Educational Technology, Epistemology, and our Leadership Challenge

In his 1992 book, Technopoly, Neil Postman introduces his work with a story from Plato’s Phaedrus: The Judgment of Thamus. As the story goes, Theuth, the god of inventions such as geometry and astronomy, shared one of his inventions with King Thamus: writing. Theuth told King Thamus that writing would help improve wisdom and memory for Egyptians. King Thamus disagreed. He argued that anyone who uses writing will soon lose their capacity to remember as it will no longer be necessary. He also warned that writing would give the appearance of wisdom, but it would not be actual wisdom.

Postman uses this story to make an argument. He notes that King Thamus only sees the burden that can come from technology while Postman focuses on both the good and the bad. Postman was a critic. Throughout his four decades of work, he asked “At what cost do we introduce new technologies to society?” Ten years earlier, 1982, Postman wrote The Disappearance of Childhood where he chronicled the advent of “childhood” through the invention of the printing press and the dismantling of childhood with the advent of television. In 1985, Postman continued his cultural critique of the impact of television in his work, Amusing Ourselves to Death. In this work, he argues that when we get most of our information from television, we are busy being entertained, and we do not stop to really think critically about what we see and hear.

Why would I bring up a public intellectual who started his work more than a half a century ago and whose critiques of technology are decades old? I do so, partly, because I often wonder how Postman would react today if he were still living. But, I also introduce his work because it is based on a troubling dichotomy that is often used when people consider the impact of technology: the good and bad, the winners and losers, the technophiles and technophobes. But in 2023, the dichotomies fall short.

Technology is not merely additive. It is not something that emerges within society. Technology is a vital part of society. As the application of scientific knowledge to life itself, technology has altered our epistemology – what it means to know.

Please indulge me for a moment while I attempt, in the most efficient manner possible, to chronicle how our epistemology has changed over time.

Let’s begin with Aristotle and Plato. Aristotle sees knowledge as concrete, unchangeable, created by God, and existing outside of us. Truth is absolute: Picture a capital T in 48-bold Calibri font. In contrast, Plato sees knowledge as pure and internal - also created by God but found within oneself. We have within us all Truth upon conception, but it is jumbled up in the birth process - His truth is also that big, bold absolute T. Their differences are depicted in Raphael’s print, School of Athens, (a copy of which I have on my wall in my office) where Aristotle is pointing out into the world and Plato is pointing up to God.

Now, let’s jump ahead more than 1,000 years to Descartes. Considered the father of modern philosophy, Descartes is known for what key philosophical phrase?  Anyone?  “Cogito ergo sum,” I think therefore I am. At this point we come into the picture. We are actors in this work of knowing. This is significant given that, for many, the source of all truth had aways been the church. Knowledge is still external and unchanging, but our relationship with knowledge changes after Descartes. Now intuition and deduction matter. That 48-bold Calibri font T truth? It still exists, but now we engage with it ourselves rather than having it imposed upon us.

Apologies now for skipping over a lot of players Hegel, Kant, all the folks from Germany like Husserl, Heidegger, etc. Instead, let’s jump to the industrial period in the U.S. and consider the pragmatists, including my favorite. Anyone? Yes, John Dewey. As we begin to see the impact of industrialization, our characterization of what it means to know changes. That 48-bold Calibri font T – absolute truth existing outside of us to be transmitted or imposed - yeah, it’s gone. Now it’s a lower-case t that is truth at this point and time until something else replaces it. Knowledge becomes knowing – from a noun to a verb. It is a collective achievement based upon inquiry. It’s the experiments that we conduct and share, the debates in which we engage, the book studies, the think tanks. We cannot know in isolation. Knowing cannot be imposed. It must be achieved – together. For example, think about our understanding of Covid. Think about what we know now about the disease compared to what we knew in March of 2020. We know far more about the disease now than we did in its early days because of our experiences and because of the studies that have been conducted.

Postman’s critiques about technology only work if we keep knowledge as a noun and truth as that big capital T absolute truth. Technology then becomes the means through which that truth is transmitted. But, in fact, technology shapes how we work together as a community to understand our world. Technology has played and will continue to play a vital role in not only what we know but how we think about knowing itself.

In more recent years, we see images of postmodern epistemology – the work of philosophers like Foucault and Derrida. There is no independent reality. That Big capital T truth that turned into a lower-case t with pragmatists? Think of it now as a flickering t on a neon sign. Instead of a collective achievement, truth becomes an empty concept. Claimed truths are suspect because they often come from those in power. Postmodern epistemology challenges categories, classifications, and strident claims about the world and the people in it. It creates conditions through which multiple truths co-exist.

Why does any of this matter? It matters because technology is creating seismic shifts in what we know and how we even think about what it means to know. When I described pragmatism to you, I bet you could visualize it playing out: the scientific process. We can picture what it looks like in classrooms: moving away from lectures and promoting group work, assigning work where there is more than one right answer.

But when we think about postmodern epistemology and how it plays out in our world, it is more challenging to picture, right? It’s high schools eschewing their “boy/girl” superlative categories, it’s creating spaces in classrooms for critical race theory and critiquing power structures, It’s Simon Cowell “singing” Our Love was Meant to Be on the America’s Got Talent stage.

Our world is changing quickly. Technology has transformed everything – not just what we know but also what it means to know. Our leadership is essential. If Postman were here, he’d probably argue that our leadership is needed to reduce the bad and promote the good about technology. It’s not that simple. We will lead as we move into this complex and postmodern world. We need to be prepared for changes we cannot yet imagine. We need to see the world with its limitless potential. It will require humility and willingness to live and work amid difference. We will not lead from the center. We will not rely solely on our points of view. While we cannot ignore the potential challenges that accompany innovation, it is essential that we avoid falling into the dichotomies of the past. Scary? Perhaps. But I know we are ready.