Gerald Argenton

Abstract This paper states that modern education and utopian discourse share one common trait, that of being structurally founded on the promise of human betterment. The changing relations between concepts of education and utopianism will be developed through conceptual analysis of the dynamics of the promise in their interweaving process. This shall be discussed through three main topics. The first is the appropriation of space in early modern education (sixteenth century onward), with particular emphasis on the influence of print technology on framing a new conception of educational spaces and practices. Second, the promise of the idea of progress in the Enlightenment period, which will become the further technological promise of a society-to-come, no longer spatially but temporally presented. Finally, the promise of autonomy through and against the modern subject, in which such autonomy is presented like the end of the journey through education, supposed that there is an end to such a journey. The key frame uniting the three topics is that utopian discourse journeying towards a normative conception of human society, as well as modern educational schemes journeying towards a normative conception of adulthood, are limited insofar as their respective promises, which are more impatient than the slow project of creation, more than often outruns it. The paper thus inquires whether or not there is a way to uphold the creative and imaginative possibilities of utopia in education, by acknowledging the pervasive effects of the promise on the social imaginary.

Social acceleration may be described through the analogy of software updates. That is, updating to the latest requires some sort of forgetting of the former. This article argues that knowledge is increasingly severed from learning and thinking, following Bauman's (2005) insight that contemporary society no longer produces a culture of learning but rather a culture of forgetting, disengagement and discontinuity. First, I will review the development of the knowledge society and its promise, which social acceleration will let us forget that the same promise is still pending in contemporary discourse. Then I will address the problem of disengagement, or fear of involvement, which consequently alters the relation people have with each other and learning. Discontinuity is when society loses its connection with its past and future alternatives. Time ceases to be inscribed in duration to become scattered moments, drifting loose with the relentless overflow of information. However, learning takes time; it is a built-in property that was also forgotten alongside the 'updating' of the contemporary conceptions of knowledge. One needs time to think and connect what was, what is and what could be to foster imagination and creativity, to figure out that society could be otherwise and become an object of critique, and most importantly, an object of involvement and learning.

This article critically explores the ways by which the Web could become a more learning-oriented medium in the age of, but also in spite of, the newly bred algorithmic cultures. The social dimension of algorithms is reported in literature as being a socio-technological entan-glement that has a powerful influence on users' practices and their lived world. They do not only govern what is visible (and inherently, what is obscured), what is valued and noteworthy, but also have the power to enable and assign meaningfulness in managing how information is perceived by users. This incurs a certain knowledge logic which is pervasive in algorithmic culture. This article posits that inquiry about the relation between algorithms and learning needs definitions as well as the stance of not extensively relying on them. When asking what an algorithm is, or how to define the process of learning and knowledge acquisition, one must also keep in mind that a definition is mostly blind to the ambiguity and slipperiness of contexts, hiding the gaps that hinder the objective circumscription of a concept. This article proposes to mind these 'gaps' through discussing controversies that may (or rather actually do) happen regarding contextual or theoretical differences in the interpretation of key concepts such as learning, knowledge and culture. To extend the discussion, I will expose alternative material which allows a wider consideration of the concept of learning and emphasises a dimension of learning seldom taken into account: contex-tual dependence. The chief characteristic of data processed by algorithms being their decontex-tualisation, I will discuss the agonistic relationship that is emerging from learning in the age of algorithmic cultures, to explore the possibilities of bridging the gaps and exploit the valuable resources the Web has to provide to enrich another dimension of learning in our lived world: its contextual relatedness.

This paper states that modern education and utopian discourse share one common trait, that of being structurally founded on the promise of human betterment. The changing relations between concepts of education and utopianism will be developed through conceptual analysis of the dynamics of the promise in their interweaving process. This shall be discussed through three main topics. The first is the appropriation of space in early modern education (sixteenth century onward), with particular emphasis on the influence of print technology on framing a new conception of educational spaces and practices. Second, the promise of the idea of progress in the Enlightenment period, which will become the further technological promise of a society-to-come, no longer spatially but temporally presented. Finally, the promise of autonomy through and against the modern subject, in which such autonomy is presented like the end of the journey through education, supposed that there is an end to such a journey. The key frame uniting the three topics is that utopian discourse journeying towards a normative conception of human society, as well as modern educational schemes journeying towards a normative conception of adulthood, are limited insofar as their respective promises, which are more impatient than the slow project of creation, more than often outruns it. The paper thus inquires whether or not there is a way to uphold the creative and imaginative possibilities of utopia in education, by acknowledging the pervasive effects of the promise on the social imaginary.

Social acceleration may be described through the analogy of software updates. That is, updating to the latest requires some sort of forgetting of the former. This article argues that knowledge is increasingly severed from learning and thinking, following Bauman's (2005) insight that contemporary society no longer produces a culture of learning but rather a culture of forgetting, disengagement and discontinuity. First, I will review the development of the knowledge society and its promise, which social acceleration will let us forget that the same promise is still pending in contemporary discourse. Then I will address the problem of disengagement, or fear of involvement, which consequently alters the relation people have with each other and learning. Discontinuity is when society loses its connection with its past and future alternatives. Time ceases to be inscribed in duration to become scattered moments, drifting loose with the relentless overflow of information. However, learning takes time; it is a built-in property that was also forgotten alongside the 'updating' of the contemporary conceptions of knowledge. One needs time to think and connect what was, what is and what could be to foster imagination and creativity, to figure out that society could be otherwise and become an object of critique, and most importantly, an object of involvement and learning.

Experience is one of the major paths to growth and autonomy, and as such, of outstanding educational value. But it also has a much wider sociocultural context, rooted in life itself. It is about learning that which cannot be taught, learning to think, which precedes all other-defined
forms of education. It is an encounter with the unknown, where we learn to cope with uncertainty. Though, in the same way that growth does, experience takes time. This article discusses the contemporary changes in the perception of time and experience, through the fundamental but seldom formulated question—Do we still have time for experience? Our
argument is that while contemporary society is craving for experiences, it is not disposed to give them the time it takes for its process to unfold. This will be illustrated through the example of the contemporary conception of ‘adventure’, a most typical form of experience, in two
contexts. One is that of experience consumption in adventure tourism, the other is that of adventure education. Notwithstanding the differences in motives and aims, both are reducing experience to a predictable, other-defined, and eventually assessable programme, made to fit
a schedule. Experience is no longer something that happens to us, it is becoming something that we make happen and (try to) control. This results in flushing the unknown away, along with the formative potential of experience. This article will develop insights into what it is about to become in order to address the problem of the educational future(s) of experience.