Thinking Through Technology: Frankenstein’s Problem (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Technology)

Abstract

Introduction:  Thinking through technology1 began for me as a response by a philosopher to a Dean’s rather ominous charge to the faculty to incorporate technology more thoroughly into our college teacher education courses. I had recently begun drawing on videos to enhance text materials, but I knew that this was not what the Dean fully had in mind. How was I, I wondered, a philosopher who ‘taught’ her courses by developing a lively, embodied, dialogic ‘community of inquiry’ around common course readings (and now viewings, too) to face up to the challenges of technology in the classroom? Moreover, how was I to do that as a philosopher?