A Flat (Packed) Affect: Theorizing Pedagogies of Seriality in Unboxing and Assembly

Abstract

This chapter considers the change in the role of the user to that of someone who assembles things, not unlike a set of a building blocks, flat-packed furniture, or meal kits. This offers both a moment to evaluate the extent to which technology will create new roles by altering the pattern and the scale of human experiences as well as an entry point to consider potential pedagogical effects. Increasingly, one key new role is to put things together and to do so in a (very) prescribed and repeated manner consistent with the algorithmic content of the medium and frequently resembling an assembly line. Indeed, as the paper will show, in this version of post-Fordism the factory is now in our homes, in our classrooms, and in the palms of our hands. These effects are only enhanced by the seriality fostered by digital environments so that learning takes on a new set of possibilities based on assembling knowledge in and through a set of repeated actions. That said, a resultant effect derives from imposing a contingent sameness on the outcome, one which precedes and conditions the process. Thus, it becomes necessary to consider the pedagogical effects of the seriality that is quite literally built into the assembly practices upon which so much of our technology depends.