Category Archives: Critique of M&T

MA Defence: Vicente Regis, 10:00 am, Tuesday September 13, 2022

Posted on September 6, 2022 by | Leave a comment

The Final Oral Examination For the Degree of
Master of Arts
(Media & Technology Studies Education)
Vicente Regis
Tuesday September 13, 2022 @ 10:00
Scarfe 2108 + Zoom

Interpreting Experts’ Perspectives on Philosophizing Media And Technology for Children and Youth

EXAMINING COMMITTEE
Supervisory Committee:
Prof Stephen Petrina, Research Supervisor (Media & Technology Studies)
Prof Jillianne Code (Media & Technology Studies)
External Examiner:
Prof Paula MacDowell (University of Saskatchewan) 

ABSTRACT
This research addressed the problem of children’s and youth’s philosophical perspectives on media and technology (M&T) through the exploratory expert interview method. Four experts in philosophy education, technology education, and media literacy were interviewed, offering their insights into how philosophical capacity in children and youth manifests and evolves. The study focused on three research questions: 1) What are experts’ perspectives on what it means for children and youth to philosophize M&T? 1a) What are experts’ perspectives on the relationship between this philosophical capacity and media and digital literacy? 1b) What are experts’ perspectives on how philosophizing M&T can be integrated into the school curriculum? Drawing from the writings of Dewey (1920, 1949), Deleuze and Guattari (1991/1994), Petrina (2020), Pigliucci (2014), de Vries (2016) and Weischedel (1999), the theoretical framework understands philosophizing as a creative activity based on argumentation, concept creation, and reflection. Committed to analyzing and critiquing any aspect of reality, philosophizing transpires through the exploration of conceptual space. Mitcham’s (1978, 1994) typology of technology structures the reflection regarding how students perceive M&T. One over-arching theme, and four core themes organize data analysis and findings: Philosophizing as Perspective Expansion encompass Emergent Questions, Metaphor, Critique, and Ethics. All three research questions are explored within the overarching and four core themes. These themes in philosophizing M&T are articulated in terms of how they represent deep transformations in children’s and youth’s perspectives in symbiosis with experience and intellectual growth, which I described as Philosophizing as Perspective Expansion. Expansion of perspective means increasing or transforming the interconnected compound of ideas one relies on to decide how to act facing a complex issue. This transformation occurs through the following elements: emergent questions, critique, and metaphorical reflections that include wonder, mythical interpretations, and metaphysical discussions. Hence, in conversation with the four experts, this research sought points that crystallize connections between knowledge fields central to the philosophy of M&T for children and youth.

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Posted in Children, Critique of M&T, Curriculum, Philosophy of M&T for Children & Youth

David Wray, #UBC MA Defence: Message Me when You Land: Tourism and Hospitality Students’ Distance Relationships with Friends, Family, and Devices

Posted on April 16, 2020 by | Leave a comment
The Final Oral Examination For the Degree of
Master of Arts
(Media & Technology Studies)
David R. Wray
Exam Date & Time: Thursday April 23, 2020
Exam Location: Zoom
Message Me when You Land: Tourism and Hospitality Students’ Distance Relationships with Friends, Family, and Devices
EXAMINING COMMITTEE 
Supervisory Committee:
Prof Stephen Petrina, Research Supervisor (Media & Technology Studies)
Prof E. Wayne Ross (Curriculum Studies and Social Studies)
External Examiner:
Prof Jillianne Code (Media & Technology Studies)
ABSTRACT
This qualitative study addressed the problem of maintaining relationships via creative and routine uses of Multimedia Devices (MMDs). Twelve participants were recruited from a private college in Vancouver, which specializes in tourism and hospitality education for international students. Interviews focused on their uses of MMDs in creating and maintaining relationships with family and friends. The study addressed three research questions: 1) In what ways do international students utilize MMDs to maintain relationships with family, friends, and the devices themselves? 1a) How do the students maintain relationships at home, school, and online, while fostering newer, more immediate relationships? 1b) How do the students maintain relationships with media and technology (M&T) devices and apps? For analysis and interpretation, the theoretical framework draws on Hinde’s (1976a, 1976b) research into relationality and on Goffman’s (1974) caution of the collusion of technology in changing relationships. Findings are organized around four themes: Shifting Time and Space Constraints, Necessity vs. Habit, Online Identity, and Influence and Marketing. Within each theme, one, two, or all three questions are explored. The participants post memes, photos, and videos to their social media but do not always keep up their relationships with family and friends directly, though they said most of their significant relationships had not faltered. Participants were hard pressed to say that their personal technology use was a bad thing, though they consistently expressed how it would get in the way of experiencing real life in the moment. The participants have their technologies on them and interact with them on a regular basis, but their views on MMDs extend from necessity to habit. This research has implications for the process of intercultural relationship building among students, as it takes the pervasiveness of M&T into account. Given current conditions of life, play, study, and work, implications are placed in context of Covid-19. How this sample of international students interacts and depicts themselves online suggests the strengthening of some relationships while keeping others at a comfortable distance, but still near, nonetheless. Educators of all levels should be aware of how students create, maintain, and destroy relationships via MMDs
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Posted in Communication, Covid-19, Critique of M&T, Media, New Media, Social Media

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A #History of the Critique of #Technology: A response to @LatourBot #sts

Posted on May 3, 2015 by | Leave a comment

I wrote a history of the critique of technology as a response to Latour’s “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?” There have been few, if any, adequate responses to Latour’s ground-breaking essay. This is my second response to Latour and concurs to a degree with his thesis. My first response (“The New Critiquette“) was also a history but offered a defence of critique, or rather an analysis of the critique of critique.

This new response to Latour is the opposite of the first. I wanted to write something resourceful, something we didn’t already have. Now we have a working history of the critique of technology.

It’s big history in that it extends over an expansive historical scale (550 BCE-present) and geographic scope. I tried to be inclusive, attending to questions of gender for instance, but realize there are omissions. It’s a work in progress. I wrote nearly each paragraph as a mini-essay of sorts, meaning that it has it’s own integrity as a case study. Each of these mini-essays gives an empirical example; they demonstrate critique or criticism of media and technology at different times in different places.

The chapter sets up a series of theses, not the least of which is that the critique of media and technology has run out of steam.

If critique barely changes a thing, including youth consciousness, what is its utility? Most critiques of media and technology are instrumental by definition and intended to have an effect or make a difference. If it has been enough for criticism and critique to offer a counter to progress narratives, then how effective has this been? Has the critique of media and technology run out of steam, as Latour (2004) suggests? If out of energy drawn from the steam age, should critique be retrofit to run on light and signals? Meantime, the trend in vaping may conceivably pressurize critique enough to sputter into the future. Is the critique of media and technology over time sufficiently prejudicial or probative? Instrumental or terminal?

I had great fun writing this and have an idea of what to do next with it. It’s most immediate setting is as a chapter in Critique in Design and Technology Education, edited by P. John Williams and Kay Stables. Thank you to Kay and John, who invited me to write this. I also thank Belinda von Mergenson, David Barlex and Marc de Vries, who gave superb feedback along with other colleagues at a conference in Marseille and workshop in Sausset les Pin. The conference and workshop were hosted by Jacques Ginestiè, his wife Marjolaine, and team from Marseille University.

Sausset les Pin Workshop

Sausset les Pin Workshop

That was tremendous fun as well. And yes, despite the beauty of the tranquil setting on the coast, we did work! Merci.

Sausset les Pin Workshop

Sausset les Pin Workshop

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Posted in Critique of M&T, Media, STS, Technology, Technology Studies, Theology

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Critique of Media & Technology Workshop #yreubc #hwl #ices

Posted on April 28, 2015 by | Leave a comment

CRITIQUE OF MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY WORKSHOP 

Wednesday, April 29, 2015
10:20-12:00     Scarfe 1209
Year of Research in Education event #yreubc

CRITIQUE OF MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY

Stephen Petrina
University of British Columbia

This workshop focuses on the Critique of Media & Technology. The first part of the workshop includes a presentation and discussion on a forthcoming chapter. The second part of the workshop focuses on the process of researching and writing with special attention to philosophical and historical research 2.0 and narrative. How can we or ought we write a (big) history of the critique of media and technology?

The chapter begins with the spiritual critique of media and technology and proceeds historically through cultural criticism and social, psychic, ontic, and identic critiques. Differentiated from the spiritual critique that precedes, cultural criticism of media and technology emerges in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as a mode of describing and depicting the mechanical arts. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, spiritual critique is displaced through a rejection of religion and theology as sources of modern authority. With spiritual ground undermined, social, psychic, ontic, and identic critics of media and technology compete for defensible ground for leverage. The history of critique is a search for ground. This chapter historicizes the critique of media and technology as well as critique as a practice that has run out of steam. “Critical distance” from or “free relation” to media and technology— a seductive orientation since the 1940s— has been instrumental in critique’s gradual decline. The critique of critique has quickened the decline. The conclusion questions the short-term future of machinic critique and long-term renewal of spiritual critique.

Download the Critique of Media & Technology chapter

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Posted in Critique of M&T, Design, HWL Forums, Interdisciplinary, Media, STS, Technology, Technology Studies, Theology

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