The Postdigital in Pandemic Times: a Comment on the Covid-19 Crisis and its Political Epistemologies
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The Postdigital in Pandemic Times: a Comment on the Covid-19 Crisis and its Political Epistemologies Mark Coeckelbergh 1 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Keywords Covid-19 . Pandemic . Postdigital . Politics . Epistemology . Phenomenology .
Philosophy of technology . Risk
Digitize or Die! What does the ‘digital’ and ‘digitalization’ mean today, for education and in general? Instead of jumping to an abstract theoretical discussion in the literature, let me start with something concrete, very concrete unfortunately: the current Covid-19 pandemic that currently disrupts our lives and societies. With regard to understanding our relation to the digital and digital technologies, this crisis seems to present us with a challenging paradox. On the one hand, it seems that there is very little ‘virtual’ or ‘digital’ about it; instead, reality violently breaks in. This crisis, understood as an event, is not about otherworldly digital spaces or virtual worlds but about all too real bodies, viruses, face masks, ventilators, and coffins. It almost seems like reality takes revenge: ‘You were fascinated by computers, the Internet, and your social media. But what does it all matter now, huh? Forget about your digital revolution and your ideas about new skills for a bright digital future; education should be about learning real skills such as medical care and something you thought belongs to another century: how to properly wash your hands.’ The virus will help you to get rid of your obsession with numbers and theory. One the other hand, the digital and digitalization seems more important than ever: in times of Covid-19, it becomes clear that we were much too slow with digitalizing education, work, and other fields, and we should be damn lucky that we have all our digital tools to communicate and get information in times of lockdown: our lives literally depend on them. If we can go on with our lives and education, it is because—thank god—we still have these digital technologies. Again, we are taught a lesson: ‘You (teacher, employer, politician) believed you have still years to implement * Mark Coeckelbergh [email protected]
1
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Postdigital Science and Education
digitalization in your organization, practices, and country. And you, students, employees, citizens, you believed you could go on as always with your miserable, unenhanced offline lives. You were so wrong. If you didn’t listen to us, experts, the virus will teach you now, digital analphabets. Digitize or die!’ Luckily, however, the paradox is just that: a paradox. It is only an apparent opposition; it can be resolved and this is how: Both points of view assume a false opposition between, on the one hand, a ‘virtual’ unreal sphere called the 'digital’ and ‘online’ and, on the other hand, a ‘real’ sphere called ‘analogue’ and ‘offline.’ This metaphysics has been successfully criticized in both ‘postdigital’ studies and philosophy of technology. Postdigital scholars have argued that we no longer live in a world where
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