The Future of Education Online Conference

Presenter: Derrick de Kerkhove

"If the medium is the message, then the user is the content". This oft repeated but less heard aphorism of McLuhan may help us to understand the "user" of today’s networked environment. Much in the way McLuhan suggested that the TV medium from the earliest age transformed the children into tribes of information gatherers in the global jungle, I would like to explore the possibility that networks create their own kind of sensibility in their users. Indeed the whole cognitive environment is changing and accelerating. The question is what/who is the content of FaceBook, Youtube or Wikipedia ?

Another quip favoured by McLuhan is: "Why should I go to school to interrupt my education?" The core idea was that people in need of instruction could find outside the walls of the institution much more than within. Is this still true today?

This lecture is an attempt, inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s many fine observations on education, to probe the technological and cognitive conditions attending pedagogical initiatives today.