Citical digital education

I advocate for popular, technocritical, and emancipatory digital education, sustained across an entire lifetime. On this page, and throughout my articles, I explore the contours of this education toward "numérique acceptable" (acceptable digital technology).

Introduction

What does it mean to educate people "about" digital technology? To me, it mainly means training and accompanying citizens, across their whole lives, in a world where digital technologies constitute a total social fact that no one can escape, not even those who choose not to be "digitized." It means training and informing, contextualizing the history of digital technology, shedding light on its economic and social stakes, and awakening critical thinking. In my view, educating "about" digital technology is therefore not about teaching programming, even though learning to program can help people understand digital issues and sharpen critical thinking. Programming is only a means, not an end, and it is nowhere near sufficient on its own.

Then: educate toward which digital technology? I explore this across several articles, through what I call "numérique acceptable." I believe our entire educational effort should concern only this acceptable digital technology: emancipatory rather than alienating, ecologically and socially sustainable, chosen rather than endured. I hold a strongly militant view on the attitude we should adopt toward "unacceptable" digital technology (meaning alienating and/or endured and/or ecologically and socially unsustainable): I believe we should, to borrow from Bernard Stiegler, help people understand it in order to critique and transform it. Put differently, I no longer think it is enough to teach "good practices" for a social medium as toxic as Facebook, TikTok, or YouTube. I believe we need to critique these networks and find (either identify or build together) acceptable alternatives to them.

Educate about digital technology. Across an entire life, from age 7 to age 107. Educate in the original sense: "to form someone by developing and bringing forth their personality." I would add that we must create the conditions for an emancipatory education, because as Jacques Rancière said, citing Jacotot: "he who teaches without emancipating stultifies. And he who emancipates need not concern himself with what the emancipated person is to learn."