Five Theses on (Dis)Comfort in the Educational Cultures of Digitality

Abstract

In many current discussions, digitalization functions as a dazzling leitmotif not only for technological, social and cultural transformation processes in general, but also for current social reproduction problems and upheavals in the field of education in particular. On the one hand, there is a widespread uneasiness in educational cultures of digitality; on the other hand, the promises of the future in learning technology are also promoting tendencies of ease for some groups. Based on a broader perspective that goes beyond a Freudian understanding of discomfort in culture, this article puts forward five trenchant theses for discussion, all of which mark fault lines of (dis)comfort in the educational cultures of digitality.

Keywords

• educational culture
• digitalization
• technological solutionism
• rhetoric of digitalization
• machine learning
• robotics