I presented a paper at the excellent first European Conference on Critical EdTech Studies in Zurich this June. It set out to re-evaluate Haraway’s ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ (1985) – 40 years after publication – to understand what it might still offer us as critical researchers in digital education.
The figure of the cyborg, as imagined in the critical work the 80s and 90s, seemed to open up new possibilities for mobilising an empowered machine-human assemblage against injustice. Haraway’s statement that ‘the machine is not an it to be animated, worshipped, and dominated’ but rather is us ‘our processes, an aspect of our embodiment’ was radical and exciting. The ideas emerging from Haraway’s work, and the various critical posthumanisms and new materialisms that followed, continue to be influential in education research and practice.
However from the perspective of 2025, when AI appears unstoppable and ownership of ‘the machine’ sits firmly with the big tech oligarchs, we might feel differently about the benefits of human-machine entanglement as a locus for critical thought in digital education. My talk at the conference asked whether there is still value in working with the idea that the ‘machine is us’, when that machine is largely built, deployed and monetized by the mega-corporations of Silicon Valley.
There’s a full paper on this currently out for review and (hopefully!) due to come out in 2026. In the meantime, I am sharing my slides here.