A list of terms and short descriptions as I am reading them throughout the course. These are my interpretations and they might not get it completely right.
Actor network theory- that there are many players in the network. Humans are agents in technological systems but so are the technologies and institutions where humans do their work, and so are the non-human labourers. Some animals are doing the work, some enjoying the technology, some exploited in that network. One of the questions cyborg feminism asks is who is creating these technologies, to what end, who is receiving opportunity or repression? It is incumbent upoon us to consider all voices in the network. In education, factors for using new technology shouldn’t just be economic.
Affective Computing– The machine should interpret the emotional state of humans and adapt its behavior to them, giving an appropriate response for those emotions. Help students who are showing signs of distress at the computer screen?
Algorithm-an algorithm is commonly understood as a set of defined steps to produce particular outputs. Algorithms are not just what programmers create, or the effects they create based on certain input, they are also what users make of them on a daily basis. The danger with Algorithms is that they become so embedded and hidden that can be used “to seduce, coerce, discipline, regulate and control: to guide and reshape how people, animals and objects interact with and pass through various systems”.(Kitchin 2017).
Algorithmic generative rules, algorithms are usually woven together with hundreds of other algorithms to create algorithmic systems, and the rules generated by them are compressed and hidden. They are ‘works of collective authorship, made, maintained, and revised by many people with different goals at different times’, and they are embedded in complex socio-technical assemblages. “Therefore we do not encounter algorithmic generative rules in the way that we encounter constitutive and regulative rules. … They are … pathways through which capitalist power works”. Kitchin 2017
Ambient intimacy– we can connect to anyone we want at any time- but it can have a psychological effect, in that no connection is very deep and there are so many simultaneous connections, there is no time for mental reflection and awareness of self. (Amber Case)
Anthropology-where you go out into the field and allow a culture to tell you who they are and how they do things. It is a social science that incorporates objects, and not just people, into studying social phenomenon.
Anthropocentrism– the focus on the individual (Bayne) and not on the tool. Technological as separate from and subordinate to social practice of learning.
Behavioural Psychology- a theory of learning based on the idea that all behaviours are acquired through conditioning. Conditioning occurs through interaction with the environment. Behaviourists believe that our responses to environmental stimuli shape our actions. According to this school of thought, behaviour can be studied in a systematic and observable manner regardless of internal mental states.
Behavioural economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the economic decisions of individuals and institutions. A nudge is a concept in behavioral science, political theory and economics which proposes positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions as ways to influence the behaviour and decision making of groups or individuals
Bioinformationalism– which allows for the transformation of bodies through the manipulation of organic matter (genes and geonomes) as opposed to human-machine hybrids (Miller)
Convergence culture– recognizes that longstanding distinctions between media creation and media consumption are becoming increasingly fluid. Convergence culture acknowledges the top-down, corporate-driven acceleration of media content across multiple channels. On the other hand, it also recognizes bottom-up, grassroots influences whereby “users are learning how to master these different media technologies to bring the flow of media more fully under their control and to interact (and co-create) with other users” (Jenkins & Deuze, 2008, p. 6)
Counterculture– To be ‘counter’ is to be in opposition, to something, some ‘mainstream’ . The sheer profusion of net based affinity groups with whom users might ally themselves make the political ‘edge’ of the term ‘countercultural’ increasingly irrelevant (Lister 2009)
Cybercultures– often looks at how humans can be threatened by technology. (Knox, Miller)
Cybernetics: framing web technologies and services in terms of ‘other worldly’ and ‘virtual’
Critical cyberculture studies is, in its most basic form, a critical approach to new media and the contexts that shape and inform them. Its focus is not merely the Internet and the Web but, rather, all forms of networked media and culture that surround us today and in the future (David Silver)
Cyborg: Human-machine hybrid.
Digital choice architectures- The architecture in the term here refers to the user interface or dashboard that is built into an LMS. The ‘digital choice’ concept builds on research in cognitive psychology and behavioural economics. It shows that subtle changes in the context in which decisions are made can steer (nudge) people to choose a particular option or course of action. The user interface for example might use choice overload, display, colourfulness, visual complexity, and personalization prompts to nudge students (or teachers) towards uninformed, non-deliberate, and biased decisions, possibly infringing their autonomy and self-determination
Encounter Theory -One of Haraway’s theories of connection. Some connections are based on a relationship that is more than just economic and instrumental. Human and dog relationship has more than an instrumental value for example. From Glabau
Extropianism and transhumanism– idea that the body can be surpassed altogether by technology. Extropianism seeks to map human thought into a set of neural activity patterns (a set of informational channels). (Miller) Transhumanism-the cryogenic, brain-download and bio-technological enhancement dreams of transhumanism (Bayne)
Homo Faber– technologically embedded tool-users. Tool using can be seen as an integral part of what humans do when they are being humans. Technology doesn’t have to be viewed as ‘inhuman’ or set apart from the human body, but a “complex symbiosis between human bodies, tools and the social and physical environment”, (Miller 2011).
Informatics of domination-Boundaries can be between Minds and body, animal and machine, idealism and materialism, but “the cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgressed”. The leanings of the powerful are to control the flow of information at the boundaries- erecting walls between us and using misinformation to maintain the status quo of control- this is informatics of domination (Haraway 2007)
Instrumentalism– Where technology is seen as the tool that we use. Technology can be utilised to enhance pre-existing personal and societal educational objectives (Bayne). Bayne criticizes this though as instrumentalist viewpoint can be simplistic. Technology, it’s not just a tool but one arm in a complex entanglement of human, social, technological. Reducing it to simplistic descriptions limits our thinking towards alternative, more critical understandings of the pedagogic and societal impact of technological change.
Learning in TEL– Learning is not simply about the relationships between humans, but is about the networks of humans and things through which teaching and learning are translated and enacted. Human’ functions (like learning) are not pre-existing attributes of the individual separable from its social and material contexts, but are rather brought into being via a complex assemblage of the human and the non-human (Bayne)
Learnification (a concept outlined by Biesta 2015) is hard to define because of the many influencing factors, but the core premise is that learnification occurs within an education system already oriented around a centrally important ‘learner’. The learner is the (potential) consumer, the one who has certain needs, in which (ii) the teacher, the educator, or the educational institution becomes the provider. Education in this setting is responding to the consumer (learner) desire. As datification becomes more prevalent, the place of learnification in the educational setting is becoming more eroded, as the influence of more powerful actors and digital choice architecture comes to ‘nudge’ learner choices
Long Tail– The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of “hits” (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. Algorithmic data management helps producers to reach out to the potential customers lurking in the ‘narrow niches’ of the Long Tail and find all the possible trading spaces. By archiving and analysing user behaviour the service provider learns more and more about how to connect with those long narrow niches where consumers lurk. This is hard to reach data and data that people will pay for, not faster chips.
Machine learning, Machine learning algorithms build a mathematical model based on sample data, known as “training data”, in order to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to perform the task. In the field of education, machine learning can be used to make predictions on learners. Machine learning poses a host of ethical questions. Systems which are trained on datasets collected with biases may exhibit these biases upon use (algorithmic bias), thus digitizing cultural prejudices
Origin myth- the tale of creation. This is where we humans believe that there is a greater force guiding us back to nirvana when our time here is up- this origin myth has been a useful blueprint to help people live their lives, but as less people believe in the ‘returning to our origins’ and upholding old customs, we have less metaphors to guide us in life. This represents an unbinding of culture as well, the church no longer connects people. This leads to partial connections.
Partial connections– We have many loyalties and relationships and many arenas of power, but there is no pure state, we should get comfortable with being always partial and always multiple. (Haraway 2007) I think this reflects true life and true networks. The cyborg is comfortable with partial identity and contradictory standpoints
Posthumanism; An approach which addresses critically the relationship between technology and the human. it envisages a not too distant world in which humans are mixtures of machine and organism, and speculates on what the consequences of that might be. As in the field of developing cybernetics. But Post humanism seems to be a lot more. (Miller & Bayne)
Posthumanism and this course; It has to do with where the boundaries of ‘the human’ lie, who and what influences technological change, and how we conceive of the purpose and function of education (general)
Socio-cultural perspectives on technology, example second Life, proposing the digital as a fertile social space, within which alternative, often unconventional, ‘selves’ could be fostered. (Knox)
Technological embodiment (the conversion of data into flesh). It is a technological tool that we use but when we forget that we are using the tool, it becomes an extension of human. An example of technological embodiment would be contact lenses, the user forgets they are wearing them but they completely change the way the user interacts with the world. (Miller 2011)
TEL- Technology in TEL; enhanced learning but it is much more. Shorthand for social, technological and educational change. “new forms of education, subjectivity, society and culture worked-through by contemporary technological change” (Bayne)
Transmediality- (the era of)- ‘economic trends encouraging the flow of images, ideas, and narratives across multiple media channels and demanding more active modes of spectatorship’. This incursion of the ‘ordinary person’ into the bastions of media privilege is experienced as both opportunity and threat by the industries themselves.
Web 2.0 is a phrase coined by O’Reilly (2005) and pertains to internet applications focused on participatory information creation, tagging, sharing, and remixing—and, wherein tech companies rely almost entirely on user-generated content for monetization. Simultaneously voluntarily given and unwaged, enjoyed and exploited, free labour on the Net includes the activity of building Web sites, modifying software packages, reading and participating in mailing lists, “Web 2.0 shows how our creative expression becomes commodified and sold back to us”. Lister (2009).