Class 1: January 7, 2010

Technology is/as Art

Technology is/as art. It's a concept that makes sense. I have wrestled with this idea before, and was happy to hear it given attention tonight. I'll work with it here.

I begin by conjecturing that most teachers will acknowledge pedagogical practice as an artform. Now, if that be true and with logical transitivity applied, it can be said that technology is/as pedagogy. Seems quite reasonable.

A paper is available in the JSTOR database titled Ideas of Technology: The Technological Order. It was written by frenchman Jacques Ellul (1962) and translated by a guy named John Wilkinson. Anyway, Ellul describes technology as technique. In fact, the paper says that in his book La Technique, Ellul agrees with H. D. Lasswell's (Lasswell was a professor who wrote quite a bit about technique, so said my Google search about him) definition of technique, which is, "the ensemble of practices by which one uses available resources in order to achieve certain valued ends." That sounds like it could be a definition for an artform.

The techniques which I use in the classroom are practices/procedures/processes applied after consideration is given to a desired end. My (pegagogical) technique, which includes how I discern what is good and not for my students, is an artform (technology is/as pedagogy). My technologies are not just the laptops, data projectors, tablets or the software (tools) available for me to use, but the ways I use them.

Going further, the product of technique may also be called art. Technology is/as art, is easily seen when the art is a tool developed thanks to an inventive mind. The computer is the art of the computer engineer, and so is the student the art of the teacher. Hmm. Something doesn't seem right here. Does that make a student a technology? A computer can be used to help get a job done; it is a tool. But is a student a tool? Maybe (context). A student is a learning technology (as we all are). And, students are definitley works of art, works created by many artists.

The idea is technology as technique and technique being an art, hence technology is/as art.