Keele Research Repository

The aim of this paper is to begin to explore and understand the agency and mythology of the objectification of information in culture and learning within the digital domain. Georg Simmel (1910-11) defines the nature of culture as "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history". Subjectivity and subjective experience in the objectification of external forms, and the relationship between agency and experiment, in relation to a post-human debate, are, according to Edwards (2010, p. 5), “a separation of matter from meaning, object from subject”. These thoughts will provide the necessary semantic tool kit, a “semiotics of virtuality” (Hayles, 1999, p. 24), to begin to understand the importance of the objectification of information in learning and teaching. Firstly it is necessary to locate a body (or bodies) of information that will allow further definition of agency within the objectification of information in learning and digital culture. The University of Edinburgh’s, E-learning and Digital Cultures 2013, Massive Online Open Course (mooc) will (possibly) provide the necessary depth of information to begin to understand the impact of the objectification of information in learning and teaching in digital culture. E-learning and Digital Cultures 2013 mooc Twitter feed, locating messages and conversation around hashtag1 (#edcmooc), would part provide that necessary, sampled, empirical data. #edcmooc Twitter feed data in CSV2 format can be found at [Appendix 1]. Ethical consideration regarding privacy of data has been taken into account. All #edcmooc data is in the open domain, and free to access.