Ah, and now we hit it. The "Distance Learning Bogeyman" of Higher Education. He's hiding in your computer, behind your blogging, reaching out from the darkness of ANGEL to tear apart writer's voices and stifle those without the capital to provide themselves the Magic Keys. And those keys have a name, a word of privilege, a sigil of power: Access. In the current push for online courseware and the electromancy pioneered by the University of (the Order of the) Phoenix, can anyone not recognize soulless appetite of the great god Capital? On page 813, Anson writes "[via] technology supported shifts in instructional delivery, composition may be further subordinated to the interests of powerful subject oriented disciplines where the conception of expertise creates rather different pattern of hiring and material support." (Italics mine)
I know that the Marxist lens seems irritating to some, but just look at what drives the shift toward technological teaching. Fiscal constraint. Conditions of production. Training good drones for post-education jobs. Profit. And now look at what is lost. The student and the teacher are dehumanized into digital signals that are exchanged and categorized, their unique personhood is, more than subordinated, subjugated to the external power that needs it base to continue playing its role, maintaining the drones of the factory, the bureaucratic hydra, and the continuance of its imposed order in perpetuity.
Are we using the technology or is it using us?
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