A machine readable child?

Automation of education and I-It realationships

Authors

• Pekka Mertala Jyväskylän yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33350/ka.117096

Keywords:

automation, datafication, philosophy of dialogue, digitalization, Martin Buber, relationality

Abstract

This conceptual article theorizes the tensioned interplay between digitalization, datafication and automation and subjectness in education by asking what intensifying datafication and automation means for teacher–student relationships and how we understand and approach education. Theoretically, the paper draws on Martin Buber’s ideas of the dialogical I–Thou and objectified I–It as the key forms of human relationships. The core argument is that increasing datafication and automation steers the teacher–student relationship towards an objectified I–It relationship instead of the dialogical I–Thou relationship, which Buber saw as the ideal.