A. Fuat Firat and Lars Thording, Arizona State University West

"Life is not a series of gig lamps, symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end." (Virginia Woolf in To the Lighthouse)

Introduction

Postmodern scholars in literature and other disciplines are becoming aware of the shortcomings of a modern, structured, well-defined concept of reality. We learn from writers, such as Virginia Woolf, how the myths underlying modern thinking make us produce abstractions that make only limited sense in a world where truth and reality exist not per se (in a Platonic sense), but only in and by the social context in which they are construed.

In the meantime, education has long been struggling with institutional change provoked by such realizations. Modernity saw education in the light of a very specific and exclusive knowledge concept; acquiring proper knowledge meant searching for objective, testable, and permanent truths (Schön 1983; Phillips 1985; Firat 1996). These concepts of knowing and learning seem outdated in the light of postmodern culture and the new roles that technology and media play in the life of people in postmodernity. In particular, the modern concept of literacy, which is closely linked with the written word--the book--seems to go hand in hand with social inadequacy rather than social capacity; being able to read is no longer enough to empower the individual in society. Rather, computer skills, familiarity with Internet and interactive television, as well as the capacity to immerse oneself in experiential culturescapes such as Las Vegas casinos or theme parks lie at the core of social life in the postmodern era. It is through these social contexts that the individual acquires knowledge--at least the form of knowledge which seems to empower the individual in an age where politics can be fully comprehended only in the light of its entertainment value and where "reality" and "truth" are reached through immersion rather than through academic detachment: "The figures of the learned ignoramus and of the brilliant social boob are too familiar within institutions of higher learning, not to mention corporate America, to doubt that even a doctorate in psychology provides uncertain certification that the possessor enjoys the ability to move happily and effectively in the world of people" (Berscheid 1985, p. 61 ff., see also Schön 1983).

The challenges faced by the educational world stretch far beyond the introduction of computers in the classroom or the incorporation of Internet classes in the curriculum. The magnitude of the postmodern challenge lies in the break-down of the modern project--which has fundamentally defined what education was (and is)--not in the rapid development in computer technology. Meeting these challenges demands that we de-contextualize learning from its institutional setting within a narrowly defined domain of education. Learning does take place outside the domain of education, and maybe we ought to consider such learning to be valuable and the knowledge acquired here to be as "real" as the knowledge canonized in textbooks and scholarly articles.

This article proposes that we re-contextualize learning from a perspective that recognizes the dissolution of traditional modern barriers between education and other domains, notably entertainment, and that incorporates the new cultural and technological agenda, which invites an expanded vision of what knowledge is and what learning can be. The article starts with a brief account of the modern educational discourse, its philosophical foundation, and its epistemological assumptions. In this context, we emphasize the nature of learning in the modern project and the exclusive position granted to certain types of "technologies" in this project. From this background, we proceed to demonstrate the challenge that postmodernism presents to such modern educational discourse. In a final section, we propose how postmodern challenges to modern education may be interpreted as a tremendous opportunity that allows us to benefit from new infotainment technologies and to re-invent literacy.

One of the major consequences of the modern institutionalization of education has been the separation of education from everyday life. Modernity has constituted many separations of spheres of life, such as the separation of the public and private domains, production from consumption, and as Habermas--building on Weber--has articulated, separation of the spheres of science, art, and morality (Foster 1983). In its quest to rationalize and make more efficient the different aspects of human life, modern culture has partitioned and fragmented it, a condition that is further reinforced and accepted in the transition to postmodernity (Firat and Venkatesh 1995). Among these partitions is the separation of everyday activities from learning, education from play and everyday chores.

Modernity aimed to realize a project: betterment of human lives by controlling nature through scientific technologies (Angus 1983). To move towards this formidable goal there was the need to educate all humanity and communalize knowledge about scientifically discovered universal truths in order to diffuse human benefits of such knowledge and achievements. This need and goal led to universal institutionalization of education in an effort to assure that the most important and necessary knowledge could be imparted, especially to young people, within the most conducive environments and through the most effective and efficient methods. For the younger, the children, we know that this resulted in the quite universal structuring of primary and secondary schools. For young adults, the pre-modern formats observed in different cultures for religious or secular education in academies, medreses, and seminaries were reorganized into the modern university. Now, instead of children and young adults being educated by elders in their homes, as they played, or as they attended to daily chores with others, learning took place in specific places and at specific times assigned to the tasks of "education."

These separations were constructed by, and helped in the development of, cultural images that education was something distinct from other activities of life. One kind of other activity that intellectual learning was clearly detached from was play, recreation, or entertainment. This detachment was then cemented by having recesses for play and recreation in between classes or courses from the very early years in a student's life. At the higher education level, of course, these recesses were more informal and less planned. We know how many young university students have turned these periods of recess into times of complete escape from any intellectual or cognitive pursuits, such as drinking and partying binges.

In terms of literacy, defined in modern culture as the ability to read and write, such structuring of education has led to impressive gains in modernized nations. Larger and larger proportions of the populations in these nations became literate and possessed general knowledge. On the other hand, the separation of education and entertainment has bred some self-defeating circumstances that have relatively recently surfaced in statistics, such as the fact that around a quarter of the adult population in the United States is now functionally illiterate.

A significant reason for the paradoxical results of the modern structuring of education has been the apportionment of technologies--broadly defined as methods or ways of accomplishing tasks--to the domains of education and entertainment. Consider the products of two different communications technologies, print and audiovisual: the book and television. Originally, the book achieved its popularity and wider markets by appealing to not the intellectual but the sensational interests of the people (the consumers)--other than the Bible, most sales of books in Continental Europe came from popular novels that were in the romance genre (Fullerton 1988). With the development of other, specifically visual and audio transmission communication technologies, the book increasingly became culturally assigned to the more lofty informational communication purposes, for "cultivated" and educational learning. With time, the image of reading a book has become one of intellectual activity, although, of course, there are books that are considered to be of little intellectual value--such as romance novels and comics books. The print media, in general, have the aura of greater sophistication and intellectualism in relation to, say, the radio or television, which are considered to be more for entertainment, relaxation, and fun.

One reason for these images relates to modernist values regarding knowledge. In modern culture, the scientific approach to knowledge requires that knowledge be acquired about the reality surrounding the subject from a detached position in order to assure objectivity. The practice that separated and abstracted from daily, common experience and practice, therefore, was valued as superior. Such a result was best achieved by the "word" which extracted and abstracted from immersed, immediate experience, thus allowing the detached, independent representation of reality. As such, the word, especially the written word, which had permanence--another quality valued in modernity (Firat 1996)--became the medium of reasoned, rational knowledge and was considered to be superior to other, more direct forms of representation, such as the visual--photograph or film--or the audio--recorded sounds. In this culture of values, the word became considered as the medium of serious, mental, consequential, intellectual, scientific discourse, while visuals, sounds, smells, etc., were media for the more profane, sensual, superfluous, inconsequential, "entertaining" purposes.

There is another important historical reason for such assignment of different media to different purposes. Unlike the period when printing technology was invented, by the time newer technologies of communication--for example, television--were invented larger and more powerful corporations had become involved in their commercialization and marketing. While when first developed and envisioned, television was considered and promised to be a potentially great educational tool, the corporations that controlled its market introduction and diffusion used and positioned it as an entertainment medium to draw audiences for commercial and advertising interests and purposes. Intellectuals, educators, and academics who had negative attitudes towards television as a superficial medium have chosen to not claim it and have left it to the control of the corporations and celebrities. Even for the more intellectual and informational content, for example, news programs, the commercial concerns override educational and informational goals--a fact that has been stated by many television news producers (Moyers 1989a, 1989b) and prominent news anchors (for example, CBS news anchor Dan Rather).

Consequently, culturally we have an antagonistic opposition between the book and television. They have been contenders for people's time, trying to detract from each other instead of complementing each other. In many ways, the book has lost this battle. After all, with its ability to impress upon more senses, spectacularize, and present multilayered, vivid images and sounds, the television has had more attraction power than the book--which has a linear logic of progression--for many who are uninitiated to the joys of reading. Plus, given the cultural images of these technologies, especially students think and feel that reading books is for study and hard and boring, while television is fun and light and entertaining. It is understandable, therefore, that with the continuous improvements in the production technologies and "quality" of television programs, television has increased its viewership, reading has suffered, and literacy rates--including the reading level of university students, which is now around an eighth grade level--are lowered.

The circumstance of conceptualizing students as receivers of knowledge, as consumers are conceptualized as the audience of television, persisted in the modern idea of education despite the fact that they were asked to compose written essays. Instead of higher education being conceptualized as a process of shared exploration and discovery on the part of the students and the facilitators (the instructors)--as was the case in Socratic education--it became a process of imparting scientifically developed knowledge to the students. There was an idea that within this process, the students would also be taught the ways of developing such knowledge themselves, thus, they were asked to compose ideas in written form, and they were taught the scientific methods. Generally, however, it has come to be considered that these "skills" learned are to be exercised later, after higher education is completed. In many ways, the time spent in higher education involves a one-way flow of knowledge.

With this structure, modern education has become both a process of privileging some, and an institution of sustaining power relations that exist. The few who can afford higher education become the ones who possess true knowledge and expertise. The separation of education from everyday learning also guarantees that students cannot develop true knowledge from encounters that are outside the educational institutions. They become both uniquely privileged and, yet, limited in reproducing the "confirmed" ways of knowing. For institutionalized education, therefore, infusion of entertainment technologies into the higher education processes is threatening. Current forms of computarization of higher education reflect educators' discomfort with this threat.

The technologies that are now poised to permeate higher education are mostly computer based. Almost all courses at the university level necessitate the use of the computer. An increasing number of courses are using the Internet. More and more courses require the students to get on line for electronic-mail programs or lists in order to communicate with instructors and classmates, take examinations, complete exercises, and the like. Is the infusion of this technology into classes at universities achieving the purposes espoused or wanted?

Students' encounter with the computer is mostly as audience or utilizer of pre-programmed procedures. Possibly the largest use that the students have for computers in class is to replicate what they earlier did using pen and paper: writing (word processing), preparation of tables and figures, and statistical procedures. When used in this way, the computer does not realize its potential as a new technology; it becomes only a faster technique.

One of the major reasons for the computer's fast adoption, other than its speed and function capacity, is the fact that it is screen-based, which constitutes a familiarity for the televisual generation. "Watching" the screen has become, for this televisual generation, the dominant mode of absorbing and/or receiving "information." As long as students do not construct, compose, or produce multi-sign communication on the computers, they are limited in their education, even more than when they only used the book and the notebook. At least, then, they were not merely passive recipients of information, but relatively active learners of the principles through which knowledge was generated and, especially, communicated. By utilizing the same technology through which they were exposed to knowledge, that is composing written essays, analyses, interpretations, in effect, by writing "partial" books, they engaged in a deeper understanding of the principles and processes of knowledge, its communication, and its generation. Thus, they could develop a better control of knowledge.

In late modernity, with the increasing effectiveness of audio and visual media, institutionalized education has already lost some of its original influence. Specifically, with the cultural developments we discussed above, higher education, in particular, has forfeited its role as a conveyor of principles, philosophies, goals, and values to younger generations. Increasingly, higher education has become a technical or trade learning process, often even in the case of humanities or liberal education. At our universities today, students get informed and "educated" in the methods and strategies of achieving their career goals, or they learn the techniques of their trades. What their goals will be for life, purposes of selecting life styles or directions in life are "learned" not in higher education institutions but through popular media, mostly television and films. The role models for developing identities and the ideals for life are represented and found in these media. One might say, therefore, that the more consequential "education" is taking place outside of the designated educational process.

At present, sensing the loss of interest in education among students as entertainment technologies draw more and more attention and interest, educators are preoccupied with the adoption of new technologies, new modes of learning and teaching, which mirror a development that occurs primarily outside the boundaries of educational institutions and the domains that they serve; notably that of entertainment. Students are encountering technologies and embracing new forms of learning outside the classroom, in thematized hotels of Las Vegas, in theme restaurants, while watching television shows, in the virtual reality of Disney World and Universal Studios, and in cyberspace. Inside the classroom, the educator encounters students who may be well acquainted with Egyptian art and history; not because they read about it in a book, but because they visited the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas, because they watched a show on the Discovery channel, or because certain Donald Duck episodes take place in ancient Egypt. Such "knowledge" encountered in students is readily dismissed by the modern educator due to the improper media through which knowledge was obtained, and due to the improper nature of such knowledge. However, the educator may be stunned by the depth and excitement of such educationally "unreal" knowledge: students will have vivid stories to tell about Pharos and slaves, they will account not merely for the number of stones in the pyramids, but also for the hardship that the slaves suffered, and the brutality of their masters. Such knowledge may seem intriguing, because it has different properties than the knowledge that the educator was about to convey to the students; the student is excited, because although it took place on screens in a hotel in Nevada and on television, s/he was there when the pyramid was built. S/he saw it; s/he experienced it. Although these practices and these technologies in a modern perspective are located outside the educational domain, educational discourse is faced with a demand that these technologies and their accompanying modes of living, learning, and knowing be reacted on, whether through a dismissal of their relevance in the educational project, or through their recognition and adoption in the educational project.

We see the effects of powerful entertainment communication technologies in Las Vegas. People who come to Las Vegas and encounter the thematized environments of the hotels are enthralled and captivated. At Luxor, or in New York New York, they are immersed into environments that simulate experiences of ancient Egypt or contemporary New York, but with a twist that audaciously presents what could be or could have been--not only representing what is or was (The Making of Luxor 1994). The enjoyable experiences people have within these environments--of course, not only at Luxor and New York New York, but also in encountering the volcano at The Mirage, the knights of the round table at Excalibur, pirates at Treasure Island, etc.--leave them with insights and preferences regarding what they find meaningful or intriguing or promising in and for life. Having directly encountered these experiences also leaves them with more vivid and powerful images and memories.

Clearly, however, these thematized environments that were built on new infotainment technologies (see, Dholakia, Mundorf and Dholakia, 1996) allow little interaction on the part of the visitors. They are not participators but voyeurs; they are tourists. When and if such technologies are used in the classroom, the students are likely to also remain tourists, not users, controllers, or appliers of knowledge. For complete knowledge and understanding of the contemporary world, these technologies must be tools in the hands of the students, for them to manipulate and construct through. They must not be employed to simply expose students to knowledge. Students must have access to production of televisual programs, for example, as they are often asked to produce written reports and essays.

Among the more prevalent abstractions of the modern project has been the Cartesian mind-body (res cogitans - res extensa) separation, and the corresponding project of making categorical distinctions (dichotomies) between different spheres (domains) of life, distinctions that embrace ideologies as well as practice forms, distinctions that normatively (Firat 1996) confine, and deem proper, certain practice forms and values within the domain they are ascribed to. As we have discussed, education is one such category or domain of life, a category that modernity has associated with the pursuit of academic excellence and rational search for objective truth. In contrast, entertainment has been construed as an unproductive, fundamentally empty exercise, the purpose of which is to passively absorb entities of wasted time.

The nature of a domain, however, is not merely defined by the goals that it must pursue and the validation of practice forms--in education, quantifying and measuring phenomena is a proper practice form, having fun is not--that it entails. Along with this foundation goes an acceptance of certain technologies or media of social action that are deemed proper in the light of the confinement of practice forms and ideals. Again, as discussed, the written word, the book, reading and writing have come to represent the proper media or technologies in education, whereas visiting Disneyland or watching Seinfeld do not; theme parks and television shows are technologies that we associate with entertainment. Education has consistently defended the borders of its domain and sought to exclude technologies associated with entertainment from entering the classroom, the very same technologies that seem to be gaining significance with the waning of modernity.

We fear that if the educational system continues to ignore technologies other than those traditionally associated with the educational domain, yesterday’s literate may become tomorrows illiterate. If a student's effort in college goes towards reading books, and s/he fails to recognize the intellectual value of immersed experiences within the boundaries of the postmodern theaters of Disney World or Universal Studios, s/he may be less prepared to participate in social life than yesterday's illiterate who couldn't read. Furthermore, the student who knows about obtaining knowledge from sitcoms and theme parks is likely to become the one that masters an active participation in social life.

We have previously accounted for the nature of modern education technologies and the philosophical criteria upon which they have been selected and granted exclusivity. Scholars have in recent years debated how new technologies should be adopted by educational institutions. Many of the arguments have aimed at preserving the book, the written and read word, as the primary medium for attaining knowledge. Their point is that the printed text is inextricably connected with the manner in which we understand phenomena that are "real" or "true." If the book is ascribed a less dominant position in the attainment of knowledge, our link with the past will disappear, and so will our link with the future (Mortensen, et. al. 1984).

According to some authors, the replacement of the book by media such as television will have disastrous consequences for society. Thompson (1997) writes about the role of the book in modern society:

Entertainment is directly associated with technologies (television) that serve improper purposes, whereas education and preparation for a democratic life involves the dominance of other learning technologies, notably the book.

Obviously, it cannot be claimed that television is inherently endowed with malicious intention and anti-intellectual traps. However, it is argued, certain features of television actually threatens the educated mind--to read a book requires reflection on the part of the reader, whereas television does not. It fosters only passivity. Reading a book means that we reflect upon its contents and actively produce from it a reality. The reality presented in television is somebody else's reality, whereas with the book, one may create ones own imagery, ones own reality.

This is where the argument becomes increasingly absurd. The point is that television does not allow us to pursue the fundamental purposes of education; to enable the student to be active and critical in her/his life as an empowered, participating, and contributing citizen in a democracy. The absurdity lies in the fact that postmodern technologies may be particularly well suited for activity and critical reflection, whereas the book merely provided these traits within an isolated area of life: the academic pursuit of scientific truth (Mortensen, et. al. 1984).

Thompson (1997) offers a similar argument when addressing another major entertainment technology that takes increasing presence in postmodernity: theme parks and similar environments that require a certain degree of immersion. His argument is that with the decreasing importance of the book, what is replacing literacy as an antecedent to citizenry is passivity as an antecedent to a pleasantly unreal state of consciousness. This "degradation" is very much a product of the passivity that entertainment technologies allegedly foster. Thompson refers to a visit to General Motor's World of Motion: ". . . the individual is lifted off his feet, but in that ride in which the speakers celebrate the freedom of motion, he is not allowed to move but is strapped down, not to be released until the end when he is set before the showroom that contains General Motor's newest models on display for inspection and admiration" (1997, p. 28 ff.). Later, he continues, "What was only toyed with in General Electric's Carousel of Progress is now a full-scale celebration of corporate America, a commercial from which there is no escape, for this is indeed the prototype community in which entertainment and not education molds the voter of tomorrow" (1997, p. 29).

However, television shows and theme parks seem to have reality value to the students in whose discourse these technologies are active; they become areas of active reflection, and the students derive from them an understanding of various phenomena. Modernity may have assessed the nature of entertainment consumption erroneously. We are not necessarily consuming entities of wasted time when walking down the Strip in Las Vegas, we are immersed in an experience through which we can construe an image of real ancient Egypt. We are participants, not poor victims of entertainment waste. How can this be claimed? Consider the fact that television shows and theme parks are very much in our everyday discourse about important matters of life. We discuss the latest Seinfeld episode. We convey to others our Las Vegas experiences. However, in a modern perspective on truth and knowledge, we cannot claim Seinfeld to be the source of truth; we are, in essence, not capitalizing as intellectuals from the rich pool of knowledge that may be accessed through sitcoms and talk shows. Consider an example: if we wish to argue that it is unwise for friends to live too close to each other, we can legitimately do so on the basis of a psychological account that refers to positivistic experimentation; if, on the other hand, we argue this point on the basis of the fact that Seinfeld was opposed to the idea of Elaine moving in as his neighbor, we easily become the object of ridicule. Why? The answer lies in the mythological constructions that dominate the way we conceive of proper knowledge and improper knowledge. In modern discourse, real knowledge is objective, intersubjectively verifiable, generalizable propositions; it cannot be obtained through a vicarious experience from a fictitious story, it must be in scholarly writing, a proper, modern learning technology.

Thus, in modern culture, the validation of knowledge media and technologies regularly used in the educational system was based on their fit with the modern project--the myth about human progress through the pursuit of objective reality-- and the qualities to debate were whether new technologies and knowledge media allowed for detachment (Firat 1996; Schön 1983) of the student from the object of study, a capacity which ultimately is related to the permanence and testability of knowledge, something which lies at the core of a modern concept of reality.

The position of the education establishment towards new technologies has been an eclectic one--technologies can be incorporated in education activities only if they serve the well-defined purposes of education. Technologies or experiences originating outside the educational domain are, at best, irrelevant, at worst, damaging to the project. Schön (1983) writes about the position taken by the educator to technologies and the realities students encounter outside school:

The assessment is not too different for higher education.

In postmodern discourse, validation of knowledge media and technologies in education must be based on something else. The purposes and goals of education must change, not merely because technology dictates, but because our project is changing. Interactive computer technology, cable television, participation in (not observation of) theme park experiences, residential neighborhoods, and culturescapes--all these knowledge sources that we associate primarily with entertainment, because they were antithetical to the modern education project--must be re-evaluated on the basis of new forms of social life that we associate with postmodernism. In the foreground of such re-evaluation is the reconstruction of the education landscape; where may knowledge come from, and which form may it take? Since the attainment of testable and permanent truths can no longer be viewed as a viable goal--it leaves the literates illiterate and makes intellectualism an obstacle to social adequacy--detachment may no longer be the ideal position for the student to take to study objects, or at least we know that immersion and the use of what has been called infotainment technologies produces knowledge--if only we recognize that knowledge may be many things.

Multiplicity of knowledge sources may have always been the case. Significant education about goals, ideals, and values of and for life may have always been outside institutionalized education; if earlier not by the televisual media, at home by family, peers, communities, etc. In modernity, with its fragmentation, its universalism fostered by mass media, and increasing exposure of people to influences of mass media, learning outside of designated educational institutions has increasingly come under the power of these media. In this respect, today Las Vegas provides for us good examples of technologies to be possibly used in educating in and through entertainment. Tourists who visit Las Vegas encounter and enjoy simulations that enable them to immerse themselves in experiences of the past, present, and future.

The modern idea(l) has been that the knowledge transmitted in education is knowledge that is based on scientific, objectively verified and certified information about the world and about humanity, therefore, knowledge that can be used with confidence in organizing human lives, and for making decisions that have true significance and that will make a difference. Information that one received in and through other experiences, including from exposure to entertainment media, has been, on the other hand, suspect, based on biased perspectives, value judgments, untested conjectures, and personal preferences. Consequently, they constituted "experience," but not true knowledge.

A postmodern approach to knowledge challenges the above distinctions in several ways. First, there is the recognition that experiential knowledge acquired through immersed encounters with life and with others does make a difference in how people decide to direct their lives. As mentioned earlier, such knowledge, underprivileged in modern thought, in effect often directs the more important values and goals in life, leaving only the more technical aspects of life to knowledge acquired in education. Second, once it is recognized that there is education in entertainment and that education can be and is entertaining, it becomes clear that there is a need for a new definition of literacy. This definition will have to incorporate into it effects of technologies that emphasize and use signs other than the word; visual images, sounds, smells, touch, and tastes. Since learning can take place through exposure to all media, including television, photography, and virtual reality, that represent and/or present the world, educational processes considered need to integrate technologies of such media. Third, this integration needs to involve the learner's ability to compose or construct "texts" that utilize technologies of all kinds of signs--as for modern literacy reading the word was not sufficient, but that ability to write was also necessary. It is not possible to utilize the educational potential of these technologies unless those who are learning or are being educated understand the principles of how communication, thereby knowledge is constructed and transmitted through the use of all signs--that is, an efficacy in semiotics, not just language is required. Such deeper understanding of the principles necessitates the "reader" to know the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of constructing multi-sign--more than words--texts, and this knowledge can only be completely acquired by active construction of such texts, not only through an exposure to them. Mere exposure to multi-sign texts, as one finds in films and television programs, will likely leave the students as mere audience, passive in their interaction with such texts and unable to reflect on or be analytical with what they are exposed to. Thus, even the espoused modern goals of education, specifically the aim to empower human beings to take control of their lives, cannot be achieved.

A challenge of transition to the postmodern is the recognition that most knowledge in the future will have to be acquired through immersed, not detached forms of encounter with information. Imagine, for example, students encountering the Vietnam War not through verbal descriptions they find in books, but also through virtual reality programs that immerses them into the experience, allowing them to feel, hear, see, smell the contents and effects of the War, as well as taste the rations, for example, that the members of opposing armies had. If, instead of opposing such technological education possibilities with the book (the word), they were integrated, furthermore, allowing the students to interpret by "composing" these virtual reality programs--as they write analytical interpretations of the War in their essays--we would have the possibility of intellectual discourse through multiple media, not in spite of them. That is, three results may be achieved through integration: (1) energy would not be wasted to compete with and struggle against "entertainment," (2) technologies would be put under the control of the learners, instead of a few producers, and (3) education would be a part of life, instead of detached from it.

Given the history of the modern culture of education discussed, is it a wonder that what transpires in universities, the classrooms is considered to be the "ivory tower?" It is ironic that at the same time that the knowledge acquired in higher education institutions is considered to be the most reliable, verified, and meriting greatest confidence, it is also often considered to be irrelevant and divorced from "real life." Our students often think of their courses at the university as a grind that they have to get through to get a diploma that will get them jobs and money to spend, not as a means of learning or a means toward lives of substance and meaning. They are often bored by classes and dislike reading their textbooks. To overcome this trend, professors now want to bring in technologies to make classes more exciting and closer to "real life"--and often lighten the requirements to make the courses easier for the students. Text books assigned to classes increasingly require lower standards of reading and analytical skills. While new technologies are brought into classrooms, however, they are not required to be used substantially by the students. Students do not have to produce audiovisual programs--unless they are film or television production students. They, instead, watch these in their classes in order to write essays about what they learn from them.

The educator has long taken the position that knowledge acquired in television shows or in theme parks is improper knowledge. However, the critical student must ask the educator: what's so unreal about theme parks and television shows? Or perhaps more effectively: what's so real about your version of reality? "Reality" is not more real than television shows, it has merely been assigned this role in a modern project that focused on demonstrability and intersubjective verification. Students, like Thompson's son in the following quote, have understood how to use infotainment technologies and they know that no technologies have exclusive rights to demand reality value:

Unless modern significations of both education and entertainment technologies do go through change, and/or the meanings of education and entertainment are problematized, infusion of the newer audiovisual, screen-based, and virtual reality communication technologies into the classrooms at universities and other higher education institutions may divert the assumed intellectual, reflective, analytical, and empowering aims of education. In effect, the illusory separation of education and entertainment must be overcome towards their (re)integration: an infusion of education with entertainment and entertainment with education. In any case, thinking about technologies and higher education is unlikely to bear fruitful understanding without considerations of the cultural context we have discussed, that is, without their cultural and social contextualization.

Today, it is the modern ideology of technologies that makes modern education fail its most prominent task: to empower the individual and enable her/him to participate in and contribute to society. As it privileges certain knowledge forms and discredits other knowledge forms and technologies, it offers to the student a version of literacy which effectively fails to bring about the empowerment that it promises. Technologies and culturescapes outside the educational domain have increasing importance as vehicles for construing meanings and gaining understandings that lie at the center of postmodern society.

A proper response must be based on the realization that technologies are not inherently for something; it is in the employment of technologies that distinctions are being made between that which is real and proper and that which is fantasy and improper. Education must open itself up to modes of learning that we associate with postmodernity. This would enable coping with life in the postmodern era.

To empower the student, a new concept of literacy must be fostered to fill the empty void between institutionalized education and the still expanding area of social life usually referred to as entertainment. This new concept of literacy must first and foremost empower the student in the sense that it enables her/him to not passively receive scattered and seemingly empty units of wasted time, but to use those in an active construction of meanings.

The Luxor experience is going to dominate social life. The educational system has the capacity to determine whether students should be equipped with modern literacy and thus become passive audience or they should be equipped with a capacity to actively and reflectively use the Luxor experience for a construction of meanings that could represent intellectual growth. Education must enable the students to learn how infotainment technologies can be used for empowerment.

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