Dewey

My last post, driven by some general anxiety and a feeling of disintegration, prompted a couple of comments (thanks!) and a lengthy email from Winston. Those have inspired me to devote a series of posts on the subject. I want to stress at the beginning that these posts will mostly be about social networking and me and aren’t any attempt to universalize any sort of judgments about the tools in general. I am not claiming that Facebook is the Devil, nor that twitter will revolutionize media as we know it. Not only are such claims hyperbole (which, of course, means they get attention), but aren’t part of my project. This is about a personal mini-crisis of sorts, so the exploration will be personal and philosophical. That doesn’t make it normative.

Two parts to begin things. First, I’ll share some general thoughts on social networks as tools. Second, I’ll share some personal reflection on my social networks prior to there being any electronic social networks.

I see social networks as tools. Here, I really mean these contemporary electronic networks (and I’ll include things like blogs and email here) are human made devices designed for some sort of purpose. The purpose may not be explicit or even completely known. I also think tools are always value-laden. Here, I think I disagree with a lot of the technolgists out there. I KNOW I disagree with much of the literature on educational technology, which sees ed tech as value neutral. By that, they mean there isn’t “good ed tech” or “bad ed tech”. There is just tech that is used well and tech that is not. There is tech that is put to good uses and tech that is put to bad uses, but the tech itself isn’t good or bad. The problem with this sort of thinking is it sees “value” in strictly dichotomous terms — good or bad. But value isn’t dichotomous. It has to do with priorities and purposes. Tools are made to fulfill some sort of purpose in a particular way. In so doing, they channel human activity along those purposes and those paths. By doing that, they channel it away from other purposes and those paths. I can dig a hole with a shovel or a backhoe. Each one has similar purposes, but different paths. One is much better at digging a large hole, but does that digging in a particular way with particular consequences and collateral effects (noise, smoke, etc). Twitter’s 140 character word limit isn’t good or bad in and of itself, but having such a limit channels communication in a particular way that a lack of such a limit does not and there are consequences to such a choice. Facebook may be good at some things (reconnecting us with old friends), but that reconnection may come with various consequences (everyone in my Facebook network, from my wife to random high school person is a “friend”). Those value choices are part of the tool. Whether they are good or bad depends on how those purposes and paths match with my own purposes and paths. The insidious part is we often don’t realize how our tools shape our own purposes and paths. The values embedded in the tool become part of our own values without serious consideration. We see this all the time, but the car is a good example. Our cars allow us to do amazing things, but at the cost of other things. Most of us don’t really think about the things we give up when we use a certain tool.

All of this is heavily indebted to Pragmatism, and Dewey specifically. To be very specific, it’s derived from Larry Hickman’s work on Dewey and technology, which I find pretty compelling both as an interpretation of Dewey and as a general philosophy of technology.

It looks like it’s getting late, so I’ll take up the personal reflection part in my next post.