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Liked on Vimeo: What is cybernetics?

Great video of Paul Pangaro discussing the fundamentals of cybernetics.

What is cybernetics? by paul pangaro

Paul Pangaro discusses how the fundamental concepts of cybernetics inform our perception of the world and of the quotidian. View next: “Conversation at work”

Uploaded 2012-05-08T14:07:07.000Z and liked 2020-01-30T10:17:50.000Z

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Tech’s battle for the classroom

Audio piece describing how Apple and Google are fighting for presence in the classroom. What do you think their answer was when asked whether tablets are essential for learning? The presenter also checks out what role robots can play in teaching.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csymtl

Jane Wakefield checks out the latest educational tech at the Bett 2020 show in London.

from Pocket https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csymtl
via IFTTT

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Week 2 summary

I started this week off with reading more about singularity. Will there be a point when machines take over the world and if so, when would we reach that point? Undoubtedly, it wouldn’t be as comical as portrayed in The Intelligence Explosion. Whether you believe in the theory of singularity or not, it can act as a trigger to reflect on humanity and its relationship with technology.

I also wanted to think more about transhumanism and found the review of the book To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell particularly interesting as he investigates what people are actually doing to become more machine-like. To lighten up my lifestream I listened to a couple of Kraftwerk songs, which I found very relevant to this block. Being German myself, I went for the German versions.

For my film review I chose Robots of Brixton, partly because of the message ‘history repeats itself’ (fascinating how people, and robots, don’t learn from their mistakes) but also because I found the animation and soundtrack stunning.

I haven’t explored IFTTT much further this week but I’m hoping to get a chance next week. My preferred mode is still saving articles to Pocket although I sometimes find the delay between saving an article and it showing up on my lifestream a little frustrating. Ideally, I would like to save an article and then go straight to my blog to add a comment and edit the tags/categories. Despite not liking Twitter very much, I will make an effort to use it more because I feel it’s easier to interact with my classmates.

I’ve also been gathering ideas for my visual artefact although I don’t have anything concrete yet. Hoping for some inspiration next week!

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Film Review: Robots of Brixton

Someone walking past run-down buildings and shops selling cheap goods. No job to go to and no purpose in life. This could be the picture of an everyday working class person almost anywhere in the world. However, it’s the life of a robot in a futuristic version of Brixton as depicted in the short movie Robots of Brixton.

Despite portraying a dystopian vision of the London district, the animation is beautifully detailed with a strong focus on architecture. Buildings are stacked on top of each other resembling a ghetto which is home to a disillusioned robot workforce. The robot we follow in the movie seems disheartened in the face of poverty, unemployment and drugs.

Buildings in Brixton

The film concludes with scenes of rebel robots being chased and attacked by police. However advanced technology, in this case robots, has become, social problems are still an issue. Social divides remain resulting in similar unrests to what human residents of Brixton experienced in the past. The words ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce’ appear in order to remind us of the riots in 1981.

Brixton riots

Linking this thought back to education, we need to be mindful that technologies are not the answer to social inequalities. When looking at the uptake of MOOCs, for example, ‘MOOC students have very high levels of educational attainment… In addition to being highly educated, the Coursera student population tends to be young, male, and employed, with a majority from developed countries’ (Christensen et al., 2013: 4). Simply having the offering of free education does not mean that everyone can take advantage of it. Tawfik et al. (2016: 602) describe in their study that ‘while the discourse on the benefits of technology to curb inequality is laudable, technology-infused interventions may also have differential effects favoring already advantaged groups and serve to widen outcome gaps’.

Images from http://www.presidentsmedals.com/Entry-29391

References

Christensen, G., Steinmetz, A., Alcorn, B., Bennett, A., Woods, D., & Emanuel, E. J. (2013). The MOOC Phenomenon: Who Takes Massive Open Online Courses and Why? Social Science Research Network Journal.

Tawfik, A. A., Reeves, T. D. & Stich, A. (2016). Intended and Unintended Consequences of Educational Technology on Social Inequality. Tech Trends, 60:598–605.