Education and the shift from knowledge to information: Virtual classrooms or automated diploma mills?

This paper begins by introducing the philosophy of technology of Martin Heidegger. Heidegger maintained that technology is not neutral and he talked of the 'technological understanding of Being' as the last stage in the Western metaphysical tradition where people are treated as resources. In the next section, the work of Jean-François Lyotard and Mark Poster are used to discuss in critical terms certain changes in the nature of capitalism and the consequent shift from knowledge to information. Finally, in terms of the educational consequences of the shift from knowledge to information the paper contrasts two possible scenarios: one referred to as 'the search for the virtual classroom'; the other referred as 'automated diploma mills'.