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<p>This article offers a rhizomatic reading of how automation and educational technologies were imagined in the <i>International Review of Education (IRE)</i> from its relaunch in 1955 through the 1970s. Guided by Gilbert Simondon’s concept of <i>technicity</i> as the mutual constitution of humans and machines, this article examines the world-making practices of early <i>IRE</i> contributors as they speculated on automation’s potential to generate “a good life” in the post-war context. In its early years, the <i>IRE</i> framed automation primarily in relation to manual labour, emphasising vocational education, democratic participation and the cultural integration of technology. Writers voiced optimism about automation’s capacity to relieve drudgery and foster human creativity, while also warning against the “robotic” reduction of human dignity. By the 1960s, attention shifted to the automation of cognitive labour through “teaching machines”, programmed learning and computer-based instruction. Here, technicity manifested as the algorithmic reconfiguration of pedagogy into logics of precision, efficiency and behavioural control, supported by corporate and philanthropic investment. A minor rhizomatic methodology attending to ruptures, divergences and becomings (dynamic processes of change), suggests the contingencies of technological development and their entanglement with the changing subject of the Human. The article also reflects on its own experiment with artificial intelligence (AI) to trace interconnections in the corpus, noting the effects of its synthetic technicity for researchers’ cognitive labour. Ultimately, the analysis suggests that the technicity of automation in education is not a fixed trajectory but an open question, inviting alternative worldings (world-making) of a “good life” for all.</p>

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Techno-dreaming and the technicity of automation: A rhizomatic reading of post-war technologies in education in the International Review of Education

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年11月20日

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  • Suzanne Smythe

摘要

This article offers a rhizomatic reading of how automation and educational technologies were imagined in the International Review of Education (IRE) from its relaunch in 1955 through the 1970s. Guided by Gilbert Simondon’s concept of technicity as the mutual constitution of humans and machines, this article examines the world-making practices of early IRE contributors as they speculated on automation’s potential to generate “a good life” in the post-war context. In its early years, the IRE framed automation primarily in relation to manual labour, emphasising vocational education, democratic participation and the cultural integration of technology. Writers voiced optimism about automation’s capacity to relieve drudgery and foster human creativity, while also warning against the “robotic” reduction of human dignity. By the 1960s, attention shifted to the automation of cognitive labour through “teaching machines”, programmed learning and computer-based instruction. Here, technicity manifested as the algorithmic reconfiguration of pedagogy into logics of precision, efficiency and behavioural control, supported by corporate and philanthropic investment. A minor rhizomatic methodology attending to ruptures, divergences and becomings (dynamic processes of change), suggests the contingencies of technological development and their entanglement with the changing subject of the Human. The article also reflects on its own experiment with artificial intelligence (AI) to trace interconnections in the corpus, noting the effects of its synthetic technicity for researchers’ cognitive labour. Ultimately, the analysis suggests that the technicity of automation in education is not a fixed trajectory but an open question, inviting alternative worldings (world-making) of a “good life” for all.