ABSTRACT
B. Williamson wonders what might be the “practical” and “conceptual” consequences for the curriculum in the “digital age,” noting that the big tech companies have each prodded schools to “keep pace” with technological advancement. Digital media are such an “important part of young people’s lives”, offering “forms of participation, community, belonging, and communication”, that, he allows, are “shaped and limited by consumer culture.” Relocating curriculum development from universities, schools, and ministries of education to global commercial entities facilitates the cultural homogenization, political polarization, and economic inequality. For Arthur Kroker, Innis mediates between two poles of Canadian intellectual life and its preoccupation with technology, power, and survival. In his belief that technology has potential for the recovery, in civic life, of an ancient orality, Innis is, Kroker suggests, “midway between the tragic perspective of George Grant and the utopian imagination of Marshall McLuhan.”
