2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Problems believed to be caused by social media such as suicide, and those thought to be, and likely to be caused by ChatboxGPT clearly affect a society’s health. Currently these technologies, especially the social media, seem to be more controlling than they are controlled, and a major problem for both the individual and society is how to control them. Such issues are as much philosophical and psychological as they are legal and technical. It is argued that it is a function of TELPhE to provide for a public debate in this area.
In this paper, supported by previously published case studies, Technological Literacy is taken to be an organizing mechanism that enables a person to solve problems caused by technology, and not a not a discipline in the traditional meaning of the term.
A technologically literate person is one who can organise knowledges in order to solve problems created by technology. It is understood that programmes designed to achieve this goal will, in response to the characteristics of the public, have to function at different levels of complexity and as such will require collaboration between the sub-systems of universities, and schools (elementary, middle and high).
Technological literacy is closely related to Frankenfeld’s concept of technological citizenship too which Kathryn Neeley drew attention in her 2017 review of the division’s development. In that sense it may be regarded as an extension of Neeley’s paper, for while beginning with a brief consideration of the role of philosophy in the curriculum, the primary focus of this paper is on learning, because understanding how learning is conditioned is to learn not only how we are controlled but how we control.
Following a very brief discussion of a curriculum model that establishes the need for a technologically literate person to have a liberal education that is grounded in philosophy the paper focuses on learning but in particular cognitive dissonance.
It is argued that if we understand how we learn, we will be better able to control our engagement with the media, to distinguish fact from opinion, and the real (truth) from the false.
Key words AI, Learning, Prejudice, Philosophy, Psychology. Technological literacy/citizenship. Truth