In my contribution I develop a technosomatic perspective on teaching and learning (Cf. Richardson 2010). This is to say, first, that the meaning and form of educational practices, both in digital and pre-digital times, is dependent upon the invention and use of particular technologies and second, that these technologies require the acquisition (and thus the training) of distinct bodily routines and gestures. In my view, pencil and paper are as much technological tools as keyboards and screens are, and I would define the term technology in a broad sense, i.e. including practices related to these instruments (handwriting, keyboarding). These technological and bodily dimensions are often forgotten when trying to understand the implications of digitization for future education. Therefore I focus on the differences between concrete embodied practices that go together with a form of education based on handwriting and book-technologies, as opposed to a form of education that depends on screen-related technologies (and which involves typing and screen-reading). My aim is not to assess which mode is the most effective or desirable, but to map two different spaces of experience, which go along with different conceptions of what it means to relate to a world and to others, to teach and to learn, and to become a literate human being. I draw on Bernard Stiegler’s (2010) phenomenological analyses regarding on-page and on-screen text-production and text-consumption, which not only point in the direction of a fundamental transition in the spatio-temporal conditions of writing and reading, but moreover to a profound shift regarding the experiences of (dis)ability that go together with the bodily appropriation of various technologies. I relate this further to the work of Giorgio Agamben who opposes the pre-digital and digital in relation to a different consciousness of the materiality of the texts we write and read (on page and on screen) – arguing that different senses of ‘potentiality’ are involved, as well as to Tim Ingold’s (2007) ethnographic work on the creation of various types of ‘lines’ (continuous and vital threads as opposed to discrete ones).

Agamben, G. (2014). Dal libro allo schermo. Il prima e il dopo dell' opera. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpQcNSNO6B8 (accessed 29/01/2015) Ingold, T. (2007). Lines, A brief history. London: Routledge Richardson, I. (2010). Faces, Interfaces, Screens: Relational Ontologies of Framing, Attention and Distraction. Transformations (18). Stiegler, B. (2010).Taking Care of Youth and the Generations (S. Barker, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Vlieghe, J. (2013). Education in an age of digital technologies. Flusser, Stiegler and Agamben on the idea of the posthistorical. Philosophy and Technology. (OnlineFirst article: DOI: 10.1007/s13347-013-0131-x)