The Technologisation of Education and the Pathway to Depersonalisation and Dehumanisation

Abstract

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, it is a central contention of this piece that there exists a growing crisis of depersonalisation and dehumanisation which has emerged from the computechnological texturing of contemporary society. We shall endeavour to show that the primary mode of electronic communication is characterised by the covert depersonalisation of human relations. Depersonalisation, as we shall define this computechnological dimension of the problem refers to the condition of human relationships wherein we have come progressively to substitute face-to-face human exchange in preference for technologically mediated forms of electronic communication. One significant paradox to be explored here will reveal that we personalise and anthropomorphise our computechnology, while simultaneously depersonalising ourselves and treating others as if they were machines. The criterion of 'employment-efficiency-expectation', as we call it, is now determined by the work capabilities of computechnology, not the work-potential of humans defined in terms of integrated well-being and mental health. When we increasingly treat each other as machines, and our machines as humans, the time has truly come to reflect not only on how we value our relationships with each other, but on the way in which we have come, somewhat mindlessly, to value the very tools of technology which depersonalise and in turn dehumanise those relationships.