Preparing for the digital apocalypse: APHE Summer Conference 2019

Technology takes a central role in our lives, infiltrating many aspects of what we do and how we spend our time. However, while there can be little doubt that we all use technology, importantly, we do not all use technology in the same way. If the transformation into a scholar happens when entering a classroom or lecture theatre then a similar, but more pervasive, shift occurs as we all inhabit the collective identity of technology. What then does this mean for learning in the twenty first century? Learning experiences constructed within some kind of technological environment or using technology as a teaching tool often provokes familiar questions: what are the benefits? What are the challenges? What is the point? However important these questions are, perhaps what is more critical concern is how technology conflates form and content together. Since this is the basis through which it operates. In principle, the success of an online learning environment merely requires the technology or platform to work. Operating as a decentralized system, aggregated from different and independent sources, an unfettered online learning environment is autonomous, automatic and allegedly self-sustaining. Where conventional courses rely on things such as room bookings, timetables, resources, teaching styles, peers and the very intricate weave of a whole range of different but mostly human interactions, online environments appear outside of the normal university structure. This paper will investigate and challenge the notion that hybrid, generative and post-digital pedagogies in their current form offer significant benefits. It will claim that as a digital apocalypse approaches what is needed is not new platforms to deliver the same content but new content which challenges both what photography is and how it directly contributes to the collective identity of technology we unknowingly inhabit. The wider claim is that as we swipe, share, like and retweet socially we become permanently distracted from engaging directly in the fundamental aspects of education: reading, thinking and learning.