디지털 데이터 사회의 포스트휴먼을 위한 교육

Abstract

The news has been overflowing around us that the so-called the posthuman age, the age of artificial intelligence, or the fourth industrial revolution is coming near. The posthuman age literally points to an age ‘after’ human beings. Here, one should be careful to recognize that the prefix ’post-‘ does not refer to the end of biological human being but to the radical transition of the biological mechanism of human being into a new digital being through new technologies such as artificial intelligence, networking and augmentation of virtual reality. Along with these state-of-art technologies, which now are changing human nature itself, one can predict that the current education system and curriculums, which have derived from the modern understanding of human being as a biological organization of individual, will not be effective any longer, given that our definition and concept of human being as individual cannot be applied to the posthuman being who live as part of symbiotic life community with machines and whose mind is extended over physical and digital material. In this context, the issue of education is brought into relief, for this transition of human nature means the crisis of education, given that the human nature, which has been the targeted goal of the modern education system, will be drastically changed. It is the most prominent and imminent task in the coming posthuman age that is the issue of educational revolution, unless education would collapse into a total break-down due to the change. Who will be the new being in the posthuman age or what kind of being will human being become in such a age, if the posthumanism has been an attempt to overcome the Enlightenment anthropocentric tradition of humanism along with the end and dissolution of the modern subject? What will be the human condition if we human beings still want to be human in such posthuman future? If the posthumanism does not mean the end of beinghuman but the end of the modern specific forms of humanism, what kind of new concept of being-human will be required for the posthumans? With these questions in mind, this article seeks for the meaning of the subject in the posthuman age. It seeks to move beyond modern humanism and suggests the subjectivity and hybridity of the other(s) as alternatives to Enlightenment dualism of mind and body and to liberal humanism. Further, this article will explore the possibility of education for posthumans in a digital society, suggesting some alternative concepts like digital literacy, data literacy, and reverse engineering. What the posthumans need to remain human are some new abilities. On the one hand, an ability to relevantly utilize data emerging and sharing through the connecting devices such as smartphone, SNS, IoT(Interent of Things), 3D printings and so on is needed. On the other hand, an ability not to overextend and expose one’s personal feelings and biorhythm on such virtual public spaces is important. This is none other than data literacy. A further ability of reverse engineering which can redesign and appropriate the digital technologies for one’s well being, based upon the data literacy is required.