Introduction

Since the beginning of the century, postdigital theory has made undeniable contributions to educational thought. Rejecting the dichotomy between human beings and technology, as well as technological determinism, instrumentalism, and EdTech solutionism (Jandrić and Knox 2022), postdigital approaches have resulted in nuanced analyses of contemporary teaching and learning. Yet postdigital theory is not just about analyzing. Grounded in radical education and critical pedagogy movements of the twentieth century, postdigital education emphasizes the need for theory in action, or postdigital educational praxis, where theories are dialectically intertwined with practice and aimed at social transformation (McLaren and Jandrić 2020).

Postdigital scholars have approached this goal in various ways. Postdigital inquiry into topics such as postdigital soundscapes (Ford 2023) and postdigital learning spaces of higher education (Lamb et al. 2022), research efforts aimed at ‘Making Sense of the Digital Automation of Education (Selwyn et al. 2023), or indeed examples such as the recent critique of the UK government’s guidance to ban phones in England’s schools (Reed and Dunn 2024) have offered many ground-up improvements in everyday educational practice. Future-oriented studies, using various creative approaches often originating outside the mainstream of educational studies, have developed numerous pathways for moving from what is to what could be (Macgilchrist et al. 2024). Tinkering with genres of academic writing (from short, punchy commentary articles through collective writing to dialogic papers) (see Peters et al. 2016), Postdigital Science and Education has built a playground for unorthodox approaches to scholarly research.

The Postdigital Science and Education publishing ecosystem has created a haven for outcasts, rebels, and thinkers who eschew accustomed academic boxes, and we are happy to see reflections of these actions in global scholarship. Yet linkages between educational scholarship, policy, and practice have always been weak. For instance, despite decades of academic criticisms surrounding the neoliberalization of education, contemporary academia is more neoliberal than ever. Introducing new technologies seems only to exacerbate this neoliberal trajectory. In specific to ChatGPT as the latest example, the ‘uncritical use of GAI tools, rather than helping academics resist neoliberal logics of production and scarcity, amplifies and centres such logics’ (Watermeyer et al. 2023). Or, to take just one more example, despite decades of academic criticisms, EdTech solutionism stubbornly remains deeply ingrained in discourse, policy, and politics (see Teräs et al. 2020), possibly reinforcing monologic modes of knowledge, written and sold by ‘unseen authorities (e.g., tech corporations), as legitimate, worthwhile, and beyond question (Saltman 2022).

Postdigital theory is thoroughly against the Californian ideology (Barbrook and Cameron 1996) and its leading metaphor of the endless technological frontier. This vision of technological change is undeniably penetrating and omnipresent, yet if we are pioneers at the brink of a virgin new world, we carry with us a hypervirulent atavism that infects the new world with old-world ills (Barbrook and Cameron 1996). Nevertheless, hyping technological development is just as problematic as ignoring technological development (Jandrić 2023). We create our futures, but our creations are never completely free as they are firmly based on the past. Postdigital educational development is, therefore, a complex matter of balancing past, present, and (a better) future.

Territories, Networks, and Rival World Systems

Writing about ‘The Geopolitics of Postdigital Educational Development,’ Peters and Besley (2024) argue for a ‘shift in meaning and reality from territories to networks and to rival world systems.’ This shift is inextricably linked to technological development. Before the advent of digital technology, geopolitics was predominantly about territories; during the rapid development of communication technologies, the focus was on building and maintaining networks; as we approach the postdigital age, the geopolitics of networks presumes a transfiguration into rivalrous world systems. Having said that, the postdigital is not about a neat historical development from one phase to another. According to Cramer,

[t]he prefix ‘post’ should not be understood here in the same sense as postmodernism and post-histoire, but rather in the sense of post-punk (a continuation of punk culture in ways which are somehow still punk, yet also beyond punk); post-communism (as the ongoing social-political reality in former Eastern Bloc countries); post-feminism (as a critically revised continuation of feminism, with blurry boundaries with ‘traditional’, unprefixed feminism); postcolonialism... (Cramer 2015: 14)

However rough, this typology is a useful historical device to help explain the complex development of (now postdigital) geopolitics of educational development.

Predigital: Territories

In the predigital age, education and the classical geopolitics surrounding nation-state sovereignty were intrinsically linked (Luke 2023). Education has played a pivotal role in shaping the understanding and perception of a country’s identity, culture, ethnicity, territorial borders, sovereign boundaries, and relations with other states. It is through the educational system that a state imparts knowledge, values, and history to its citizens, fostering a shared sense of national identity alongside nationalism and patriotism. Education in this context is also responsible for the imbuement of superstructural concepts and practices concerning a sense of internationalism and what this might comprise in terms of world institutions, norms, and international law.

In the context of classical geopolitics, education becomes a tool for countries to maintain and project both their power and/or aspirations to power. The curriculum designed in a country’s educational system often reflects the geopolitical priorities and interests of the state (Aitken and Jones 2023). For instance, a country may emphasize the study of its own history, culture, and language, promoting a sense of national identity and unity. At the same time, it may also teach about other countries and their geopolitical significance, enabling students to understand and analyze international relations from the perspective of their own state. On the other hand, the state may censure and control information borders that determine whether certain kinds of content, programs, books, and other cultural products are indeed even allowed in the marketplace of ideas. Extending the notion of education to include media and broadcast media, often state-controlled, foregrounds that public education also embraces an ideological function. This understanding has been argued by many scholars, both before and after Althusser (see Luke 2023 for a good USSR-focused example).

Education also plays a crucial role in shaping the foreign policy and diplomacy of a given country. Through education, states can produce citizens who are aware of the geopolitical challenges and opportunities faced by their respective countries. This enables the state to engage in informed decision-making and policy formulation in the realm of international relations. This is part of a rough sketch that views education and the classical geopolitics of nation-state sovereignty as closely intertwined. Education fosters state-sanctioned prescriptions of shared national identity, shapes foreign policy, and influences international relations. It is, therefore, a vital aspect of a country’s geopolitical strategy.

Digital: Networks

Digitalization has profound implications for education and geopolitics, transforming both the nature of learning and the international landscape of educational power dynamics. Education in the age of digitalization can radically expand access to education, especially in regions where traditional educational resources are limited. However, it also highlights and exacerbates inequalities, as not all communities have equal access to technology and the Internet (see Kuhn et al. 2023 for a multi-perspective analysis).

With a shift to online learning, education becomes an effective means for/of internationalization. The accelerated adoption of online learning platforms and tools, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, led to decentralized educational systems (see Jandrić et al. 2020). This deterritiorial shift also changes the role of schools and universities, as physical infrastructure becomes less central. Additionally, the deterritorialization shifts ownership and control over the content, curriculum, and pedagogical approaches from teachers and schools to private actors (i.e., tech corporations led by philanthrocapitalists and major supranational organizations), siphoning money from the educational process in local educational institutions to international ‘edu-businesses’ (Saltman 2022).

Digitalization allows for personalized learning experiences tailored to individual student needs, using data analytics and AI to adapt educational content and teaching methods. The rise of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) challenges traditional educational publishers and has the potential to democratize access to high-quality educational materials across borders. Digital tools enable adults to upskill and reskill more efficiently, making knowledge more quickly obsolete and the concept of lifelong learning increasingly important. Simultaneously, however, there is an argument that, although claiming to provide individualized/personalized teaching by appearing attentive to student subjectivity and local contexts, digital tools and educational technologies tend to apply standardized and decontextualized pedagogies that disregard student subjectivity, cultures, and differences and produce truth claims grounded in essentialized identities (Kamenarac 2024). Besides, most critics would also agree that the net effects of this round of educational globalization probably widen inequalities between the Global North and the Global South (Peters and Jandrić 2018).

Geopolitics in the age of digitalization has further positioned and enabled the utilization of education as a form of networked soft power. Countries like the United States, the UK, and China use education as a tool of soft power in their competition to host the world’s top universities and attract international students. Nations with advanced technology, such as the United States and China, are positioning themselves to export their educational technologies and platforms, influencing global educational standards and practices.

With the growth of networked power and the increase in digital education comes a greater need to protect sensitive student data. Geopolitical tensions can arise around data sovereignty and security, especially as educational platforms may be subject to international surveillance and cyberattacks (Pangrazio 2024). The networked forms of power that now characterize a stage of globalization based on digitization require scrutiny over questions of ownership, i.e., who owns the network. Most often, these new networks of power are owned by Big Tech, a limited number of very large companies that have access to global markets that can easily crowd out other companies. The global digital divide isn’t just about access to technology but also about the skills needed to use it effectively. This creates a new dimension of geopolitical competition, as countries strive to bridge the divide and avoid being left behind in the digital economy (Williamson 2021).

There are also risks of cyberconflict; a new front for geopolitical competition, with the potential to disrupt educational services and influence global educational narratives (Shandler and Canetti 2024). Digitalization is reshaping education and geopolitics simultaneously, creating new opportunities and challenges for countries, institutions, and individuals. As these shifts continue, it will be important for governments and other stakeholders, such as UN organizations, to consider the implications for equity, security, and international cooperation in education.

Postdigital: Rival World Systems

The geopolitics of twin rival systems refers to the political, economic, and strategic interactions between two powerful and competing systems or blocs. This concept is often used to describe the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, or more broadly, the West and the East (see Peters et al. 2022). In the context of education, the geopolitics of twin rival systems could be interpreted as the global competition and ideological battles between different educational systems, policies, or approaches, most obviously between the US and China as blocs that constitute ‘rival systems.’ In a postdigital age, this is no longer a straightforward digitalization of space/time or a form of globalization that reaches easily beyond borders, but rather the development of a parallel twin system rivalry that places education center stage in the race for key strategic technologies.

These rivalries can reflect broader geopolitical tensions and ideologies, yet the twin system rivalry is most powerfully represented in questions of technology and power. Digital technologies are often seen as a key driver of economic and military power. Countries that lead in the development and adoption of educational technology may gain long-term influence and leverage in global education policy and human capital planning, especially for the next generation of generative technologies. This rivalry is clearly illustrated by the competition over the development and supply of semiconductors (see FP Analytics 2021), wherein smaller states such as Taiwan, Japan, and the Netherlands act as ‘swing states’ in the global supply chain battle, as well as the US’ attempts to slow down China’s development through restrictive trade practices and investment subsidies.

The relationship between postdigital education and the geopolitics of twin rival systems is complex, with digital education being both a driver and a reflection of broader global power dynamics. As educational systems around the world continue to evolve in response to technological change, these interactions will likely become more pronounced.

The Materiality of Immateriality

Networks and systems rely on a physical infrastructure that sits on and passes through physical lands, requiring further infrastructure such as electricity (which is still largely dependent on fossil fuels). Therefore, the shift from territories to networks and to rival world systems does not imply abandoning territorial considerations in favor of networked considerations, which subsequently abandons networked considerations in favor of rival world system considerations. Instead, we are facing a sort of piling up of networked considerations over territorial considerations and then the piling up of world systems considerations on top of them all. Networks pass through lands; world systems are enabled by networks; their interdependence significantly complexifies the geopolitics of postdigital educational development.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many countries have learned this lesson the hard way. The early 2020s shortage of microchips in Europe and the US is a typical case in point. During the heyday of globalization, profit-driven corporations had transferred many so-called strategic industries to the global South. When global trade came to a halt, the Global North was soon left with supply chain shortages in various important materials. These days, we are seeing a surge in policies aimed at de-risking while bringing strategic industries back to their own territories such as The European Chips Act (European Parliament 2023). However, this is easier said than done, and the process, if ever completed, is likely to take years.

Similar developments have happened in the cultural arena. According to Gabriella Coleman (in Coleman and Jandrić 2019: 546), ‘for the first 15 years of digital studies, the digital domain was somehow cast as immaterial. The emphasis on infrastructure, all the rage today, was non-existent.’ With the works of critical scholars such as Mackenzie Wark (2015), cultural studies have started to pay more attention to physical infrastructure. Nevertheless, cultural studies, digital humanities, and similar popular fields still struggle with the dynamic between the material and the immaterial (see Hall 2013).

Since the early days, digital education has managed to avoid the trap of ‘immateriality.’ Actually, some of the first serious studies introducing EdTech paid a lot of attention to the so-called digital divide. At its beginning, digital education scholarship (appearing under various names such as e-learning and technology-enhanced learning) had been overly focused on material access to computers and the Internet. With time, more and more nuanced approaches (such as Networked Learning) have begun to realize that the postdigital mash-up of infrastructures was a requisite for participation in online learning. At the turn of the millennium, Van Dijk (1999) identified four barriers to access:

Lack of any digital experience caused by lack of interest, computer fear, and unattractiveness of the new technology (‘psychological access’)

No possession of computers and network connections (‘material access’)

Lack of digital skills caused by insufficient user-friendliness and inadequate education or social support (‘skills access’)

Lack of significant usage opportunities (‘usage access’) (Van Dijk 1999)

While these barriers reflect the complexity of relationships between material and immaterial barriers, mobility scholars, especially those specialized in the Global South, have continued to criticize digital divide approaches for their lack of cultural sensitivity, nuance (see Traxler et al. 2021), and engagement with specific postcolonial contexts (Traxler 2024).

The global Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns also represent a pivotal moment, which led to the largest recorded shift towards remote working (from home) in human history. Testimonies and reflections about this pivot (see Jandrić et al. 2020, 2021) have brought an increased focus on the many faces of postdigital inequality (see Kuhn et al. 2023). Yet again, we must agree with Karl Marx and recognize the centrality of labor. This time, however, distinctions between human labor and machine labor have become increasingly blurred, and human–machine collaboration in life, learning, and work has been intensified.

Navigating the Geopolitical Landscape of AI

The rapid advancement of AI systems has been reshaping the technological landscape and reverberating through geopolitical spheres for decades. A good recent example is the automation of labor, which has unequally affected different industries, regions, and countries (see Peters et al. 2019). Following recent developments in generative AIs, automation has started to profoundly impact global matters of growth, productivity, competition, national defense, and human culture. In this swiftly evolving arena, political and corporate leaders alike are seeking to decipher the implications of this abrupt and powerful wave of innovation, exploring new opportunities, and navigating new risks.

The US and China emerge as the primary contenders in the global AI race, with both collaboration and competition shaping the trajectory of generative AI development (Nguyen and Hekman 2022). While the US leads in cutting-edge innovations, China faces challenges in training Large Language Models (LLMs) (Jiang 2024), thus intensifying geopolitical dynamics as nations vie for technological supremacy. Geopolitical swing states, including the UK, UAE, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Taiwan, and India, hold significant sway in shaping the AI landscape. These nations are poised to form alliances and partnerships to advance common goals, altering the geopolitical landscape in the process.

As AI evolves, its geopolitical implications become increasingly pronounced. The economic potential of generative AI is vast, with estimates suggesting significant contributions to global GDP growth (see Qin et al. 2023 for a systematic review). However, realizing these benefits hinges on addressing key components such as energy consumption, computing resources, data availability, model advancements, and education. To mitigate the risks of regulatory backlash and political disruption, stakeholders must actively monitor geopolitical trends and engage policymakers and the public in dialogue.

We are now in ‘the inter-AI period’ – a brief moment in history in which [u]ses, norms, standards, and values embedded in AI technology are evolving at a dizzying pace and are in flux. … This window of opportunity will be short, after which mathematical principles and decision processes embedded in AI algorithms will harden. Technological evolution will certainly continue thereafter. But the views, norms, practices, and strategies would have been embedded in the technology. (Sanders 2024)

The inter-AI period calls for proactive engagement from stakeholders across sectors to ensure that decisions made today pave the way for a generative world order that prioritizes affirmative ethics (Braidotti 2019), safety, fairness, and reliability. Educating stakeholders about the capabilities and limitations of AI is crucial to fostering informed policymaking and public discourse. International cooperation and multilateral dialogue are essential to harmonizing regulatory approaches and addressing cross-border challenges.

The inter-AI period must be used to shape AI technologies while they are still under development and, therefore, malleable. Once AI technologies become more mature, it will become increasingly harder — and eventually impossible — to change their ‘hardened,’ deeply ingrained settings. The time for shaping AI technology is now, and this shaping must go in hand with postdigital educational development.

Mobilizing A Postdigital Geopolitical Turn

Peters and Besley (2024) have hit upon an important thematic avenue of discussion that centers education and its increasingly AI-driven orientation and development within a larger geopolitical struggle for technological supremacy. This recent turn within the postdigital field brings together seemingly disparate disciplinary frames of reference, theories, and concepts, as well as academic, administrative, and lay practices, understandings, and insights to bear within a transformative praxis of postdigital education. While the latter may seem a more implausible task than the former, such is the underlying impetus of the postdigital knowledge ecology (Green 2023).

The previous sections have highlighted that collaboration and competition between China and the US over the development of strategic AI technologies have escalated to the degree that there now exists a twin system rivalry that places education center stage. The permutation of this so-called ‘great power rivalry’ (Peters et al. 2022) into the realm of next-generation AI technologies is not a novel understanding, having been highlighted previously by Knox (2023a). However, questions regarding the scope to which this AI-centered rivalry will affect the future of educational development at the global scale are just now coming into a more focused view.

Specifically, alongside longstanding cross-cutting educational themes such as sustainability, access, equity, quality, disasters, safety, and the like, educational stakeholders must also grapple with the increasing encroachment of AI for EdTech development as a taken-for-granted yet widely assumed techno-deterministic pathway towards global educational amelioration. This is highlighted by the recent release of UNESCO’s ‘Guidance for generative AI in education and research,’ which ‘presents an assessment of potential risks GenAI could pose to core humanistic values that promote human agency, inclusion, equity, gender equality, and linguistic and cultural diversities, as well as plural opinions and expressions,’ while also stressing ‘the need for educational institutions to validate GenAI systems on their ethical and pedagogical appropriateness for education’ (Miao and Holmes 2023: 3).

Congruously, Peters and Green (2024) have previously outlined the need for a global consensus on the development of ethical AI foundations in pursuit of a human-centered vision of Artificial Wisdom (AW). This article builds upon that call by pursuing a more open, diverse, and complex vision of educational development through a postdigital engagement with global educational stakeholders who now find themselves caught between two predominant geostrategic sociotechnical imaginaries. As expressed by Mager and Katzenbach (2021: 224), sociotechnical imaginaries may be understood as ‘concretely constructed, made, and unmade in different constellations and contexts.’ Given this understanding, it is clear as to why Peters and Besley (2024) sought to enumerate eight specific facets of geopolitics that ‘shape the trajectory of educational development.’

Alongside these given facets, there exists a litany of under scrutinized sociomaterial issues related to the current bipolar geostrategic shaping of the AI-driven EdTech for educational development discourse. The term sociomateriality should be understood as a concept utilized within poststructural/posthumanist research that, through a view of micro-level or field-level practices, positions social orderings as the outcome of interactions between human and non-human elements (de Moura and de Souza Bispo 2019). Highlighting a lack of both geopolitical and sociomaterial awareness surrounding the contemporary ‘hyping’ of AI technologies (Jandrić 2023), a recent report conveyed a sense of stupefaction with the fact that Amazon’s AI-based checkout-free ‘Just Walk Out’ technology required the manual labor of 1000 ‘real people in India’ to physically monitor 700 out of every 1000 purchases (Bitter 2024). In this light, we position the postdigital as an appropriate context and field from which to pursue and develop an improved geopolitical understanding of the sociomateriality of current AI-centered sociotechnical imaginaries.

Specifically, Peters and Besley (2024) outline that inquiry into the geopolitics of postdigital educational development may cut through any number of disciplinary fields. Such a transdisciplinary discussion might include the political economy of microchip development and production, protectionism, material cost, and the unequal distribution of benefits; foreign affairs, public policy, migration, and the subsequent mobility or immobility of academics between supposed rival nations; educational sustainability and the current environmental cost and potential benefits of AI for EdTech production, manufacturing, and implementation; public diplomacy, university rankings, and AI for EdTech as a conduit for global soft power; philosophy of education, educational policy and reform, and the future connotations that AI-driven EdTech will have on the appropriate educational provision, pedagogy, and practice; sociology of education and the role AI-driven EdTech might play towards either bridging and/or widening various forms of social stratification. These are just a few of the possible avenues of inquiry that necessitate a concerted effort from the ever-expanding global postdigital community.

We would like to proffer a few examples of contemporary works whose themes may manifest in rich veins of postdigital inquiry for scholars aiming to manifest a transdisciplinary praxis of postdigital educational development. These include topics such as global technological and educational governance regimes (Zapp 2020; Sambuli 2021), contested spatialities of digital sovereignty (Glasze et al. 2022), and its rise within regional/national AI governance regimes (Larsen 2023) education governance, digitization and the social contract (Patil 2023; Hayes et al. 2024), techno-nationalism and the balkanization of cyberspace (Burrows et al. 2021), the geopolitical landscape of academic science (Cantwell and Grimm 2018) and the geostrategic role of schools (Nguyen 2020), technology and educational power relations across regions (Essa Al Lily and Foland 2015), feminist approaches to understanding the contemporary geopolitics of technology (Jack and Avle 2021), and decolonizing approaches to AI teaching and learning (Zembylas 2021).

Postdigital inquiry into these topics, among many others, may promote a more complex yet infinitely more elucidating understanding of the geopolitics of AI-driven education as a bifurcated sociotechnical discourse that has real-world sociomaterial implications for educational stakeholders across the globe. In this way, postdigital scholarship can contribute to a ‘kaleidoscopic’ (Kuhn et al. 2023) vision of educational development that is driven and shaped by diverse global understandings and practices aiming to promote a more ethical and sustainable human-centered praxis. This geopolitical turn may be understood as a call to mobilize postdigital scholarship towards a transformative praxis of educational development that counters the techno-determinism of predominant sociotechnical imaginaries, which hype and position AI-driven technologies as unproblematic progenitors of educational amelioration and developmental supremacy. As such, this turn aims to promote an inclusive process of biodigital becoming (Reader 2022) that will shape the current and future sociotechnical trajectory of global educational discourse and development within a ‘human-centred vision of these new technologies’ (Miao and Holmes 2023: 3).

This ‘human-centred approach’ to the meaningful and ethical use of AI is grounded in ‘human rights principles, protection of human dignity and cultural diversity’ in defining ‘the knowledge commons’ (Miao and Holmes 2023: 18). As such, it is in  service of the development of human capabilities for co-creating inclusive, just, and sustainable futures for human and more-than-human beings.

Towards a Transformative Praxis of Education Development

These days, the postdigital contours of educational development undergo significant and formative changes; what we make of these changes today will shape our collective future for many years to come. Governments, nongovernmental organizations, think tanks, and corporate research centers spend a lot of effort to direct these changes. However, postdigital research clearly shows that those efforts are predominantly grounded in overly techno-deterministic, techno-instrumentalist, and techno-solutionist premises. The global scholarly community has extensively, loudly, and clearly argued against such analyses and solutions. Yet, while there have been some explorations of postdigital organizations (see Reeves 2019), educational leadership (Ellis 2024), and educational development (Knox 2023b), forward-looking postdigital scholarship focused on the geopolitics of educational development is few and far in between.

Beyond education, however, similar research efforts have already taken hold. One good example is Andreas Hirblinger’s (2023) exploration of research strategies for postdigital peacebuilding. In the first step, Hirblinger explores the main features of postdigital policy. ‘Contrary to narratives in policy and practice that tend to fetishize the digital,’ writes Hirblinger, ‘digital peacebuilding cannot be meaningfully separated from peacebuilding before digitalization.’ Therefore, ‘[r]esisting the call for a “digital turn,” a post-digital lens helps to research, rewrite, and rework the digital while simultaneously staying with and moving beyond digitalization’ (Hirblinger 2023).

After a tour de force of appropriating various postdigital theories to policy contexts, Hirblinger argues that the postdigital helps researchers to:

(1) establish a critical distance to narratives of fast-paced innovation and progress that fetishize the digital, (2) scrutinize how digitalization compounds contemporary approaches and constellations of peacebuilding, (3) engage with the uneven temporalities of digital peacebuilding and its diverse global manifestations, (4) shed light on its real, embodied, and tangible effects on conflict-affected populations, (5) hold digitalization accountable by unearthing disillusionments and failures, (6) re-adjust our focus on human agency in the development and use of the socio-technical systems that constitute digital peacebuilding, (7) and finally, take a rhizomatic view that is concerned with how power relations make and break digitalized peacebuilding networks. (Hirblinger 2023)

Hirblinger’s analysis is still oriented towards researchers (rather than policymakers or the general public), and their argument is strongly focused on the specifics of peacebuilding. Nevertheless, a mere glance at Hirblinger’s (2023) seven points indicates the value of this work as inspiration for the geopolitics of postdigital educational development.

This is not the place to develop a systematic theory of postdigital educational development or, indeed, its geopolitics. Education is to benefit and be accessible equitably to everyone. For this to happen, policy decision-making needs to forge communal solutions and ensure that the voices of everyone, especially voices of ‘missing people’ (Braidotti 2017), are invited and represented in a wide social consensus. Hence, postdigital educational development needs to bring together scattered pieces of relevant postdigital knowledge — sociomaterialism, postdigital-biodigital philosophy, theory and practice of collective knowledge-making and action, and many others. We need to open postdigital dialogues (Jandrić et al. 2019) between these and across other diverse ways of knowing and acting. We need to listen to education managers, politicians, and the general population. With its border-transcending transdisciplinary orientation, postdigital research (see Jandrić et al. 2023a, b) is well equipped for the task. Above all, we need to roll up our sleeves and try out our theories in practice. We need to engage in postdigital research projects, take leadership and advisory positions, make tangible postdigital changes, and then learn from their consequences.

This is easier said than done. Leadership, consultancy, and policymaking are very different from scholarly research. Green Papers and White Papers are very different from academic articles; participation in policy-making and advisory task forces is very different from leading and participating in academic committees. However, we are not alone, and Rome was not built in a day. Participating actively in the now firmly established Postdigital Science and Education publishing ecosystem and following Lewin’s (1952: 169) message that ‘there is nothing more practical than a good theory,’ the community is well equipped for two important tasks: to unpack the main issues and debates surrounding the geopolitics of postdigital educational development and to align its theory to practice. Starting yesterday would be better than starting today; starting today is better than starting tomorrow.