slow” lanes, the internet could be more equitable and offer more opportunity for profit instead of favouring some uses and applications over others. But all of these interventions techniques are essentially a violation of any terms of agreement between customers and a service provider. Throttling, for example, is the lowering of connection speeds to users. Lastly, content is also blocked for ideological, financial or political motives, such as the telecommunications company Telus making information about its labour dispute inaccessible to users. The debate today is over net neutrality is essentially an argument over bandwith and speed of access. On ther one hand, there is fear that it will create a two-tier system. Those companies who can afford to pay a higher price will have a competitive advantage in the marketplace by offering “better” services (Raustiala, 2017). On the other hand, those who are against net neutrality claim the principle is unfair and outdated

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since ISPs have paid for developing and sustain the infrastructure of the internet. In Canada, net neutrality is still the guiding force in theory and by law. But ISPs are allowed to engage in traffic shaping, for example, as long as their customers are informed. The problem is that service contracts are more complex and misleading, so the “fine print” does not often protect consumer rights. The United States has done away with the principle of net neutrality, but it is still too early to gauge its longterm implications. Although it has created an unlevel playing field among ISPs and search engines. Without net neutrality, there is the danger that technopolies would form and take over the internet to a far greater extent than is already happening with the Amazon, Google and Facebook.

References Dillard-Wright, D. B. “Technology Designed for Addiction.” Psychology Today, Jan 14, 2018. K. Finley, “The Wired Guide to Net Neutrality,” May 9, 2018. https://www.wired.com/story/ guide-net-neutrality/. Marwick, A., & Lewis, R. (2018). 2018. Data and Society. Metzger, M., & Flanagin, A. (2013). Credibility and the use of information in online environments: The use of cognitive Heuristics. Journal of Pragmatics, 59, 210–220. Nicholas Carr. Is Google Making Us Stupid? Atlantic Monthly, July/August, 2008. Raustiala, K. (2017). The internet whole and free: Why Washington was right to give up control. Foreign Affairs, 6(2), 140–147. Yzer, M. C., & Southwell, B. G. (2008). New Communication Technologies, Old Questions. American Behavioral Scientist, 52(1), 8–20. Wood, E., Zivcakova, L., Gentile, P., Archer, K., De Pasquale, D., & Nosko, A. (2012). Examining the impact of off-task multi-tasking with technology on real-time classroom learning. Computers & Education, 58, 365–374.