Skimming through this thought provoking book by Rob Stones on Social Theory and Current Affairs, I was struck by how his core argument could be expanded into how to think contextually about any social phenomena. I’ve added the bold below to illustrate the core steps he identifies which I would argue are essential to have realistic appraisals of technology in educational settings:
Events can only be understood once they are envisaged as positioned within this context, which should be thought of as a network of social and material relations in which the events have been produced. It isn’t possible to understand how these events have come about, to understand what causal sequences are responsible for producing them, unless an effort is made to think about how they have emerged from a particular set of relations and circumstances that stretch beyond the immediate moments and visual spectacles of the events themselves. The immediate events have a history that is now in the past and, in this age of extended, complex societies, they will have been affected by processes that are also spatially distant. It is necessary to understand these ‘absent’ or ‘invisible’ conditions in order to understand why and how the events have come about as they have, and what alternatives are possible. This means we need to develop ways of thinking, ways of seeing, that incorporate these absent conditions if we are to have a better grasp of news and current affairs.
pg xiii
Mark Carrigan 