Really Useful Knowledge in a Postdigital Age

Abstract

This chapter presents a close reading of Richard Johnson’s seminal work 'Really useful knowledge', 1790–1850. Published 40 years before writing this chapter, Johnson’s work has left a huge legacy in radical education until day. The chapter moves on to reinventing and reimagining Johnson’s ideas for the postdigital context through a complete rewrite, mirroring the exact structure of Johnson’s work. This methodological choice is burdened by two limitations: there is no way to know whether presented interpretations of Johnson’s themes are at all faithful to Johnson’s ideas, and Johnson himself would surely not write the same text today. These limitations are counter-balanced by an honest approach to the rewrite, in which the author reveals the importance of randomness, chance, and human emotion, in postdigital research, and it welcomes new workers, human and non-human, into knowledge work. The chapter concludes by reinventing and reimagining Johnson’s work in the concept of postdigital really useful knowledge which is a concept in flux, a set of practices, and a battlefield for social justice, that can be found in streets, art galleries, activist organizations, libraries, the academia, and many other places. Mirroring Johnson’s seminal work, it is hoped that his important messages will be taken forward into today’s postdigital context.