“Does It Make More Sense to Invest in School Security or SEL?” Edsurge asked in 2018. Those are the choices education technology now has for us apparently: surveillance or surveillance.
Our non-compliance is not intended to be rebellious. We simply do not comply with things that harm us. But since a great number of things that harm us are not harmful to most neurotypicals, we are viewed as untamed and in need of straightening up.
Forced intimacy is a sign you failed to design for inclusion.
This open access textbook on autistic community and the neurodiversity movement—edited by an autistic neurodiversity researcher—is a free download.
Parents and educators, check it out.
Autistic Community and the Neurodiversity Movement: Stories from the Frontline
What if anything “good” about ed-tech this past decade was so overwhelmed by all the money funneled into the “bad” that the “good” didn’t matter one whit? What if all that “bad” meant any semblance of “good” was stifled, suffocated? What if, as David Kernohan has suggested, there wasn’t anything this past decade but technological disappointment? What if there wasn’t anything good about ed-tech?
I’m serious. Sit with that sentence a minute before you pipe up to defend your favorite app or social network or that cute robot your kids coded to move in a circle. What if there wasn’t anything good about ed-tech? What if ed-tech is totally inseparable from privatization, behavioral engineering, and surveillance? What if, by surrendering to the narrative that schools must be increasingly technological, we have neglected to support them in being be remotely human? What if we can never address the crises of our democracies, of our planet if we keep insisting on the benevolence of tech?
Source: HEWN, No. 337
Via:
Just as the Internet and social platforms more broadly have been accompanied by a range of techno-utopian mythologies, so too has participatory culture and micro-celebrity. These mythologies, promoted through mainstream media discourses, technology firms, and at times, in academic scholarship, often highlight the potential of social media to promote progressive ideals of social equality. Specifically, they promote social media—and the micro-celebrity it enables—as a fundamentally democratizing force where anyone can have a voice and help shape public discourse.
In recent years, a range of Internet scholarship has begun to challenge some of these mythologies. For example, scholars of online micro-celebrity and influencer culture have highlighted the inherent neoliberal self-commodification involved in these processes, in which users brand themselves through influencer marketing (Abidin 2018; Marwick 2015). Media historian Fred Turner (2018, 144) has argued that platforms such as Twitter and YouTube have enabled “charismatic, personality-centered modes of authoritarianism” in which the expression of individuality online can ultimately serve authoritarian ends.
By adopting micro-celebrity practices that stress relatability, authenticity, and accountability, they differentiate themselves from both the mainstream media and progressive politics as they perceive them. Thus, the YouTubers in this study align micro-celebrity practices with a reactionary political standpoint. These findings complicate previous mythologies of Internet celebrity that treat participatory culture as inherently progressive.
certain political influencers have specifically aligned micro-celebrity practices with reactionary, anti-progressive, and frequently conspiratorial politics.
Importantly, by stressing the ideals of relatability, authenticity, and accountability—all of which have positive connotations—the practices of micro-celebrity, when paired with reactionary politics, can serve as an entry point for more extreme views. The rejection of mainstream media is often the first step in radicalization for many young people, as their previous worldviews get destabilized (Marwick and Lewis 2017). YouTube provides a fertile environment for this kind of radicalization: its recommendation algorithm frequently encourages users toward increasingly extremist content, and political YouTubers (including those included in this analysis) frequently collaborate with more extreme guests, thus giving them a platform for their views (Lewis 2018; Tufekci 2018).
Via:
Anyone got a playlist of openly autistic artists? #AskingAutistics
My two favorite bands are the rockin’ power trios @Screamales & @TheWarningBand2. Following their careers has been a joy & a privilege. Thanks for all the great music.
On the links between autism and PTSD:
I touch on this in “Design is Tested at the Edges: Intersectionality, The Social Model of Disability, and Design for Real Life”, which includes this relevant quote on trauma:
People who enter services are frequently society’s most vulnerable-people who have experienced extensive trauma, adversity, abuse, and oppression throughout their lives. At the same time, I struggle with the word “trauma” because it signifies some huge, overt event that needs to pass some arbitrary line of “bad enough” to count. I prefer the terms “stress” and “adversity.” In the book, I speak to the problem of language and how this insinuates differences that are not there, judgments, and assumptions that are untrue. Our brains and bodies don’t know the difference between “trauma” and “adversity”-a stressed fight/flight state is the same regardless of what words you use to describe the external environment. I’m tired of people saying “nothing bad ever happened to me” because they did not experience “trauma.” People suffer, and when they do, it’s for a reason.
“Behaviorism is the foundation of education technology.” It is also the foundation of too much of what we platforms do. See Audrey Watters’ review of the past decade of unethical and misguided ed-tech. Resisting behaviorism in education and in our companies is part of the work of the neurodiversity and disability movements. Allies welcome.
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