Digital Culture, Education and Public Sphere

• Main Author: Luiz Roberto Gomes
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Asociación Latinoamericana de Filosofía de la Educación 2015-06-01
• Series: IXTLI
• Online Access: http://ixtli.org/revista/index.php/ixtli/article/view/31

In the context of the so-called digital culture, this paper discusses the issue of education and the political implications of the distance learning expansion movement in Brazil. In addition to the advances in the democratization of the access to information through the mediation of information and communication technologies (ICTs), which should be recognized as an effort to spread a certain “political culture”, this does not necessarily mean, as Habermas (2003b) recalls, that the effective political participation of citizens is assured, especially in light of recurrent dislocation between the political public sphere and civil society. What are the interests behind the phenomenon of digitization of culture? And what is the purpose of education in this new cultural context? As an expression of contemporary social life, digital culture generates structural changes, not only in the form of transmission and access to culture, but also in the very concept and attitude towards culture, with decisive political implications for education. That leads us to think, for example, about the differences between the concepts of education present in the classical Greek Paideia culture, in the modern culture of Bildung, and in the contemporary educational model increasingly subservient to the ICTs we now have.