Reclaiming the Nordic model of education: The child as an affective human-music technology cyborg in an era of ethical and conceptual vacuum

In the postdigital society and education systems, humans have become fabricated hybrids of organism and machine – they have become cyborgs. Ignoring the affective dimension of becoming, however, digitalized environments give way to an ethical and conceptual vacuum, wherein children risk being sacrificed at the altar of development. Reclaiming the Nordic model of education, the authors therefore put postdigital literature in conversation with posthuman affect theory because new vocabularies and a view of language as material are needed to describe the postdigital web of entanglements and how this relates to the way ‘data’ is reported. In the posthuman project, humans as affective are significant and need to be storied for one to become creative with its functionings. Hence, by thinking with Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Donna Haraway, the authors address the need for studies approaching the cyborg in a new way – by way of affects and storying: the child as a metaphysical being, as knowing and a knower of affect. This implies a view of children as more than simply users of technology and rather as a political life-engendering force if one lets it and childhood become. Given this, the authors discuss data as bioinformatical practices of data, both situated and fictional, within the child's specific positioning related to music technology such as streamed music, given that music involvement affects the human body, moods and feelings. The aim is to bring the cyborg to life by discussing affects in children – and digital music technology – storied cyborgs. The image, voice and power of the biblical figure of Isaac rising from the sacrificial altar becoming child permeates the text as the authors’ thinking tool. Instead of speaking about evidence-based research, analysis and results, they speak of something imperceptible and inclusive that collectivizes digital freedom as processes of subjective becomings. The authors’ style is indirect and provocative, aiming to be suggestive and poetic rather than conclusive. Sentences are deliberatively sometimes incomplete, leaving the reader – in accordance with a view of language as matter and mattering – with a feeling of being dropped in the middle of something possibilizing, and simultaneously affirming, the emergence of the event. Altogether, they apply a thought-provoking and innovative approach to rethinking education in the postdigital era.