I enjoyed Steve Fuller’s TEDx lecture Defining Humanity one of the core viewings as part of the E-Learning and Digital Cultures #edcmooc. The talk centers around the idea of posthumanism. According to transhumanist thinkers, a posthuman is a hypothetical future being …
“whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards.” (Bostrom 2003)
Early in his talk Professor Fuller describes education as a “dying art” I think this is because he sees education as an output of the humanist project and realises that education he understands it may not exist in a posthuman world. He talks about the ‘modern artifice’ of enhancement (although I am not sure how modern this really is).
From Kit Roebuck’s Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life
see: http://www.bohemiandrive.com/comics/npwil.html
Some consider this move towards an enhanced humanity as being part of a natural evolutionary process toward becoming posthuman. The goal of the posthuman project is the “perfection of the human species” Improving human performance via advances in science and technology (in popular science media and science fiction this often represented in stories involving altering our physical selves by augmentation (robotic limbs, cyborgs, computer brain implants etc – with the goal of achieving greater agility, strength, information retention) and involves a blurring of the natural and the artificial.
Professor Fuller argues that there’s historical precedent for considering only some homosapiens to be ‘human’. Notions of a perfect human archetype often consider what it is to be “most human”, in other words to exemplify all that is good or desirable about human kind – physically, spiritually and intellectually. However, the moment an ideal is created – those of us who do not achieve its high standards may be considered deficient in relation to the perfect specimen, and could be be thought of as lesser humans, or even, less than human.
There are many examples in modern human history where certain societal or ethnic groups are demonised to such an extent that their humanity is questioned. For instance those left out of the caste system in India were untouchable and considered outside society; the treatment of Australian aborigines by the European colonialists; the subjugation of Jews during WW2. Science, has been both directly and indirectly complicit in this, exemplified by the the use of Social Darwinism to create false taxonomies that inferred that certain racial groups (usually European Caucasian) were more developed, more intelligent and therefore more human than other racial groups.
Returning to the dystopian theme of #edcmooc week 1, the stratification of society – based on perceptions of humanity – is a recurring theme in science fiction for example in the relationship between the human sub species the Morlock and Eloi in Wells’ Time Machine or the “Heads” and “Hands” in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.
Fuller suggests that we are questioning the very existence of the ‘human’ because we have failed in the humanist project (for example, we are far from achieving racial, gender or class equality). Although equality has not been achieved, I don’t believe we have failed the “humanist project” can’t be viewed in terms of deadlines, surely it is an ongoing piece of work. The very fact that we are talking in these terms props up the idea that we are actually succeeding rather than failing – and perhaps more “human” than ever.
The #edcmooc suggests that we might we see MOOCs as an example of an ‘old humanistic project’, particularly in the promise they appear to offer for democratisation, equality of access and so on. Perhaps there is a general move – in some quarters – towards a more humanist view of education (MOOCs being only one strand of this). Certainly the original cMOOCs (created by Cormier, Siemens, Downes etc) were born from a humanistic and ‘open’ philosophical starting point but as we know, not all MOOCs are created equal. In Siemens’ words:
“our cMOOC model emphasises creation, creativity, autonomy and social networking learning. The Coursera model emphasises a more traditional learning approach through video presentations and short quizzes and testing. Put another way, cMOOCs focus on knowledge creation and generation whereas xMOOCs focus on knowledge duplication”
While I think Siemens’ assertion is correct those involved with the xMOOC movement Coursera, EDx etc certainly – at least superficially – give a nod to humanist rhetoric in amongst the business and techno-centric jargon. Daphne Koller of Coursera lets us know that …
“One of our top priorities is to reach the people who need education the most, including those who would not otherwise have access.”
Koller also goes on to claim that its MOOCs are the answer to excess demand for higher education in poor countries, this positioning has led to accusations of neocolonialism in some quarters – but was probably intended as a humanist gesture.
There does seem to be a humanist reawakening (mediated by ubiquitous networked computing and the promise of global connectivity) in education exemplified by projects like The Ragged University, University of the People, The OpenCourseWare Consortium (OCWC) .
Bostrom, N (2003), The Transhumanist FAQ – A General Introduction, Version 2.1. http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/FAQv21.pdf
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