This post was retrieved from a past blog (and lightly edited in the process).
The thesis in the title of this post occurred while I was reading Cal Newport’s A World Without Email, which makes a great case for the problems posed by email technology in knowledge-work contexts.
Toward the end of the book Cal (citing Neil Postman) makes the argument that technological change is not additive but ecological. The quote is this (as transcribed from the Audible version):
Technological change is not additive, it is ecological. A new medium does not add something, it changes everything. In the year 1500 after the printing press was invented you did not have ‘old Europe plus the printing press’, you had a different Europe.
My line of thinking is this: To what extent does this kind of observation hold true for education? Or perhaps, rather than education, situations where the changing technology is the human body and/or human knowledge?
Thinking back on time recently spent with Dewey’s ideas, I’m inclined to think that an ecological take on learning (as per the use of ecological above) is a fairly reasonable proposition. In this vein, a useful topic to review in the future might be the distinction between concepts of learning and change.
Thinking about education (and learning, and change) as ecological rather than additive has interesting implication for educational design. Riffing off of Dewey, how might seeing sequential educational experiences as ecological rather than additive shift our approach to structuring those experiences?