This document discusses concerns about the rise of educational technology (ed-tech). It references historical figures like the Luddites who resisted industrial machines and authors who have criticized an over-reliance on technology. The document questions whether ed-tech companies are accountable for how their products impact students and society. It cites B.F. Skinner's work on behaviorism and manipulation through reinforcement as similar to how some ed-tech products aim to control learning. Overall, the document raises issues about the unchecked growth of ed-tech and lack of responsibility from its creators to consider education's role in shaping the future.

1. Ed-Tech’s Monsters
Audrey Watters
@audreywatters
!
September 2014 - #altc

3. “Riding Giants”

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— Walt Whitman

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— Lord Byron

10. "According to Pellew's Life of
Lord Sidmouth (1847) Ned Lud
was a person of weak intellect
who lived in a Leicestershire
village about 1779, and who in a
fit of insane rage rushed into a
‘stockinger's’ house, and
destroyed two frames so
completely that the saying ‘Lud
must have been here’ came to
be used throughout the hosiery
districts when a stocking-frame
had undergone extraordinary
damage. The stor y lacks
confirmation. It appears that in
1811–13 the nickname ‘Captain
Ludd’ or ‘King Lud’ wa s
c ommo n l y g i v e n t o t h e
ringleaders of the Luddites.”

11. Is it okay to be a Luddite?
— Thomas Pynchon

13. “…to deny the machine”
!
—Thomas Pynchon

15. “…our sin is not that we
created technologies but that
we failed to love and care for
them.”
!
—Bruno Latour

18. “Comparable results have been obtained with pigeons,
rats, dogs, monkeys, human children… and psychotic
subjects. In spite of great phylogenetic differences, all
these organisms show amazingly similar properties of
the learning process. It should be emphasized that this
has been achieved by analyzing the effects of
reinforcement and by designing techniques that
manipulate reinforcement with considerable precision.
Only in this way can the behavior of the individual be
brought under such precise control.”
!
— B. F. Skinner

19. The Rise and Fall of “Luddite”

20. Where are ed-tech’s monsters?

21. "Education is the point at which we decide whether
we love the world enough to assume responsibility
for it…” — Hannah Arendt