Abstract
Samuel Butler offers a somewhat dystopic view of Victorian society in his now famous satire, Erewhon, published in 1872. In it, he tells the story of a fictitious country where the strange inhabitants have formed a society that forbids the use of modern technology (only old, established, and nonthreatening technology is allowed). This society actively suppresses any expression of originality, experimentation, or creativity. It further contends that individual scholarship can only ever be made manifest in a curriculum that develops proficiency in the study of what is referred to as “unreason and hypothetics.” Indeed, a venerable Erewhonian professor of worldly wisdom states that “it is not our business to help students to think for themselves. Surely that is the very last thing which one who wishes them well should encourage them to do. Our duty is to ensure that they shall think as we do, or at any rate, as we hold” (189).
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Dakers, J.R. (2014). Technological Literacy as a Creative Process of Becoming Other. In: Dakers, J.R. (eds) New Frontiers in Technological Literacy. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137394750_2
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