Social participation in a postdigital–biodigital age

This chapter introduces the concept of social participation and analyzes its recent transformations in a postdigital–biodigital reality. It explores the main sources of biodigital (in)equality and links them to the nature of biodigital communication. Drawing firstly on the work of Kate O’Riordan, the chapter argues that traditional communication based on an exchange of information is significantly different from emerging forms of biodigital communication and identifies the regulation of biodigital communication as the key question of social participation in a postdigital–biodigital age. The discussion then addresses in detail the complex power relationships that emerge in this age, the varying levels of participation that different individuals enjoy, and associated political rationalities. The chapter then explores aspects of postdigital–biodigital policymaking using the case of education and drawing on Human Data Interaction (HDI) theory

Effect of Helicobacter Pylori Eradication on Extent of Duodenal Gastric Metaplasia and Grade of Gastritis

The extent of the regression of duodenal gastric metaplasia (DGM) after the eradication of Helicobacter pylori infection is controversial. Therefore, we decided to assess the degree of DGM before, sex weeks and one year after H. pylori eradication. 105 consecutive Helicobacter pylori positive patients with endoscopically proven duodenal ulcer, with DGM and Helicobacter pylori infection were recruited for this study. The diagnosis of Helicobacter pylori infection was based on CLO-test and histology, and DGM was assessed on four bulb biopsies taken before, sex weeks and one year after Helicobacter pylori eradication. Histological assessment of Helicobacter pylori associated gastritis was performed according to the Sydney classification. Follow up study on 98 patients before, six weeks and one year after the eradication of Helicobacter pylori showed that the mean extent of DGM did not change significantly after eradication and did not differ when compared with 14 patients with persisting infection. Our results show that the inflammatory process related to Helicobacter pylori does not play the main role in the development of DGM

​Postdigital citizen science: mapping the field

This paper provides a brief overview of citizen science, attending to its tensions and possibilities. We acknowledge the creative potential of citizen science for expanding and diversifying public participation in knowledge production and dissemination, and we also draw attention to its contradictions. We point to emerging postdigital tensions as new technologies and vast public databases are increasingly becoming cornerstones of citizen science. We discuss how postdigital citizen science operates in the context of knowledge capitalism while aiming at its transformation and highlight three key challenges for postdigital citizen science: the challenge of technology, the challenge of political economy, and the challenge of participation. Different postdigital challenges cannot be separated from each other, so we call for a deep reimagination and reconfiguration of citizen science in and for the postdigital condition. We start this reimagination by asking three questions: What is postdigital citizen science? Who (or what!) is the postdigital citizen scientist? How to conduct postdigital citizen science

Who is really in charge of contemporary education? People and technologies in, against and beyond the neoliberal university

This article reflects on the position of people in, against and beyond information and communication technologies. Firstly, using Jandrić and Kuzmanić’s work on digital postcolonialism, Raymond Williams's work on residual and emergent cultures, and Deleuze and Guattari's insights into the dynamics between territorialization, de-territorialization and re-territorialization, it develops a theoretical framework for inquiry into the hybrid identity of the contemporary university. Then, through critical discourse analysis (CDA), the article moves on to analyse the ways in which technology discourse resides in the dominating ideology of technological determinism and co-opts with neoliberal agendas by omitting humans from explicit mention in UK policy documents. It shows that true counter-hegemonic practice against dominating social practices is possible only through reinvigorating the central position of human beings in regards to information and communication technologies. Within the developed theoretical framework, it seeks openings to intervene subversively into current relationships between technologies, people, and (higher) education, and to identify opportunities for building a non-determinist identity of the contemporary university that reaches beyond the single-minded logic of techno-scientific development. In the process, it situates Paulo Freire's insights into critical pedagogy in the context of the network society, and places the relationships between human beings, language and information and communication technologies amongst central questions of today's (higher) education and society at large

Lecture Capture Policies: A Survey of British Universities

The integration of digital and convergent technologies into the classroom poses policy level challenges for universities, as these constitute a wider process of digitalization and marketization of the Higher Education Institutions (HEI) ranging from open access publishing to augmenting pedagogy through learning platforms. Digital technologies not only augment teaching and learning, they present HEIs with a multitude of challenges from copyright of third party materials to performance rights. This paper surveyed Lecture Capture policies in 149 British universities in 2015-2016. As mobile and capture technologies become part of the classroom and extend their construction beyond the physical realms, this paper assesses the policy challenges that have emerged with the incorporation of lecture capture technologies into HEIs. Lecture Capture is part of the ‘digitalization’ of the HEI sector, illuminating both the investments into digital modes of delivery and dissemination and in tandem the numerous challenges (structural, pedagogic, legal and ethical) that face the sector today through the increasing incorporation of technologies into everyday teaching practices, policy and delivery

Whose domain and whose ontology?:Preserving human radical reflexivity over the efficiency of automatically generated feedback alone

In this chapter, we challenge an increase in the uncritical application of algorithmic processes for providing automatically generated feedback for students, within a neoliberal framing of contemporary higher education. Initially, we discuss our concerns alongside networked learning principles, which developed as a critical pedagogical response to new online learning programmes and platforms. These principles now overlap too, with the notion that we are living in ‘postdigital’ times, where automatically generated feedback never stands alone, but is contested and supplemented by physical encounters and human feedback. First, we make observations on the e-marking platform Turnitin, alongside other rapidly developing artificial intelligence (AI) systems. When generic (but power-laden) maps are incorporated into both student and staff ‘perceived’ spaces through AI, we surface the aspects of feedback that risk being lost. Second, we draw on autoethnographic understandings of our own lived experience of performing radically reflexive feedback within a Master’s in Education programme. A radically reflexive form of feedback may not follow a pre-defined map, but it does offer a vehicle to restore individual student and staff voices and critical self-navigation of both physical and virtual learning spaces. This needs to be preserved in the ongoing shaping of the contemporary ‘postdigital’ university

Biodigital philosophy, technological convergence, and new knowledge ecologies

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in Postdigital Science and Education on 11/01/2021, available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00211-7 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.New technological ability is leading postdigital science, where biology as digital information, and digital information as biology, are now dialectically interconnected. In this article we firstly explore a philosophy of biodigitalism as a new paradigm closely linked to bioinformationalism. Both involve the mutual interaction and integration of information and biology, which leads us into discussion of biodigital convergence. As a unified ecosystem this allows us to resolve problems that isolated disciplinary capabilities cannot, creating new knowledge ecologies within a constellation of technoscience. To illustrate our arrival at this historical flash point via several major epistemological shifts in the post-war period, we venture a tentative typology. The convergence between biology and information reconfigures all levels of theory and practice, and even critical reason itself now requires a biodigital interpretation oriented towards ecosystems and coordinated Earth systems. In this understanding, neither the digital humanities, the biohumanities or the posthumanities sit outside of biodigitalism. Instead, posthumanism is but one form of biodigitalism that mediates the biohumanities and the digital humanities, no longer preoccupied with the tradition of the subject, but with the constellation of forces shaping the future of human ontologies. This heralds a new biopolitics which brings the philosophy of race, class, gender and intelligence, into a compelling dialogue with genomics and information

Distance Education as socio-material assemblage: Place, distribution and aggregation

This paper outlines some of the material assemblages that are formed in international distance education (DE) in Africa. It offers a first exploratory study of materialities in DE and how they potentially distribute and aggregate to form a network to provide education. Through the use of interviews, students lived experiences are explored to unpack the multiplicity of networks needed to overcome the de‐aggregated and distributed institution. The multiplicity of networks that form in DE brings challenges that question how spaces become connected and disconnected and how different materialities shape DE. The materialities in DE produce forces and effects, such as translocal and transmobilites that are more than just the human actor, but extrude materials, networks, and connectives that transform continuously. The interconnectivities of the university and home or institution and students are brought together through enabling technology, but infrastructure does not always have the ability for the facilitation of aggregation