According to a 2021 study, at least 17 million people will need to altogether change their profession in the US, due to the automation and digitalisation of production and consumption by 2030 (which is a 25% higher estimation than before the COVID-19 pandemic). Already 100 years earlier i.e., in 1930, L.S. Vygotsky tried to anticipate the implications of such technological progress on human development in his article published in VARNITSO* with the title “The socialist alteration of Man”. Vygotsky’s pioneering work explores the links between the organisation of social activities and the organisation of psychological functions. Taking Vygotsky’s work as a point of departure: How can one think of the present-day technological and psycho-social changes in the aftermath of a global pandemic i.e., in a world that is more interconnected than ever before in the human history, as well as increasingly divided? What are the implications of these developments for children, young people and education?
My talk in the Summer University ‘Critical Psychology’ explored these questions by revisiting case studies from a series of research projects, while exploring, in specific, how to best support disadvantaged children and young people to imagine yet unknown futures across urban and rural settings. Further details: https://mkontopodis.wordpress.com/digitalchildhoods/
CoDesigning Glob@l Childhood & Youth Futures 