Re-presencing the Network: A Phenomenological Paradigm for the Anthropocene

This chapter will explore a design paradigm for networked learning (NL) that emphasises experience in tracing different levels and patterns of its infrastructure. Technical features of infrastructure will be foregrounded to facilitate the phenomenological, hermeneutic receptive work of following the passage of the “mark” of exteriorized memory even where it is hidden by code. This facilitates creative disclosures of the world that the machine learning technologies of the Anthropocene short-circuit and mimic. It also facilitates learning where they are re-presenced and generate other marks that are possible and even improbable. Human-centric infrastructure design moves beyond criticism of the increasing mining and automatization of human knowledge by the machine learning technologies used in hermeneutically closed systems. Rather, phenomenological network infrastructure, by way of being an open response for life, is not just an assemblage of artefacts, systems, and services but is also a process and method for ongoing interpretations of novel togetherness of individual subjects, social groups, and technological tools.