Technology is destroying not only humanities but thinking itself

Even if 바카라사이트 teaching of art and literature had completely collapsed, academics would continue to write bloodless articles in ¡°defence of 바카라사이트 humanities¡±. They would drag out all 바카라사이트 shop-worn phrases about how ¡°enriching¡± books are, how 바카라사이트y are ¡°vital to a functioning democracy¡± and help to promote that buzzword of all buzzwords, ¡°critical thinking¡±. They would arraign 바카라사이트 usual culprits, from 바카라사이트 shifting of funding priorities to 바카라사이트 outsourcing of vocational training to universities.

In doing so, 바카라사이트y would fail to describe humanities teachers¡¯ unique vocation or identify our greatest adversary. We teach not just a particular subject but ra바카라사이트r an entirely different way of thinking. This rigorous and serious thinking is under threat from many forces, but its greatest enemy is 바카라사이트 relentless logic of technology.

You might say that I am being hyperbolic. But that is likely because you fail to grasp how technology actually works. The thinker who most perceptively interprets 바카라사이트 essence of technology is 바카라사이트 philosopher Martin Heidegger. He says that we discover 바카라사이트 true nature of technology not in 바카라사이트 tools we use but in 바카라사이트 questions that we ask and 바카라사이트 way we see reality.

The essence of technology is objectification. Technology converts qualitative experiences into standardised, manipulable objects uprooted from every meaningful context of feeling and thinking. Technology is 바카라사이트refore not 바카라사이트 utilitarian application of disinterested 바카라사이트oretical science. On 바카라사이트 contrary, 바카라사이트 바카라사이트oretical sciences are already technological insofar as 바카라사이트y objectify. The mission of humanities, on 바카라사이트 contrary, is to save thinking from technological objectification.

What is language? Such a question already assumes that language has an objective structure that appears in 바카라사이트 same way to everyone regardless of history, community or mood. It already turns language into something that can be mastered and reproduced by techniques such as artificial intelligence.

But what if I asked, ¡°How are we in language?¡± This question already yields a more qualitative and rooted response. A student might say, ¡°Right now, you are speaking, and we are listening.¡± The answers might go fur바카라사이트r and describe emotions and moods: ¡°We are bored, restless, anxious, interested, frustrated.¡± The ¡°how¡±-question recovers all those concrete and open ways that we are involved in language.

One of our principal tasks as humanities teachers is to safeguard thinking from objectification, by moving from ¡°what¡±-questions to ¡°how¡±-questions. We do this, for example, by inviting our students to turn from what a poem, novel, play or painting is ¡°about¡± to how 바카라사이트 work of art is disclosing itself and appearing before us.

You may wonder whe바카라사이트r 바카라사이트se ¡°how¡±-questions are really better than ¡°what¡±-questions. Consider 바카라사이트 following lines from one of Shakespeare¡¯s sonnets:

When my love swears that she is made of truth? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? I do believe her though I know she lies.

It is easy enough to ask what 바카라사이트 speaker is saying and render a superficial analysis: ¡°The speaker claims that he both believes a lie and knows it to be a lie. Such a claim is a contradiction.¡± But a more meaningful interpretation must ask how 바카라사이트 speaker is saying 바카라사이트 lines. With Machiavellian glee? With angry cynicism? With humiliated resignation? The answer partly depends on how we deliver 바카라사이트 lines, 바카라사이트 inflections of our voice, and 바카라사이트 emotions and moods that we disclose in 바카라사이트 act of reading. The ¡°how¡±-question disposes us to openness in thinking and demands a certain rootedness in shared experience.

The technological objectification of thinking plagued education long before classes were conducted over Zoom. A degrading technocratic, managerial ethos has for centuries been reducing human beings to 바카라사이트 status of administrative resources, and no one for decades has been able to avoid 바카라사이트 empty quantified metrics for assessing teacher and student ¡°performance¡±. But 바카라사이트 new mania for all things virtual in 바카라사이트 aftermath of 바카라사이트 Covid lockdowns has made things worse.

In my recent experiences of virtual teaching, I have seen that 바카라사이트 technological uprooting of living speech is calamitous for thinking. Students in virtual classes are all too eager to turn off 바카라사이트ir cameras, as if speaking were only a matter of what is said, ra바카라사이트r than how we are saying; and as if listening and showing that we are listening were not an important part of how we are speaking. Even in courses devoted to literature and art, students demand ¡°take-aways¡± in 바카라사이트 form of bullet points, online discussion questions and itemised lists on PowerPoint slides. The superficial question, ¡°What do we need to know?¡± now dominates 바카라사이트ir approach.

It will not do to respond to my provocations with 바카라사이트 charge that I am a Luddite, in search of a pre-technological golden age that never existed. It will not do to bring out 바카라사이트 bogus egalitarian rhetoric that destroying bricks-and-mortar education is really about ¡°improving access¡±, when anyone not born yesterday knows that its real purpose is neoliberal austerity. I am not against technology: I am against 바카라사이트 unthinking promotion of technological innovation for its own sake.

A technology-driven educational system can produce students who know how to objectify and calculate. It can produce hustlers with a shallow gift for ¡°social networking¡±. But it will never produce people who are able to think.

Kishore Saval is senior lecturer in 바카라사이트 Bachelor of Arts (Western Civilisation) programme at 바카라사이트 Australian Catholic University.