Viral modernity? Epidemics, infodemics, and the ‘bioinformational' paradigm

Viral modernity is a concept based upon the nature of viruses, the ancient and critical role they play in evolution and culture, and the basic application to understanding the role of information and forms of bioinformation in the social world. The concept draws a close association between viral biology on the one hand, and information science on the other – it is an illustration and prime example of bioinformationalism that brings together two of the most powerful forces that now drive cultural evolution. The concept of viral modernity applies to viral technologies, codes and ecosystems in information, publishing, education and emerging knowledge (journal) systems. This paper traces the relationship between epidemics, quarantine, and public health management and outlines elements of viral-digital philosophy (VDP) based on the fusion of living and technological systems. We discuss Covid-19 as a ‘bioinformationalist' response that represents historically unprecedented level of sharing information from the sequencing of the genome to testing for a vaccination. Finally, we look at the US response to Covid-19 through the lens of infodemics and post-truth. The paper is followed by three open reviews, which further refine its conclusions as they relate to (educational) philosophy and the notion of the virus as Pharmakon.

Philosophy of education in a new key: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Education and environment after the coronavirus

This paper explores relationships between environment and education after the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of philosophy of education in a new key developed by Michael Peters and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA). The paper is collectively written by 15 authors who responded to the question: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Their answers are classified into four main themes and corresponding sections. The first section, ‘As we bake the earth, let's try and bake it from scratch', gathers wider philosophical considerations about the intersection between environment, education, and the pandemic. The second section, ‘Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural change?', looks more closely into issues pertaining to education. The third section, ‘If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you', focuses to Greta Thunberg's messages and their responses. The last section, ‘Towards a new (educational) normal', explores future scenarios and develops recommendations for critical emancipatory action. The concluding part brings these insights together, showing that resulting synergy between the answers offers much more then the sum of articles' parts. With its ethos of collectivity, interconnectedness, and solidarity, philosophy of education in a new key is a crucial tool for development of post-pandemic (philosophy of) education.

Futures Studies, Mobilities, and the Postdigital Condition: Contention or Complement

This paper explores relationships between recent developments in the fields of mobilities, futures, and postdigital studies. The article covers six main themes: questions and their histories;definitions;research methods and ethics;the nature and ownership of knowing and learning;understandings of time, space, identity, community, and relationships;and political processes and political legitimacy. The article was written in three steps. In the first step, the leading author (John Traxler) has identified the relevant themes. In the second step, proponents of each position have freely responded to the themes (futures studies, Stuart Connor;postdigital theory, Sarah Hayes and Petar Jandrić;mobilities, John Traxler). In the third step, the responses have been collectively (re)mixed and edited, identifying complementary and conflicting concepts and ideas. The article was initiated a month before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it was completed over one and a half years later. Thusly, responses and analyses have included the pandemic experience without explicitly focusing to the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper concludes with drawing together contributions, seeking underlying commonalities and differences, and looking for trends, convergence, and change. Epistemically, the three positions discussed in this paper are far from commensurable. Yet they are compatible and complementary, in a postdigital dialogue, in a sense that they all need each others’ inputs on the road to a better understanding of our current condition, and the road to a better future.

Dissolving the Dichotomies Between Online and Campus-Based Teaching: a Collective Response to The Manifesto for Teaching Online (Bayne et al. 2020)

This article is a collective response to the 2020 iteration of The Manifesto for Teaching Online. Originally published in 2011 as 20 simple but provocative statements, the aim was, and continues to be, to critically challenge the normalization of education as techno-corporate enterprise and the failure to properly account for digital methods in teaching in Higher Education. The 2020 Manifesto continues in the same critically provocative fashion, and, as the response collected here demonstrates, its publication could not be timelier. Though the Manifesto was written before the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the responses gathered here inevitably reflect on the experiences of moving to digital, distant, online teaching under unprecedented conditions. As these contributions reveal, the challenges were many and varied, ranging from the positive, breakthrough opportunities that digital learning offered to many students, including the disabled, to the problematic, such as poor digital networks and access, and simple digital poverty. Regardless of the nature of each response, taken together, what they show is that The Manifesto for Teaching Online offers welcome insights into and practical advice on how to teach online, and creatively confront the supremacy of face-to-face teaching.

A Message to You, Rudy: Hear Reason, or Nature Will Make You Feel Her

ABSTRACT. This articles main takeaway is the importance of the question: Why did it take me so much time to realize that the pandemic is real? Cutting across the personal and the collective, the uncanny and the ordinary, the visceral and the rational, this article shows that our philosophies and our sciences lack of sensitivity to instinct and emotion is a problem.

Review of Fang Fang (2020). Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. Trans. M. Berry

In this introduction to the special issue on systematic reviews on emerging learning environments and technologies, we introduce best practices for conducting systematic reviews and meta-analysis and discuss the need for a systematic review on emerging learning environments and technologies. We synthesize research on seven primary areas of emerging learning environments and technologies that include: (1) social media, (2) massive open online courses, (3) special education technology, (4) mobile learning, (5) game-based learning and gamification, (6) adaptive learning, and (7) learning analytics and introduce the thirteen articles that were included in this special issue. This article also provides implications for the readers on using and conducting systematic reviews.

Postdigital Research in the Time of Covid-19

The First 80 Days of Covid-19 The first case of the coronavirus disease, Covid-19, was officially reported from Wuhan, China, on 31 December 2019 (World Health Organization 2020a). The coronavirus disease had initially been compared with an ordinary flu, and Dr. Li Wenliang, who raised the alarm in the early days of the outbreak, was investigated by the Chinese police and the Public Security Bureau for ‘spreading rumours’. Yet it soon became obvious that Covid-19 is far more dangerous than the flu, and Dr. Li Wenliang, aged 33, died of the infection on 7 February 2020 (Hegarty 2020). In spite of their harsh initial reactions to Dr. Li Wenliang’s alleged whistleblowing, Chinese authorities soon exhibited remarkable determination in containing the virus. By late January, they quarantined the city of Wuhan (11 million inhabitants) and several other areas affecting over 60 million of people. ‘Since February 18, China has reported the number of recovered cases is vastly outpacing the number of new confirmed cases each day.’ (Roper 2020). In the meantime, the coronavirus has crossed the borders of China, and Western countries have been much slower in their response. On 11 March, the World Health Organization ‘declared COVID-19 a pandemic, pointing to the over 118,000 cases of the coronavirus illness in over 110 countries and territories around the world and the sustained risk of further global spread’ (Ducharme 2020) and on 13 March, ‘[i] nternational health officials said Friday that Europe has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, as the continent is now producing more new cases each day than China did at the height of its crisis’ (Coote and Jacobson 2020). In popular media, the Covid-19 pandemic has started an infodemic of unprecedented scale;fake news and bullshit flourish alongside credible information from sources such as the World Health Organization. In the context of research, the Covid-19 pandemic has initiated historically unprecedented levels of collaboration and openness, prompting some authors to suggest that ‘[w] hen the story of the coronavirus (2019-nCOV) is finally written, it might well become a template for the utopian dream of open science — where research data is shared freely, unrestrained by competition, paywalls and patents’ (Crowe 2020). Worldwide closures of schools and universities have pushed millions of students and teachers online, bringing decades of experience in the field under the public eye (Bates 2020). Commentators compare Chinese and Western responses to the crisis, often under bombastic titles such as ‘Coronavirus and the Clash of Civilizations’ (Maçães 2020). Political scientists discuss whether the pandemic is an argument for total dismissal of capitalism or just a passing aberration in its functioning (Roberts 2020). Economists advise us to prepare the new recession (Elliott 2020). Sociologists see worldwide border closures as an anti-globalization experiment (Peters et al. 2020), and philosophers go back to questions pertaining to human nature. Worldwide governments are responding in radically different ways—the government of Montenegro has closed down the whole country before it registered the first patient within its borders (World Health Organization 2020b), while the UK has opted for a laissez faire approach which is hoped to result in herd immunity (Dunn and Kahn 2020). From official news to social networks, everyone and anyone has something to contribute to these debates, creating an infodemic which will be analysed long after Covid-19 is gone. As I write these words on 16 March 2020 from self-isolation in my flat in Zagreb, Croatia, the future of the pandemic is unclear. We have no idea what percentage of the global population will be affected by the virus, whether the virus will mutate, how many people the virus might kill, and what might happen with our politics and economy after the pandemic is gone. At this point, we need to develop immediate measures to protect ourselves individually and collectively—weed out reliable information, self-isolate, reduce panic, develop educated guesses and emergency plans. However, these urgent measures cannot arrive from thin air, and it is just as important to step back and take a birds-eye, longue durée view at the pandemic. While doctors, nurses, politicians, food suppliers, and many other brave people self-sacrifice to support our daily survival, this editorial argues that academics have a unique opportunity, and a moral duty, to immediately start conducting in-depth studies of current events.[truncated]