Udo Krautwurst

The ‘Unknown Soldiers’ of the Classroom: Paul Virilio and Multimedia (2009)

This chapter puts forward the thesis that instrumental philosophies of technology are insufficient to address issues of multimedia-based instruction in classroom contexts. This is done through a critical examination of the analyses of Paul Virilio. He contends that the increasing militarization of societies globally is closely related to the development and spread of military technologies, including information technologies, among civilians and civilian institutions. Virilio implicitly poses the question of whether technology is a passive and ‘neutral’ instrument, or an active and ‘partial’ agent (and if so, how)? Ultimately, I argue that the value of his approach to technology is in the questions he raises, not necessarily in the answers he provides.

Dr. Udo Krautwurst is a social theorist with particular interest in the anthropology of representations and the historical confrontations between different means of knowledge production and technology. Recently, he has been researching and theorizing the anthropology of science and technology on PEI; he is studying the cultural practices surrounding information technologies and biotechnoscience and how these practices link to issues of power and issues of knowledge production that affect social relations.