If you are asking how people deal with difference, one part if the answer is that sometimes, they don’t. Or they respond defensively. So should we be looking for ways to change that?

Your subsequent point seems to be about what I’ll call self-actualisation (i.e., the future) in relation to technology. I see that’s not your central point, but is the focus of the Papert segment.

At this point, and without having a clearer sense of what you mean by critique, my guess is that you are simply asking how a critical approach to something like futurism plays out, or how the techniques of self-actualisation might be affected by a particular critique. In these examples, it’s not a matter of finding an answer, but of illuminating possibilities.

That’s what I get from what you’ve written here.

“The question is not ‘What will the computer do to us?’ The question is ‘What will we make of the computer?’ The point is not to predict the computer future. The point is to make it. Our computer future could be made in many different forms. It will be determined not by the nature of the technology, but by a host of decisions of individual human beings. In the end, it is a political matter, a matter of social philosophy and of social decision how we will remake and rethink our world in the presence of technology. When we talk about computers in education, we should not think about a machine having an effect. We should be talking about the opportunity offered us, by this computer presence, to rethink [things]…”

The article is actually about technocentrism, which is what John Thackara also essentially objects to in terms of design and forecasting: no need to limit ourselves to a purely technological future. So where does critique fit here? How does it play out?

in any case what strikes me now, before my first cup of coffee in the morning, is that when critical theories are being mobilised by commercial interests – as in the case of, say, design or techno-social forecasting – they become different kinds of criticality that are able to do different kinds of things, both positive and negative.

now it isn’t a question of whose critical approach is best – that’s competitive like military operations and i’m not a soldier – but it can be a question of how critical perspectives are mobilised in different ways, to different ends.

the problem, it seems to me right now, is that some people struggle with differences that cannot be easily ranked. i also continue to see non-academics struggle with the difference between critique and criticism, both getting defensive and becoming aggressive at the mere suggestion of disagreement.

this gets back to my desire for convergence without consensus. it seems so simple, and so obvious to me, but it proves to be a great challenge in contexts where the objective is to do the “right thing.”

but now i’ve rambled so long i no longer know what i’m talking about, so i’ll stop ;)

But maybe I’m only thinking that because I’m a bit put out by my own circumstances.