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So Where Now? 159

models of educational technology provision and practice. Instead of simply acting as
conduits for global agendas and imperatives, nation states could attempt to reconstruct
them first from a national perspective, and then to fitin with local social needs.
There are also a number of other practical interventions that nation states could
make in the construction of educational technology ‘on the ground’ with regard to
increasing equality of opportunity. For instance, states could be more involved in
the establishment and control of adequate telecommunications infrastructures across
all regions of a country. States could also work harder to encourage a heightened
social consciousness on the part of usually profit-hungry private telecommunications
companies. There is also clear scope for nation states and governments to support
democratic forms of governance of educational technology. By projecting a unified
notion of consensual educational technology use through the production of national
strategies and policies, it could be argued that states currently act in ways that sup-
press the needs and wishes of dissenting publics. Rather than seeking to promote
top-down strictures on ‘national’ educational technology use, the role of states
could be reoriented so that they become what Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan (2008, p.113)
terms “the states of the subaltern classes”.
Here, then, states can assume a role as a key driver of democratic forms of
educational technology provision and practice within national contexts. As Michael
Burawoy reasons, there can be many benefits that arise from a state that is engaged
in this manner, i.e. “democratically self-governing, responsive to multiple interests,
and … responsive to civil society, facilitating, promoting and protecting the
conditions of participatory democracy” (Burawoy 2005, p.324–5). There is clear
room here, therefore, for states to act as stimulators rather than suppressors of
democratic engagement with educational technology. This would certainly require
states to move beyond the notion of ‘skills’ as an economic or social panacea, and
focus instead on the wider issues underlying educational technology – such as social
justice, ethics and other currently obscured issues (Keep and Mayhew 2010).

Challenging Corporate Involvement in Educational Technology
The second aspect of educational technology governance that needs to be addressed
is that of the corporations that own and operate the information technologies,
as well as the corporate interests who effectively own and operate the global
knowledge economy. At present, corporate involvement in the field of educational
technology is driven primarily by profit making motivations – albeit increasingly in
the guise of ‘cool capitalism’ where corporate interests pursue market-orientated
activities under the veneer of being involved in worthy, sustainable and socially-
minded action (see McGuigan 2009). As has been observed throughout this book,
in most instances, these corporate actions nevertheless remain centred around the
ultimate establishment of privatised and liberalised markets for digital technology
products, and the enrolment of individuals and countries into the digital economy
(as consumers, as employers and so on).