Friday 7 March 2008

Shift Happens


Is this merely technologically determinist "information society" newspeak? Perhaps so. But I think it reinforces the thrust behind my previous post that disciplines are mutating, in part because the university is attempting contingency planning for the advent of what they regard as "the digital age" (in a way, Sadie Plant was speaking of its cultural manifestations in other areas, although it is debateable whether she was doing so in such a programmatic fashion).
Indeed, Beloit College in the U.S. produces a "mindset list" to draw attention to the technoculture which has socialised the latest influx of students, thus assisting the efforts of faculty to communicate with them. The video I've included was intended likewise as a pedagogical tool, some might say a "meme", which has, appropriately enough, grown at an exponential rate into a series of successor versions. But whose agenda are the much vaunted changes most likely to serve?

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