Transdisciplinarity: A New Learning Paradigm for the Digital Age?

I have been an educator, administrator, writer and creative artist for over fourty years. During that time, most of the disciplines with which I have been involved have changed. For better or for worse, the very nature of disciplines (of both an artistic and analytic nature), their function and their role within and outside of institutions has shifted. The context for this change is not just the individual nature or history of one or other disciplines or research practices. Rather, the social and cultural conditions for the creation and communication of ideas, artifacts, knowledge and information have been transformed. From my point of view, this transformation has been extremely positive. It has resulted in the formation of new disciplines and new approaches to comprehending the very complex nature of western societies. However, we are still a long way from developing a holistic understanding of the implications of these social and cultural shifts and this brief essay can only offer a hint as to why so many distinct changes have happened in such a short time. 

From a cultural point of view, the impact of this process of transformation first appeared in a symptomatic fashion in the early 20th century, when the cinema became a mass medium and accelerated with the advent of radio and then television (although there are many parallels with what happened to literature and photography in the 19th century). Networked technologies have added another layer to the changes and another level of complexity to the ways in which ideas are communicated and discussed, as well as learned (and in so doing further fudging the boundaries between disciplines). The conventions that have governed communications processes for over fifty years have been turned inside out by the Internet and this has led to some fundamental redefinitions of information, knowledge, space and time. 

Technology plays a role here, but it is not the only player in what has been a dramatic move from an industrial/agrarian society to a mixed environment that is as dependent on cultural activity, networks and information as it is on the state and conventional notions of political and economic activity. The disjunctures at work in our society and the upheavals caused by profound cultural and social change have begun to affect the orientation, direction and substance of many different academic and art-related disciplines. Although some of these disciplines have been around for a long time, part of my argument in this essay will be that most disciplines have been under stress for the better part of the 20th century. We are very likely in the early stages of a long-term shift in direction and it may take some time yet before that shift is fully understood. One important way of understanding these changes is through the an examination of what has happened to learning in the digital age and the role that technology has played in sustaining and sometimes inhibiting changes in the way learning takes place both inside and outside institutions.  

I will discuss post-secondary institutions because I know them best, but I believe that many of the following arguments apply to most forms of education. Modern universities now operate within a context that is both challenging and undergoing fundamental change. My effort in this essay is to try and understand why some of our disciplines may be in crisis and why transdisciplinarity may be one of the best solutions to that crisis. It is my feeling that a combination of phenomena and a particularly difficult context for education has begun to foreground a series of contradictions that require some elucidation. These include increasing questions about the relevance of university education for the future and questions about how universities manage themselves and what the balance should be among research, teaching, learning and administration. 

 At the same time, I am concerned with the evolving role of disciplines within post-secondary educational institutions and the challenges that a new context is introducing into the learning environment. What is that new context? Well, it is not one thing or one phenomenon; rather, I believe that we are in the midst of a ‘sea change’ in our understanding of the communications setting that is the underpinning for learning, pedagogy and education. This is a bold claim. For example, it is not possible, in my opinion to examine what we teach without linking that to the networked world. Information now flows from so many venues that what we mean by content needs to be examined from many different and sometimes-conflicting perspectives. Educational institutions are becoming one of many possible places that learners can seek information and knowledge, but they are no longer the only place. 

An interesting phenomenon which exemplifies this point and which is enhanced by using the Internet is auto-didacticism, people who teach themselves. A good example of this is in the computer sciences where students as hackers learn programming from each other as well as from sources that are sometimes legitimate and other times not. Another example is the many different ways in which young people alter the computer games that they play. There is a vast movement of gamers who have learned how to ‘patch’ games and introduce ‘mods’ which transform not only the aesthetic of the game, but often its intentions. The marvel of auto-didacticism is the extent to which at least in the digital era, learning turns into networked dialogue among anonymous individuals who dedicate themselves to projects that they are working on. The development of the LINUX operating system (which was the product of thousands of peoples contributions) is a further example of this growing and important shift in how ideas and information are exchanged. All of these examples point towards a complex landscape in which learning takes place within a variety of different settings and where notions of authority as well as authorship are under constant pressure.

The digital revolution has disrupted and will continue to disrupt what we mean by learning and how we organize our disciplines. Suffice to say, that to think about transdisciplinarity in a networked world is to think about disciplines in a different and evolving context of interconnection and complex forms of communications and interchange. The fluidity is sometimes startling, but a necessary if not creative condition which can transform the exchange of ideas. Or, put another way, the public sphere is no longer dependent upon the particular forms of dialogue to which we have grown accustomed and new forms will have to be developed. This doesn’t make universities redundant as much as it shifts the ground for the conversations that we can have and has significant implications for the processes of communications that we engage in on a daily basis.

The discipline of Communications (which matured over the last thirty years) perhaps more than others represents the shift from a mono-disciplinary approach to a multi-disciplinary strategy. This may well be its undoing, but at a minimum I believe that communications has helped us to conceptualize as well as explain some of the changes that we are experiencing. The status of disciplines like communications does of course largely depend on the definitions that we apply to the activities of research and practice within both education and society. For example, the fact that there is now a discipline in the universities with the name of media studies is largely the result of the increasing importance of media in society and a growing recognition that critical as well as theoretical research is needed if we are to understand how the media work and what their influence is on our daily lives. The disciplines that we are a part of at universities have grown out of shared social, political, cultural and economic concerns. Disciplines are based on a systematic history, one that includes not only particular methodologies, but also specific concerns that are sustained in a cohesive way over time. 

In Western cultures disciplines developed because of a felt need for sites of rational discourse, reason and a sense that without boundaries knowledge cannot be rigorously pursued or deepened. Yet, those boundaries are neither as natural nor as fixed as the history of disciplines would suggest. Nor should they be. Rather, as with knowledge and learning, the question is how to create sites of engagement, which will support some degree of stability while recognizing the need for continual change and responsiveness to the social, cultural and economic pressures that surround the learning experience.  

Disciplines are examples of the synergistic relationship between the perceived needs of social formations and the common assumption that economic and political progress comes from an educated populace. The assumption that education and progress are linked is of course an eighteenth as well as nineteenth century concept, which developed in part because literacy was assumed to be central to bourgeois society. It was and still would be a heresy to suggest that literacy may not only be found through the comprehension of texts and that there may be many other venues that encourage personal and social growth. I am of course not arguing against the value of literacy, just against the received opinion that to understand means to read, to learn means to write and that reading and writing are the foundation upon which all else is built, especially in the educational system and particularly in the digital age. 

The discipline that I received my doctorate in is Communications. Historically the development of the discipline of communications was the product of a convergence among a nascent media studies, cultural studies, film studies, literary studies, cultural anthropology, semiotics, feminist studies and art history. It is clear that a broader mapping was needed to sustain the multi-disciplinary interests of different scholars. This was also, clearly, a response to changes in our societies. Other areas like linguistics, sociology and political science watched in amazement as communications researchers borrowed and begged from everywhere in order to engage with some of the central cultural and social phenomena of the 20^th century. It is fascinating how quickly communications with its sub-disciplines like film studies, media studies and cultural studies spread and how many departments were created or recreated to accommodate faculty and student interest. So, we have an interesting paradox. Aren’t these developments evidence of the ability of disciplines to evolve and change? Doesn’t this suggest that universities are supple and responsive places? This profusion of disciplines also suggests that the antennae of researchers were carefully tuned to the changes going on in society at large. As media became more ubiquitous, as more and more devices of communications appeared, as our entire society geared itself towards a technological shift, many departments and disciplines, many teachers and administrators responded in a positive and constructive manner. 

The paradox is that this is both true and false. It is false because the newer disciplines simply transported earlier intellectual paradigms onto the media for example without due concern for specificity or context. Modernist notions of canon creation allowed and encouraged a few paradigmatic ideas to become central and foundational far too quickly. The relationships among the various disciplines became obscured. Hovering in the background were concerns that interdisciplinarity was simply too general and not specific enough to encourage rigorous scholarship. And then there was the teaching. Because these areas were and are of interest to students who bath in the phantasmagoria of media and culture on an everyday basis, these courses attracted large numbers of students at all levels. People had to be hired to service demand. Doctoral programs grew. More and more conferences were organized by faculty anxious to understand each other’s work. At the same time, expectations about rigour and connections to more traditional disciplines — to the broader constellation of concerns within universities seemed to be of marginal concern. Ironically, this new area, so unaware of how disciplines can quickly lose their edge, so disconnected from similar research going on in other areas, growing so rapidly found itself to be mainstream in society and under attack in the university. 

Somehow, the broad vision of Communications was being transformed into what looked increasingly like literary studies of the 1950’s. The fragmentation was enormous and continues to this day. This would not necessarily be a negative were it not for the fact that the eclecticism (which I believe can and should be supported in certain circumstances) became self-referential. That is, research in the area referred increasingly to literature that most researchers outside of the field would not or could not read. And in universities the reaction to that lack of interaction is that silos go up, walls are built to keep ideas and people out of each other’s purview. There are many disciplines other than Communications that have followed a similar trajectory. 

I am not suggesting that the inherent transdisciplinary character of communications led to these problems. I am suggesting that the way in which that transdisciplinarity is practiced needs to be examined with close attention paid to the tensions between applied forms of research in communications (international policy, for example) and research that is oriented towards criticism, theory and history. It is an irony that just as Communications became increasingly accepted as a discipline, it fractured from within and lost sight of its goals. The most telling example of this is that early research into the Internet came from interdisciplinary scholars in the science and engineering and not from scholars in communications. 

Now, as the technologies of entertainment and communication have become not only ubiquitous but also foundational to everyday life, there is an increasing convergence among the various strands that broadly speaking make up the study of communications. The digital era is very much about the fudging of boundaries and this has increasingly meant that the study of communications cannot and should not be pursued in isolation of the computer sciences or psychology or the neurosciences. These disciplines are also increasingly attracted to more rigourous forms of research in anthropology and communications.   

How does what I have said impact the development, maintenance and continuation of the disciplines I have been talking about? Well, at the same time that we are researching, inventing and reinventing our areas of interest, we need to stay connected to the many ways in which all disciplines are engaged in a similar struggle. That struggle tries to bring purpose to ideas, tries to create a context for a transformed and transformative humanism and tries to connect the value and depth of research to the process of communication among all members of the community (inside and outside of the university) and most importantly, students.

As I have said, with respect to the discipline of Communications, the arrival of a plethora of new instruments of communications, new technologies and new media has created a wonderful opportunity to bring the sciences, engineering, computer sciences, social sciences and humanities together. I am involved in numerous projects with researchers and practitioners with whom I would never normally have had contact. We are transgressing all of the boundaries and mapping a new territory that hopefully will re-energize our teaching and redefine our disciplines. I say this with some pride but also with trepidation. I recognize how fragile this process can be and have been made wary of the potential for politics and competitiveness to interfere with good intentions and well laid plans. Yet, I am hopeful that our students will resist the seemingly natural tendency of our institutions and disciplines to narrow their concerns, and will keep the pot boiling as to the relevance of the courses that they are taking and the information that they are processing and learning.    

Often, the assumption that is made is that technology has been the main cause of the shift that we are presently experiencing. But, I believe that this change has been in the works since the advent of distribution and communications systems for mass culture and the linking of culture to education and learning. In addition, the motor for many of the changes has been scientific research in a variety of fields, but most especially in physics and biology. The integration of science and technology and the strengthening of the social sciences have combined to transform what we mean by subjectivity and human identity. This is in turn has led to a redefinition of our sense of time and of space. In particular, "time" in the early 21st century has less to do with measurement than with flow, which may well be an excellent metaphor for the direction in which our disciplines need to head. So, by way of summary, let me suggest the following:

1. Technology is one of the drivers of change in the shift to transdisciplinary models, but not the only one.

2. The integration of research in the sciences with research that has led to technological innovation and social analysis has been supported by a massive change in communications and distribution systems. This is turn has changed the ways in which we translate innovation into practice. It has also transformed how we locate and sustain change at the economic, social and cultural level. All of these elements have an impact on what we mean by learning and transdisciplinarity.

3. Networks of communication have altered what we mean by information and also how our culture views knowledge and this has had a profound impact on the arts and on the social sciences.

4. These changes have redefined our notions of time and space and our ability to map and develop explanatory models for what is happening around us with the result that different disciplines have had to alter their direction (good examples are geography and architecture).

5. More importantly the metaphors that we normally use to explain change have been altered by the integration of media and images into every aspect of our daily lives. The digital revolution has merely extended the boundaries of these transformative phenomena. 

6. All of this has affected the definitions and explanations of disciplines and it may be the case that transdisciplinarity provides us with the strategies that we need to understand the radically different boundaries within which disciplines must now operate. 

7. There is a strong desire to recognize the importance of convergence between disciplines and research and scholarship. This desire for convergence must also recognize diversity and difference. It will only be possible to move from specialized and closed approaches within disciplines, if we also acknowledge that their relatedness allows us to select what needs to come together, while celebrating separateness, locality and community.

A significant example of these processes at work is that one of the most important of the physical sciences relating to the brain, the neurosciences, has become a combination of anatomy, physiology, chemistry, biology, pharmacology and genetics with a profound concern for culture, ethics and social context. Genetics itself makes use of many different disciplines to achieve its aims (including data visualization). To survive in the 21st century the neurosciences will have to link all of their parts even further and bring genetics, the environment, and the socio-cultural context together in order to develop more complex models of mind.

It may well be the case that no amount of research will produce a grand theory. But, as the great neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran has suggested, the most puzzling aspect of our existence is that we can ask questions about the physical and psychological nature of the brain and the mind. And we do this as if we can somehow step outside of the parameters of our own physiology and see into consciousness. Whatever the merits of this type of research, it cannot avoid the necessity of integration and the inter-related nature of our disciplines. The need for a common ground has never been greater. The question is, will our institutions be up to the challenge?

Virtual/Real/Virtual (3)

(This is the third and final part of a presentation to DIGIFEST in Toronto in late October of 2011)

"An Ad Hoc Committee of the National Association of Research in Science Teaching
(NARST) stated in 2003 that there are three “important characteristics of learning… First, learning is a personal process, second, it is contextualized, and third, it takes time…Learning occurs when people reconstruct meaning and understanding; a different way of thinking, perhaps, or a different way of responding to an idea or event. Learning that occurs today depends on yesterday’s learning and is the foundation for tomorrow’s learning. The cumulative, iterative process of learning emphasizes the importance of time.”. Our own research in this area reinforces the importance of iteration." (Susan Stocklmayer, Public awareness of science and informal learning - a perspective on the role of science museums, published by the National Academies in the US)

Learning takes time and follows many pathways. A good teacher can create a map with destinations, but the routes have to be developed by the students. Those routes may meander for a while because the iterative process is not the same for everyone. Knowledge and information can be shared along the way. Wisdoms can be imparted through discussion and interaction, but these travels will always be characterized by the richness of the unexpected sometimes colliding with the expectations of teachers and other times producing engaged and engaging dialogue.

The tyranny of schedules in schools is that they artificially 'locate' learning at a time and place that may not be convenient for everyone. The schedule cannot account for iterative processes because it generates a linear type of learning that goes against the essence of learning experiences. We have created schools where the mapping from experience to learning is not fluid enough to match the needs of a new generation.

Iteration, non-linearity, informal learning. These are all characteristics of networked environments which by their very nature encourage what has been achieved by the Khan Academy for example. Here is one individual without any resources other than his own skills and intelligence, who decided to create a learning environment through video demonstrations. He has 2600 hundred courses up at this site and receives thousands of learners every day. Students use the site to move at their own pace. Khan is pointing to something very important. Courses and their contents can now be customized to the needs of learners and learners can choose when and where to learn. 

"To summarise: learning rarely, if ever, occurs and develops from a single experience. It is cumulative, emerging through diverse experiences. It is a dynamic, never-ending, and holistic phenomenon of constructing personal meaning. Much of what people come to know about the world, including the world of science content and process, derives from real world experiences within a diversity of appropriate physical and social contexts, motivated by an intrinsic desire to learn." (Susan Stocklmayer, Public awareness of science and informal learning - a perspective on the role of science museums, published by the National Academies in the US)

So, it seems clear to me that the digital age is emphatically about informality — learning through multiple means in multiple ways and in many different contexts. A key question remains. Can all of this informality be structured? Should it be? How can the dots be connected between learning that is driven by personal concerns and areas like mathematics and writing that need some formality in order to be mastered? Must all learning be governed by choice? Or are there certain basic subjects that require mastery through more formal strategies?

I made the point earlier that digital experiences encourage and support the creation of imaginary environments and imaginary connections. This is not a pejorative comment. Rather, what is exciting about these informal spaces for learning is that they are so imaginative, so full and rich with many choices and many possible avenues of exploration. Informal learning then combines with imaginative projection to allow learners and the public to engage with their ideas in many different ways. The challenge for schools is how to frame and harness these various and sometimes different learning strategies. Teachers need to be as adept as learners in a new and engaged multi-disciplinary ecosystem.

Epilogue (The 21^st Century Student)

I will call him Anthony. He arrived in Vancouver with a trunk full of DVD's. He uses SMS and a variety of social networking tools from Twitter to Facebook to communicate with friends and family. He uses a small video camera to record his everyday life and edits the output on a laptop and then uploads the material onto YouTube.

He is adept at video games, though they are not an obsession. Smart phones are expensive, but he finds the money and uses his phone constantly. This sounds familiar; an entire generation working creatively with Facebook and Vimeo and Youtube and Flckr. He loves old movies, hence the DVD's. He knows more about films from the 1970's and 1980's than most film historians. He can quote dialogue from many films and reference specific shots with ease. He uses his expertise in editing to comment on the world and would prefer to show you a short video response to events than just talk about them.

Cultural analysts tend to examine Anthony's activities and use of technology as phenomena, as moving targets which change all the time, just as they saw pop music in the 1960's as a momentary phase or like their early comments on personal computers which did not generally anticipate their present ubiquity.

However, what Anthony is doing is building and creating a new language that combines many of the features of conventional languages but is more of a hybrid of many different modes of expression. Just as we don't really talk about language as a phenomenon, (because it is inherent to everything that we do) we can't deal with this explosion of new languages as if they are simply a phase or a cultural anomaly.

What if this is the new form and shape of writing? What if all of these fragments, verbal, non-verbal, images and sounds are inherent to an entire generation and is their mode of expression?

Language, verbal and written is at the core of what humans do everyday. But, language has always been very supple, capable of incorporating not only new words, but also new modalities of expression. Music for example became a formalized notational system through the adaptation and incorporation of some of the principles of language. Films use narrative, but then move beyond conventional language structure into a hybrid of voice, speech, sounds and images.

As long as Anthony's incorporation of technology and new forms of expression is viewed as a phenomenon it is unlikely that we will understand the degree to which he is changing the fundamental notions of communications and learning to which we have become accustomed over the last century.

Anthony however has many problems with writing. He is uncomfortable with words on a page. He wants to use graphics and other media to make his points. He is more comfortable with the fragment, with the poetic than he is with the whole sentence.

He is prepared to communicate, but only on his own terms.

It is my own feeling that the ubiquity of computers and digital technologies means that all cultural phenomena are now available for use by Anthony and his generation and they are producing a new framework of communications within which writing is only a piece and not the whole.

Some may view this as a disaster. I see Anthony as a harbinger of the future. He will not take traditional composition classes to learn how to write. Instead, he will communicate with the tools that he finds comfortable to use and he will persist in making himself heard or read. But, reading will not only be text-based. Text on a page is as much design as it is media. The elliptical nature of the verbal will have to be accommodated within the traditions of writing, but writing and even grammar will have to change.

I have been talking about a new world of writing that our culture is experimenting with in which conventional notions of texts, literacy and coherence are being replaced with multiples, many media used as much for experience as expression. Within this world, a camera, or mobile phone becomes a vehicle for writing. It is not enough to say that this means the end of literacy as we know it. It simply means that language is evolving to meet the needs of far more complex expectations around communications.

So, the use of a short form like Twitter hints at the importance of the poetic. And the poetic is more connected to Rap music than it is to conventional notions of discursive exchange. In other words, bursts of communications, fragments and sounds combined with images constitute more than just another phase of cultural activity. They are at the heart of something far richer, a phantasmagoria of intersecting modes of communications that in part or in sum will lead to connectivity and interaction and to new forms of learning and knowledge acquisition.

Part 1

Part 2

Virtual/Real/Virtual (2)

(This is the second part of a speech given in Toronto at DIGIFEST)

Virtual spaces contribute to what Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski have described as ‘dynamic density’, a lovely metaphor that describes the intense effects of all the multiple levels of communication that occur in cyberspace environments. Digital ecosystems operate at so many levels that they are almost impossible to control and regulate. A further challenge is that it is very difficult to see into and through all that density and to appreciate where the horizon begins and where it ends. This is why we have tended to see the world today through the lens of globalization which is ultimately an all too simple metaphor to describe the overall complexities of networked cultures, the manner of their interactions and the simultaneous impulse to connect and disconnect.  

It appears as if we can maintain all these forms of disembodied interaction, when in reality the complexity I am describing drives people to seek physically defined experiences in real spaces.  

Try for example to imagine Twitter as the only means of communications between yourself and your family and friends. Or imagine Facebook as the only interface between yourself and the world.

The attraction of virtual spaces is both their convenience and the imaginary environments we create with them. I will return to this point in a moment.

One of the great benefits of this density is its unpredictability. This is what makes political dictatorships nervous. It is impossible to draw a single or simple line from what people say in cyberspace to what they do. It is very hard to anticipate the outcomes of discussions that are populated by hundreds and sometimes thousands of people. Most importantly, cyber environments don’t easily map onto conventional political processes let alone authoritarian ones. 

The Argument

I have been discussing the shifting landscape of digital environments and the implications and outcomes that are produced both culturally and politically by the density of networked connections.

Let me now turn to learning and education within these contexts.

An editorial in the April 8^th, 2010 edition of Nature raises some important issues about student learning experiences in the sciences. [The] "evidence strongly suggests that most of what the general public knows about science is picked up outside school, through things such as television programmes, websites, magazine articles, visits to zoos and museums — and even through hobbies such as gardening and birdwatching. This process of 'informal science education' is patchy, ad hoc and at the mercy of individual whim, all of which makes it much more difficult to measure than formal instruction. But it is also pervasive, cumulative and often much more effective at getting people excited about science — and an individual's realization that he or she can work things out unaided promotes a profoundly motivating sense of empowerment." (Nature 464, 813-814)

The same argument can be made for many other disciplines. The relationship between informal and formal learning is characterized by extreme fuzziness. Classrooms and formal lectures may well be the last place in which empowered and empowering learning takes place. The formal schedules of schools, departments divided into sometimes highly contested disciplines, and the credit system all discourage the value and importance of informal learning.

In fact, learning informally is at the heart of how people discover new things and new ways of understanding the world. For example, a visit to a museum combines the experiences of viewing with the challenges of interpretation. It would be difficult to summarize or quantify the relationships that viewers developed with Mark Rothko's work at a recent retrospective at the Tate Modern in London. Something was happening, although it was difficult to know what. Many visitors sat and stared at the paintings for quite a while. Were they wasting time? Or were they exploring the canvases, their brilliant colours and careful shading?

Part Three 

The first part of this series can be found here.

TED Day One

Kinect 3D



Humans and their Machines

(Patrick Jagoda)

Suddenly, as a result of discontinuities or critical thresholds characteristic of the coevolution of knowledge, the computer has emerged as a tool of choice for observing and simulating the infinite complexity of life, of society, and of the ecosystem—and above all, as a tool for acting on it. (Joël de Rosnay, The Symbiotic Man)

 The Brain Sees, but does the Mind Understand?

As the above quote suggests, Joël De Rosnay goes further than most futurists in his discussion of the transformative impact of computers on everyday life. “This hybrid life, at once biological, mechanical, and electronic, is still coming into being before our very eyes. And we are its cells. In a still unconscious way, we are contributing to the invention of its metabolism, its circulation and its nervous system. We call them economies, markets, roads, communications networks, and electronic highways, but they are the organs and vital systems of an emerging superorganism that will transform the future of humanity and determine its development during the next millennium.” (Xii-xiii)

This is an extraordinary statement and yet there are elements to what de Rosnay is suggesting that must be examined with great seriousness. He is beginning to talk about merging human biology and the way it functions, with digital technologies organized by the programming systems that govern them. As a result, Western societies are developing, albeit tentatively, a completely different understanding of the body and thinking in very different ways than they ever have about the relationships that humans have created with the many devices that surround them.

De Rosnay does not simply collapse technology and the human body. That is not his purpose. Rather, and more importantly, he understands the connections that bind people together. He explores the links that have been created — the webs that join people, their environment and their governments, as well as their cultures, their economies and most importantly their technologies — all of these are at the heart of a new understanding of what it means to be human.

In making this statement, I am aware of its many pitfalls, not the least of which is that there is no clear way of anticipating the outcome of the changes that are presently being experienced. However, there is no doubt that the convergence of biology and technology means that the conventional definitions of human identity and subjectivity will undergo a profound alteration. (Francis Fukuyama offers a very negative evaluation of these changes in Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution, 2002)

Much will have to be learned about how to discriminate between differing definitions and explanations of what it means to be human. Most importantly, baseline assumptions about reality will have to change to reflect the integration of image-based virtual worlds into everyday life. 

More on this in my next post…