Education and Technological Unemployment

356 Pages·2019·4.42 MB·English

by  Michael A. Peters, Petar Jandrić, Alexander J. Means

Michael A. Peters · Petar Jandrić ·
Alexander J. Means E ditors
Education and
Technological
Unemployment
Education and Technological Unemployment
ć
Michael A. Peters Petar Jandri
(cid:129) (cid:129)
Alexander J. Means
Editors
Education and Technological
Unemployment
123
Editors
Michael A.Peters PetarJandrić
Beijing NormalUniversity Zagreb University of AppliedSciences
Beijing,China Zagreb,Croatia
Alexander J.Means
University of Hawaiʻiat Mānoa
Honolulu, HI, USA
ISBN978-981-13-6224-8 ISBN978-981-13-6225-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-6225-5
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Preface
Technological unemployment is a crucial issue of our time. The evaluations of its
likelihood vary with increasing reports coming down on the side of severe eco-
nomicandsocialdisruption,althoughtherearedissenterswhodisputetheevidence
andarguethatthenewtechnologieswillproduceasmanyjobsastheydestroy.To
us,thispositivereadingandpredictionisbasedonamisreadingofthenatureofthe
new technologies and their convergence and synergy. With the so-called
nano-info-bio-cogno technologies and their convergence, there is little doubt that
we are not facing a straightforward and linear development. The changes are
exponential and dynamic. They will be far reaching. When one contemplates the
nextgenerationdrivenbythepowerofquantumcomputingandadvancealgorithms
thatdriveIndustry4.0and‘intelligent’manufacturing,itisclearfromemergentand
early existing experimental practices that these tendencies will accelerate and lead
to labourless factories working on a 24/7 cycle. This is not to embrace a techno-
logical determinism, but simply to recognize the strength of existing trends and
national planning intentions.
Given this possibility, it is not a time for fear and trepidation but rather for
rethinkingtheinstitutionslikelytobemostaffectedstartingwiththelabourmarket
and labour institutions and the role they play within the economy and society. If
thereisasignificantreductioninthedemandforlabour,whowillbemostaffected
andhowshouldgovernmentsandunionsrespond?Thatisthecriticalquestionset.
It is also clear that the group most affected will be today’s youth, who already
experience the greatest levels of unemployment. The second concern are institu-
tions which have the power to shape these trends for the future, including but not
limited to education. How will education deal with this problem when the con-
nection between education and work begins to dissolve?
Of course, it is necessary for labour and education institutions to engage in
critical dialogues with all major parties and stakeholders in government-led policy
discussions about what ameliorative actions can be taken. More importantly,
however, this is also a time for critical reflection and creative thinking about the
purposes and natures of these institutions. Indeed, if the transformation is like an
avalanche then we need to fundamentally rethink these institutions and their
v
vi Preface
relationshipswiththerestofsociety.Oursisatimeforphilosophicalreflection,for
vision and imagination not just aimed at how we might hang on to what we have
got,butratherasinitiatingaseriousdiscussionaboutwhatourfuturemaybe.Once
again,weneedtorethinkthefuturenatureofsocietyandanewsetofprinciplesfor
anew knowledge economythat creates possibilities for new formsofartificial and
augmentedintelligence, newformsofanalysisandnewformsofsociety.Weneed
newformsofunderstandingtheworldaroundus,newformsofsocialstruggleand
newformsofeducation—toactivelyshapethenaturehumanlabourinthetimesto
come.
Beijing, China Michael A. Peters
Zagreb, Croatia Petar Jandrić
Honolulu, USA Alexander J. Means
November 2018
Contents
1 Introduction: Technological Unemployment and the Future
of Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Michael A. Peters, Petar Jandrić and Alexander J. Means
Part I The Postdigital Fragmentation of Education and Work
2 ‘Intelligent Capitalism’ and the Disappearance of Labour:
Whitherto Education?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Michael A. Peters and Wei Zhao
3 The Lack of Work and the Contemporary University . . . . . . . . . . 29
Greg Thompson and Ian Cook
4 On Autonomy and the Technological Abolition
of Academic Labour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Richard Hall
5 Transdisciplinary Engagement with Enforced Dependency:
A Platform for Higher Education to Address Crises
in Employment, Sustainability, and Democracy
in Technological Society . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Tina Lynn Evans
6 Is Entrepreneurial Education the Solution to the Automation
Revolution?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Chris Arthur
7 Technological Unemployment and Psychological
Well-being—Curse or Benefit? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Neil Frude
8 Technological Unemployment as a Test of the Added Value
of Being Human . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Steve Fuller
vii
viii Contents
Part II What Can Places of Learning Really Do About the Future
of Work?
9 Acceleration, Automation and Pedagogy: How the Prospect
of Technological Unemployment Creates New Conditions
for Educational Thought. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Sam Sellar
10 Educating for a Workless Society: Technological Advance,
Mass Unemployment and Meaningful Jobs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
George Lăzăroiu
11 ‘Employable Posthumans’: Developing HE Policies
that Strengthen Human Technological Collaboration
not Separation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Sarah Hayes
12 Career Guidance and the Changing World of Work:
Contesting Responsibilising Notions of the Future . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Tristram Hooley
13 Graduate Employability (GE) Paradigm Shift: Towards Greater
Socio-emotional and Eco-technological Relationalities
of Graduates’ Futures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
Nataša Lacković
14 Care Amidst and Beyond Technological Unemployment. . . . . . . . . 213
Murray Robertson
Part III Education in a Workless Society
15 A Wantless, Workless World: How the Origins
of the University Can Inform Its Future. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
Nathan Schneider
16 Education for a Post-Work Future: Automation, Precarity,
and Stagnation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Alexander J. Means
17 Refusal of Work, Liberation of Time and the Convivial
University . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Patrick Carmichael
18 Moving Beyond Microwork: Rebundling Digital Education
and Reterritorialising Digital Labour . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
Michael Gallagher
19 The ‘Creative, Problem-Solving Entrepreneur’: Alternative
Futures for Education in the Age of Machine Learning? . . . . . . . . 297
Jeremy Knox
Contents ix
20 Towards Epistemic Health: On Stiegler, Education and the Era
of Technological Unemployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
Mark Dawson
21 Education as Utopian Method: Reimagining Education
for a Post-alienated Labor World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Michael T. Hayes
22 Afterword: On Education and Technological Unemployment. . . . . 343
Timothy W. Luke
Index .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... .... .... .... .... ..... .... 351
Editors and Contributors
About the Editors
Michael A. Peters is Distinguished Professor of Education at Beijing Normal
University and Emeritus Professor in Educational Policy, Organization, and
Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (US). He has held
posts at the University of Waikato (NZ), the University of Glasgow and the
UniversityofAuckland,wherehehadaPersonalChair.HeistheEditor-in-Chiefof
Educational Philosophy and Theory (T&F), The Video Journal of Education and
Pedagogy (Brill), Open Review of Educational Research (T&F) and Knowledge
Cultures (Addleton). He has written some 90 books, including Wittgenstein’s
Education: ‘A picture held us captive’ (2018) and Post-Truth and Fake News
(2018).
Petar Jandrić is Professor and Director of B.Sc. (Informatics) programme at the
Zagreb University ofAppliedSciences,Croatia.Hispreviousacademicaffiliations
include Croatian Academic and Research Network, National e-Science Centre at
the University of Edinburgh, Glasgow School of Art, and the University of East
London. Petar’s research interests are situated at the post-disciplinary intersections
between technologies, pedagogies and the society, and research methodologies of
hischoice areinter-, trans- andanti-disciplinarity. HislatestbooksareLearningin
the Age of Digital Reason (2017) and The Digital University: A Dialogue and
Manifesto (2018). He is Editor-in-Chief of Postdigital Science and Education:
https://www.springer.com/education+%26+language/journal/42438. Personal web-
site: http://petarjandric.com/.
Alexander J. Means is Assistant Professor of Educational Policy with Global
PerspectivesattheUniversityofHawaiʻiatMānoa.Heistheauthor mostrecently
ofLearningtoSavetheFuture:RethinkingEducationandWorkintheEraDigital
Capitalism (Routledge, 2018); Educational Commons in Theory and Practice:
Global Pedagogy and Politics (Palgrave, 2017); and The Wiley Handbook of
Global Education Reform (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018). His research examines
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