Policy Dialogue: Online Education as Space and Place

The rise of online learning over the past few decades has raised fundamental questions about the kinds of “spaces” and “places” this mode of education creates. Do they support meaningful exchanges? Can they advance educational equity, access, and community-building? Are they comparable to in-person classroom experiences? The recent COVID pandemic and the global turn toward virtual learning in response have brought such questions into sharp relief. These were the questions and contextual factors that brought distinguished historian Carroll Pursell and international educational technology authority Toru Iiyoshi together for this policy dialogue. Their conversation takes readers on a wide-ranging discussion about the interplay between education, technology, and society writ large. And they offer insights into the past, present, and likely future of education in an era of accelerating technological change.Carroll Pursell is the Adeline Barry Davee Distinguished Professor of History (Emeritus) at Case Western Reserve University and Distinguished Honorary Professor of History at the Australian National University. He held faculty positions at the University of California at Santa Barbara and served as the Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Lehigh University. Pursell is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and former president of both the International Committee for the History of Technology (ICOHTEC) and the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT), which also awarded him its Leonardo da Vinci Medal for outstanding contributions to the history of technology.Toru Iiyoshi is professor and director at the Center for the Promotion of Excellence in Higher Education at Kyoto University. Previously, he was a senior scholar and director of the Knowledge Media Laboratory at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He also served as senior strategist in the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Iiyoshi is a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Technology and Education and past recipient of the Outstanding Practice Award in Instructional Development and the Robert M. Gagne Award for Research in Instructional Design from the Association for Educational Communications and Technology.HEQ Policy Dialogues are, by design, intended to promote an informal, free exchange of ideas between scholars. At the end of the exchange, we offer a list of references to readers who wish to follow up on sources relevant to the discussion.

Artificial Intelligence, Marketing, and the History of Technology: Kranzberg’s Laws as a Conceptual Lens

Killer applications, or killer apps, are technology applications that profoundly change the way any society thinks, works, and functions. This paper explores Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a killer app, with specific application to marketing. Specifically, this paper employs the lens of technology history to explore the relationship between marketing and AI. Using Kranzberg’s six laws of technology, this paper sheds light on all manner of innovations, how technologies have shaped and impacted society, and how marketers can respond to this. This inquiry offers two main contributions: First, it suggests a number of implications for marketing practice and scholars, derived from each of Kranzberg’s laws. These suggestions are intended to guide marketing practice when implementing or using AI. In addition, this article offers a number of research directions that might be fruitful and important areas for investigation in future scholarly work regarding technology’s impact among marketing scholars.

Histories of Technology and the Environment in Post/Colonial Africa: Reflections on the Field

Much has happened since Dipesh Chakrabarty, at the turn of the millennium, paradigmatically called for a “provincialization of Europe”. The paper connects with three major trends in current history of technology, exploring these threads with regards to the Global South in general and post/colonial Africa in particular: (1) exemplifying and (later) disentangling transnational connections; (2) rethinking (colonial) infrastructures; and (3) exploring technologies-in-use, everyday practices and perceptions. Unpacking established Science and Technology concepts such as Thomas P. Hughes “Large (Socio)Technical Systems” (LTS) approach for post/colonial contexts, the paper argues that we need to move beyond the much-invoked “key figures” and drivers of global technological (ex)change and scrutinize place- and time-specific landscapes of technology instead. In particular, we need to pay closer attention to seemingly peripheral actors and actants as well as to the manifold interrelations between the human and the “natural” world.

One history of technology and media in distance education

There is a long history of the use of technology in distance education. It is necessary to look beyond the technological tools to examine the systems of media that enable meaning to be communicated and understood through the use of technology. The article looks at the development of oral, written, video and computer technologies and media from the perspective of their influence on distance education. It concludes with some lessons from this historical perspective regarding media and technology in distance education today.

BOOK REVIEW_NUCLEAR SUKARNO: INITIAL STUDY OF INDONESIAN ATOMIC POLITICS 1958-1967_NUKLIR SUKARNO: KAJIAN AWAL ATAS POLITIK TENAGA ATOM INDONESIA 1958-1967

“Nuklir Sukarno: Kajian awal atas politik tenaga atom indonesia 1958-1967” is one of Teuku Reza Fadeli's works published in 2021. This book explains how Sukarno's desire to have nuclear weapons. This book itself has three chapters explaining in detail and coherently how this incident happened, starting from the first chapter, which describes the state of the cold war that caused Indonesia to become involved in it and how President Sukarno's attitude towards nuclear technology. The second chapter describes the formation of LTE, which later turned into BATAN due to changes in Sukarno's thinking in addressing the global political constellation and Western imperialism, which continued to hinder nuclear power. The third chapter describes Sukarno's ambition to have nuclear weapons in Indonesia, then the world response to these conditions, and the last one regarding the end of Sukarno's nuclear politics as it coincided with Suharto's downfall.This book intends to look back on nuclear technology that came to the world's attention in the nuclear arms race after the end of the second world war to inform readers of Soekarno's ideas about nuclear technology, which impacted determining his government in the 1960s. Which at that time, not a few Western countries gave a cautionary attitude. In addition, this book also aims to encourage interest in writing the history of technology in Indonesia because there are still many who ignore science and technology in influencing Indonesian history.This book intends for those who are thirsty for knowledge and always want more insight. Sukarno's Nuclear Book is also very suitable for those who like Indonesian history, especially the history of technology in Indonesia which has had much influence in it. Then for those who like compilation, this book is very suitable because, in the book Nuclear Sukarno, the CIA has been involved in Indonesian history. After reading the book Nuclear Sukarno, much information is obtained by readers, such as in the economic, political, social, and cultural fields that are the reasons for writing Indonesian history; it turns out that technology itself also influences the current situation in Indonesia. The reader also knows that Indonesia wants to have nuclear weapons because of the influence of the cold war that occurred at that time. However, this never happened because of the fall of President Suharto in his leadership.

The Coming of the Drawloom: A Chapter in the Technological Transmission between Iran and India

In the history of technology, the loom has come to occupy an important place. While the horizontal handloom has a comparatively simple mechanism, this is not true of the vertical drawloom, which through centuries has developed complex forms. The question of the latter’s presence in India in early times has aroused some controversy. The case is made in this article that it arrived in the thirteenth century from Iran but failed to supplant the handloom in most areas of textile production, except for carpet weaving, mainly in Kashmir.

The mystery of technological leadership. The review of K. Davids’ book “The rise and decline of Dutch technological leadership. Technology, economy and culture in the Netherlands, 1350–1800”

The article deals with the critical review of the book by the Dutch economic historian K. Davids published in 2019 in Russian translation – “The rise and decline of Dutch technological leadership. Technology, economy and culture in the Netherlands, 1350-1800”. The author gives a detailed analysis of the main ideas of Davids’s book and shows their relevance to the modern problems of science of science. The structure and main content of the book under review is revealed. The author shows that the most important conclusion of the book concerns the author’s thesis that Dutch technological leadership was based on a successful combination of non-economic factors, among which science is has a special importance as the basis for technological creativity. The author analyses K. Davids’s book in the context of economic theory and gives a detailed account of the concepts of economic growth which are interesting and important for the history of technology. The review reveals the role of patents in the history of technology. The author of the article shows that Davids’ research provides an important material for discussions about science and technology policy. It is pointed out that modern Russian science policy is characterized by directiveness, while general encouragement of the market, social institutions, and especially basic science could serve as a more effective means of fighting for technological leadership.