Lost in Cyberspace
This is another post that reflects that education not only can, but should happen outside the classroom walls. In an epic representation of how students are able to learn even the most complex of phenomena, Sugata Mitra shows that one of the first things to start learners off is getting them interested and curious.
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What is Real Time – Analog Time vs Digital Time
https://ift.tt/2S2MtJ9 An excerpt of an interview with Mark E Goodman and Sharon Aby recorded on February 9, 2010. In this segment, Sharon talks about the difference between Analog Time and Real Time. She suggests that for business today, the only time that they have is now. Businesses are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can watch the entire interview at https://ift.tt/2RCtNRC
via YouTube https://youtu.be/YiRhVhZ5FGk
Although this short video is intended to illustrate the way ‘classic’ businesses operate in contrast to online shopping, I believe that the concept of analog (sequential) time in contrast to digital/real-time (in which there is only now) can also be applied to education. The idea of following sessions from start to finish as the teacher presents information and work sequentially may soon become a paradigm of the past when confronted with the possibilities of multitasking offered by modern technology.
https://youtu.be/l0s_M6xKxNc
“Sometimes it takes someone who has worked in the industry to provide new insights into the way technology can shape education. On the other hand, these are always success stories that find their way to the internet. Presumably, there are others that never quite left off the ground or failed mid-way. This is not meant as a negative comment but with education, especially education with the younger generation, there are so many factors that come into play. The novelty or WOW element and the way technology is presented make a lot of a difference.”
Can Technology Change Education? Yes!: Raj Dhingra at TEDxBend
Raj Dhingra is a twenty-year veteran of the technology industry with an extensive track record of building strong, sustainable and profitable industry leadership positions in new and emerging categories. Raj brings entrepreneurial drive and success, and a rich depth of corporate experience across general management, business development, product development, sales and marketing functions. Prior to joining NComputing in April 2011, Raj was VP and GM at Citrix where he led the company’s desktop virtualization business from zero to half a billion dollars growth in sales over a 3 year period. As well as his leadership role in global virtualization companies such as Citrix, Dhingra has held executive leadership positions in public companies such as McAfee, 3Com, SonicWALL and startups such as IntruVert Networks (acquired by McAfee) and PortAuthority Technologies (acquired by Websense).
In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)
via YouTube https://youtu.be/l0s_M6xKxNc
An interesting read. Carl Silvio evaluates themes from Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell in the light of Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto.
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IMDB link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219827/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
The above is an image which I had included in one of my posts during IDEL and which seems to depict one of the risks of mass-produced educational programs through technology as it tends towards the ‘universalism’ described by Knox (2015) which can also give rise to the idea that the goal of education is the creation of rational thinking.
This week has brought me closer to the philosophies behind the use of technology. The hopeful views promoted by posthumanism and the ideals supporting transhumanist trends are thrilling, to say the least. On another note, there are still those, like Bayne(2015) who advocate towards the importance of the social aspect in the integration of technology within education.
Bayne’s(2015) view that ‘Reducing a field of such complexity and importance to the terminology and limitations of TEL’ while ‘positioning the ‘material’ and technological aspect as separate from and subordinate to social practice’, thereby negating the entirety of the human, is somehow vaguely reminiscent of some of Rosi Braidotti’s perspectives on technology in a posthuman world. The call for technology as a solution to various things (amongst them education) or as an upgrade for those who can afford it, often stops short from addressing other human maladies that could be caused by technologies such as poverty, the environmental damage caused by the same materials used for manufacturing technologies that are short-lived and ‘the appropriation of nature as resource for the productions of culture’ (Harraway, 2007) while a general sense of alienation seems to permeate throughout.
While technology has, and still will, give much to the world, nothing can be gained by demolishing one world to build another. Although we do live in a world calibrated by digital time, in which the past seems long gone and the future always at hand it is only by bringing the fruits of the labour of those before us and merge them with the modern that a holistic ideal can be truly achieved.
Bayne, S., (2015). What’s the matter with ‘technology-enhanced learning’? Learning, Media and Technology, 40(1), pp. 5-20, https://doi.org.ezproxy. is.ed.uk/10.1080/17439884.2014.915851
Harraway, D. (2007). A Cyborg Manifesto. Bell, David; Kennedy, Barbara M (eds), The cybercultures reader pp.34-65, London: Routledge.
Knox, J., (2015). Critical Education and Digital Cultures. Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory. Springer, pp. 1-6. Available at: https://doi.org/10.0.1007/978-981-287-532-7_124-1.
Miller (2011) determines one of the main aims of extropianism and transhumanism as the chance to transcend the fragility and limitations of the human body.
This article by Saphora Smith (2018) describes some of the attempts by pioneers in the field to develop immortality by digitizing the brain through scanning technologies. While technology is making this target seem ever closer, it is not the storage of memory after death that is being questioned but the ability to store consciousness.
Similarly, some people question the scope of living forever or as the great Freddie Mercury once sang ‘Who wants to live forever‘. Others question the role of the soul or spirit after death. Where does technology stop prolonging life and start promoting immortality?
References:
Miller, V. (2011). The Body and Information Technology. Understanding digital culture. pp.207-223. London: Sage.
Saphora, S., (2018) ‘Disrupting death: Technologists explore ways to digitize life’ NBCNews, 25th July, Culture. Available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/tech/your-brain-cloud-how-tech-world-wants-disrupt-death-ncna894191 (Accessed: 23rd January 2020).
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Rosi Braidotti, “Posthuman Knowledge”
This lecture is built on the assumption that we are currently situated in a posthuman convergence between the Fourth industrial Age and the Sixth Extinction, between and advanced knowledge economy, which perpetuates patterns of discrimination and exclusion, and the threat of climate change devastation for both human and non-human entities. This convergence calls for a posthuman critical intervention in the form of intersecting critiques of western humanism on the one hand and of anthropocentrism on the other. The lecture discusses the impact of this convergence upon three major areas: the constitution of our subjectivity; the general production of knowledge and the practice of the academic Humanities. It addresses directly the following questions: what are the implications of the fact that knowledge production is no longer the prerogative of academic or formal scientific institutions like the university ? What are we to make of the sudden growth of new trans-discipinary hubs that call themselves: the Environmental and Digital Humanities, the Medical, Neural and Bio-Humanities, and also the Public, Civic and Global Humanities and so on ?The lecture offers both a genealogy of these Critical Posthumanities and a theoretical framework by which to assess them.
More information about Braidotti’s forthcoming book, Posthuman Knowledge can be found on the publisher’s website.
See the GSD’s homepage for recently published a profile on Rosi.
Rosi Braidotti (B.A. Hons. Australian National University, 1978; PhD, Université de Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne, 1981; Honorary Degrees Helsinki, 2007 and Linkoping, 2013; Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA), 2009; Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE), 2014; Knighthood in the order of the Netherlands Lion, 2005) is Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University, founding Director of the Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University (2007-2016), founding professor of Gender Studies in the Humanities at Utrecht University (1988-2005) and the first scientific director of the Netherlands Research School of Women’s Studies. Since 2009 she has been an elected board member of CHCI (Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes). Her publications include: Patterns of Dissonance, 1991; Metamorphoses, 2002; Transpositions, 2006; La philosophie, lá où on ne l’attend pas, 2009; Nomadic Subjects, 1994 and 2011a; Nomadic Theory, 2011b; The Posthuman, 2013. She recently co-edited Conflicting Humanities (2016) with Paul Gilroy and The Posthuman Glossary (2018) with Maria Hlavajova, which are part of the bookseries “Theory” she edits for Bloomsbury Academic.
This lecture is co-organized by the Master in Design Studies Program and Womxn in Design.
via YouTube https://youtu.be/0CewnVzOg5w
While the posthuman is an area that has gathered quite a lot of contention, the views embraced by David Simpson and Rosi Braidotti give an idea of both ends of the spectrum of thought. David’s presentation is full of hope for a future that, given the right checks and controls will create an age of super-intelligent humans and machines that could also be characterized by super empathy. David manages to coalesce the idea that above-average intelligence (through examples like philanthropist Bill Gates) is proportional to a strong sense of empathy. While dubious in the sense that not all super-intelligent people are good empathisers, he presents the notion as the cherry on the cake, in an unavoidable race towards the super-intelligent organism. In other words, we need not fear AI, virtuality and transhumanism because they can be managed by good people.
Rosi Braidotti’s speech is several notches more complex as it is embedded in history and culture of humanism and post-humanism but she brings out a couple of enlightening points. Technologies are there for those that can afford them. While technologically-developed countries can afford to step-up their powers, third world countries are wallowing in the debris and garbage that comes from a society that generates huge amounts of electronic waste with poor communities that live on the edges of these digital waste favelas. (which reminded me of several films and animations like Blade Runner, WallE and the Matrix) . It is true that we are moving towards an age of posthumanism, yet the world has failed to control climate change, poverty, migration and a number of other maladies that have been discussed for the past decades.
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Our Post-Human Future | David Simpson | TEDxSantoDomingo
-In 15 years the human specie is going to develop super human level machine intelligence
-What it means to be Super-Human?
-The country with Artificial Intelligence will be the country on topDavid Simpson is the best-selling novelist of the Post-Human series, a Kindle All-Star and has been ranked the most popular scifi Author in America by Amazon.com. He has filmed a short proof-of-concept based on his series, is an award-winning teacher and holds a Master’s degree in literature from the University of British Columbia.
David is a full example of believing in the story in your head and getting it published. He is been part of the story-telling business since his twenties. He went out of the ‘Book Industry Professionals ways’ and took the risk of not hearing the voice of those ‘who knew’ about scifi books. Now he is living his dream of been a full time scifi author and maybe he can help us dream into the realms of a Post-Human not so far future.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
via YouTube https://youtu.be/uAb-mSq615g