Learning and the politics of digitalization

In research on digitalization and learning, digital technologies (just as technology in general) are often understood as a neutral means at the free disposal of learners. What matters are only issue the ends for which (digital) technologies are used in individual or social action. Such a notion of digital objects as a means to an end points to an important insight. Rather than human agency and the learners’ learning being in some way causally determined by digital technologies, their use also opens up the possibility of relating to these digital devices and, in the process of acting and learning, employing them for self-chosen purposes. However: no means is just a means. The means-to-an-end notion of things remains one-sided and reductive, since not only do learners something with digital things, digital things also do something with learners. Digital devices, machines and systems represent contradictory forms of life, political artifacts embodying pre-decisions and particular materialized actions. Building on critical theories of digitalization, the paper explores the politics and materialized actions of digital artifacts in relation to the activity of learning.