Arthur's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

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Intersections in Online Learning

In using the term ‘online’ learning I follow Paulson (2002):

• “the separation of teachers and learners which distinguishes it from face-to-face education
• the influence of an educational organization which distinguishes it from self-study and private tutoring
• the use of a computer network to present or distribute some educational content
• the provision of two-way communication via a computer network so that students may benefit from communication with each other, teachers, and staff”.

online communities

There are three factors which I shall use to provide the background for an evaluation of online learning environments.

Firstly there needs to be an understanding on the part of the learners as to whether the PLE has been adequately established because without this there is a lessened possibility of effective communication in a virtual environment.

As this is a prerequisite, I refer the reader to Scott Leslie’s compilation of PLE options. This is the most exhaustive list of PLE options of which I am aware.

Which PLE options are chosen by the learner is of less significance than that process of reflection leading to the choice of a PLE which will be inevitably an ongoing dynamic process as more and more options are added to Web 2.0 and as future developments in the direction of Web3D occur.

Secondly the elements constituting the VLE need to be made clear. The presence or absence of key communication channels limits the chance of effective communication online. Wilson’s (2005) outline of a typical future VLE is my starting point here:

Scott Wilson: future VLE

Thirdly I want to avoid the terms friendship, virtual and real because they are overused, tired words which appear to have lost precision of meaning in online learning contexts. Therefore in looking at communicative differences in face-to-face communication and online communication I shall use the terms: allies for ‘friends’, cybernetic for ‘virtual’ and traditional for ‘real’. (Cybernetic is a term borrowed from Ananda Mitra and Rae Lynn Schwartz.

It seems to me that allies is more suitable than friends but my understanding of friendship goes deeper than that of a facebook page link. I think there is potential confusion in using the word virtual because of the confusion between virtual participant worlds and virtual reality complete with headpiece. To use the term real world carries the implication that the cybernetic world is unreal and consequently prejudges what I am considering here.

From a carefully selected PLE linked to an institutionalized VLE the learner can then communicate with his allies in the learning process online in the cybernetic world.

Irrespective of the technological hurdles which need to be crossed and new techniques which need to be learnt, the learner is likely to be faced with hauntological problems. Derrida’s citing of Hamlet’s: ‘The time is out of joint’, states the likely effect on the learner.

Exploding clock: Dali

To further cite Tribe:
“Hauntology is a coming to terms with the permanence of our (dis)possession, the inevitability of dyschronia… We live in a time when the past is present, and the present is saturated with the past…”

“…Modernity was built upon ‘technologies that made us all ghosts’, and postmodernity could be defined as the succumbing of historical time to the spectral time of recording devices.”

This takes us to the heart of the cybernetic learning experience. As Palloff and Pratt put it; online learning is the ‘separation of instructor and learner in space and time’. Further, there are “connections through educational media – where the learner takes an active role in the learning process”.

In their discussion of VLEs, Dillenbourg, Schneider and Synteta inform us that the learner finds him/herself in a designed information space called a VLE, which is social and where environmental interactions turn spaces into places. It could be textual or a 3D world. Most likely it will be a mixture of both. Not only will the students be active but they will be co-builders of that cybernetic space.

From McConnell’s ‘Comparison of Online and Face-to-face Learning Environments’ and my own reflection, I have selected those points which seem to me to be most closely linked to the cybernetic communication experience:

There is relative freedom from instructor control outside of the given activity parameters. Although text-based discussions can be rather Spartan in content they can be enlivened by audio, visual and audio-visual input. Social networking mediums add to the variety of discussion offered. Meeting is primarily random unless a virtual classroom, audio or video conference is used. The participation is relatively free in terms of time constraints. The thematic work flow is primarily multiple and fluid. The group contact can be as regular as individually required and discussion groups and social networking offer a dynamic discussion environment with the chance to withdraw to reflect before responding. There is great analytic depth although sometimes at the expense of information overload.

The lack of a shared physical context means that there is an absence of visual and intonation clues and this would seem to point to the need for the further development of live, audio-visual communication systems for online learning, despite the cost. This would be the one significant change which I would want to be made to the course which I have just experienced on the MSc programme at Edinburgh. Such conferencing would need to be selectively used however because otherwise the benefits of online learning would be lessened, for example, the ability to lurk until confidence has increased and the opportunity to reflect before responding.

reflection

There is clearly an impact from the software and the medium which manifests itself positively in broader, more even participation, rich, considered and varied feedback. Feedback is open, widespread and permanent.

When a participant feels short of ideas there are always search possibilities at the fingertips and the possibility to tune into parallel or similar discussion groups to feel ones way back into the groove. This is also important after an enforced absence when the stress of rejoining is relatively high.

The greatest attraction in online learning is the open, creative structure and the adventurousness with which the learning experience can be approached.

To quote Simon Young (2008):
“There’s a myth around that the “virtual world” is somehow a different place from the real world we all live in.
Interestingly, it’s a myth found only among those who haven’t tried out social media and social networks. Once you dip your toe in the online conversation, you find that blogs, Facebook, Twitter – and on and on – are all elaborations on (not replacements of) the art of one human relating to another.”

Bullen (1998) found a conflicting reaction:
“On the negative side, however, for some students there was also a sense that the inherent delays in asynchronous communication militate against the development of a dynamic and interactive online discussion, that this form of communication was not real, that it did not adequately simulate a face-to-face discussion, and that it left them feeling remote, detached, and isolated, and this discouraged them from participating. (Student #15)”

My personal experience suggests that the preparation behind the introduction to online communication experiences is vital. I needed and received, a handbook to prepare me for the experience, divided into technical and course content and two experts: one for content and one for technical questions; this lessened the culture shock effectively and efficiently and led me to conclude that the learning experiences are different; neither better nor worse than one another.

Kassop (2003) listed ten key advantages of online learning: student centred, greater writing intensity, highly interactive discussions, geared to lifelong learning, enriched course materials, on-demand interaction and support services, immediate feedback, flexibility, an intimate community of learners and faculty development and rejuvenation. From personal experience I know the first nine to be accurate depictions.

Bricken (13) writing in 1990 saw the next logical step in educational experience to be virtual reality.

virtusphere

A situation in which symbol processing became reality generation, viewing a monitor was replaced by wearing a computer, the symbolic became experiential, the observer became the participant, interface was replaced by inclusion, the physical became programmable, the visual became multimodal and metaphor was replaced by virtuality. In Virtual Worlds part of this has come true; the rest may follow.

The KnowledgeWorks Foundation together with the Institute for the Future have produced a forecast for education in 2020 called ‘Creating the Future of Learning’. It is labyrinthine in format so I have selected key aspects to discuss. It starts with the assertion that “the most vibrant innovations are likely to take place outside of traditional institutions”. For those organizations a dilemma is thus presented. It goes on to suggest that the “educitizens” of the future will define their rights as learners and re-create the civic sphere; that neuroscience will advance new notions of performance and cognition which will reshape both social justice and learning. Referring to schools (learning institutions) it says that they will become, at best, dynamic community-wide systems and networks that have the capacity to replenish themselves in the context of change.

I have listed these points because they seem to me to harmonize with the direction online education is taking and will continue to take. In video ten of their 2009 summit they acknowledge that this futuristic view is in fact a best practice compendium of what is already possible but not yet common currency.

The ‘vibrant innovations’ are taking place in open sourceware and becoming part of both PLEs (e.g. edublogs) and some VLEs (e.g. wikispaces). The PLE aided by web 2.0 tools, has become that defining of learning rights, together with social networking, which is the beginning of the recreation of the civic sphere. New methods of assessment and with them newly defined concepts of performance are already shaping the form of online education. The World Wide Web and the increasing understanding of neural networks have shaped how we learn. The degree to which universities and schools adapt to programmes which meet the needs of these newly enfranchised learners will determine their success as beacons or failures as dinosaurs.

O’Driscoll offers a persuasive and comprehensive argument for learning in three dimensions:

O’Driscoll closed with the statement that the acronym FREEDOM stood for flow, repetition, experimentation, engagement, doing, observing and motivation – all of which virtual worlds offer us.

If he is right then we have inherited a space which allows creativity as defined by Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, trial and error repetition as represented in Piaget’s developmental stages theory, experimentation as theorised by Dewey, Plato’s Socratic form of engagement, doing as in Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development peer-learning theory, the scientific principle of observing and testing hypotheses and motivation according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

In conclusion, this is a highly positive endorsement of what the online world has to offer 21st century learning.

References

Bassett, E.H. & O’Riordan, K. ‘Ethics of Internet Research: Contesting the Human Subjects Research Model’. Ethics and Information Technology, Volume 4, Number 3, 2002 , pp. 233-247. Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Bricken, W. (1990). Training in Virtual Reality. http://www.wbricken.com/pdfs/03words/03education/02vr-education/02train-in-VR.pdf .Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Bullen, M. (1998). Participation and Critical Thinking in Online University Distance Education. Journal of Distance Education/Revue de l’enseignement à distance: 13 , 2.[iuicode: http://www.icaap.org/iuicode?151.13.2.1] Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Colbert, M. Voglimacci, C. & Finkelstein, A. Live, Audio-Visual Communication Systems for Distance Learning:Experience, Heuristics and ISDN. http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/1151/1/14.7_videoconference.pdf. U.C.L. London. Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Collis, S. (2009). Practical Examples of using a Virtual 3D Environment for Learning in High School. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoeCkBbwWo Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Dillenbourg, P. Schneider, D.K. & Synteta, P. (2002). Virtual Learning Environments. In Dimitracopoulou, A. (Ed.). Proceedings of the 3rd Hellenic Conference “Information & Communication Technologies in Education” (pp. 3-18). Kastaniotis Editions, Greece. http://edutice.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/19/07/01/PDF/Dillernbourg-Pierre-2002a.pdf Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Kassop, M. (2003). Ten Ways Online Education Matches, or Surpasses, Face-to-Face Learning. The Technology Source Archives of the University of North Carolina. http://technologysource.org/article/ten_ways_online_education_matches_or_surpasses_facetoface_learning/?keepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=400&width=800. Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

KnowledgeWorks Foundation & The Institute for the Future (2008) ‘Creating the Future of Learning’. http://www.futureofed.org/ . Last accessed 2nd January 2010.
Martinez, M. (2009). 2009 AEP Summit 2020 Forecast Creating the Future of Learning Part 10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6-j_17jQE0 Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

McConnell, D. (2000). ‘7. Comparison of face-to-face and online learning environments’ cited by http://jabba.edb.utexas.edu/it/fc_resta_courses_files/itpm/m0_7.html
Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Mitra, A. & Schwartz R.L. (2001).From Cyber Space to Cybernetic Space: Rethinking the Relationship between Real and Virtual Spaces. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol7/issue1/mitra.html . Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Muirhead, B. (2000) Enhancing Social Interaction in Computer-Mediated Distance Education. Educational Technology & Society, 3 (4). http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_4_2000/v_4_2000.html. Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

O’Driscoll, T. (2007). aka Tripp W. Virtual Social Worlds and the Future of Learning.Learning in Three Dimensions: Experiencing the Sensibilities and Imagining the Possibilities. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2jY4UkPbAc Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Palloff, R. M. & Pratt, K. (1999). Building Learning Communities in Cyberspace: ‘Effective strategies for the online classroom’. http://macqunilearners.pbworks.com/f/Building+Learning+Communities+In+Cyberspace.doc. Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Paulsen, M. F. (2002). Online Education Systems in Scandinavian and Australian Universities: A comparative study.’Online Education Systems: Discussion and Definition of Terms’. http://home.nettskolen.com/~morten Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Tribe M. (2009) Mark Tribe’s Weblog http://www.marktribe.net/2009/02/10/hauntology-dyschronia .Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Young, S. (2008). Posting in http://www.abiggervoiceblog.com/webtech/
Last accessed 2nd January 2010.

Summary of Summaries

Introduction

I decided not to go back over my summaries but to attempt a search for the deep structure behind them. In that endeavour I came up with six questions which require answers for me to be satisfied with what these weeks brought me; a kind of personal accounting procedure.

End of Lifestream Summary

in a nutshell

1. Which range of input have I received?
I have experienced tightly written academic texts intended to impress experts (e.g. Hand and Haraway) which failed to do more than needle me and provoke an irritated response which surely detracted from their message in my case. I have met texts which speak to me at an academic level which is sophisticated yet not gratuitously verbose and from which I have learnt (e.g. Rose and Bayne). I have received refreshing visual input in film or cartoon film form during the film festival which encouraged me to dig deeper into film as a medium of both personal learning learning and the creation of learning materials for others.

2. From the input what did I learn about how I operate in digital environments? I learnt that I cannot learn efficiently or effectively from a particular kind of academic writing and that I can recognize that writing almost immediately and thus can spare myself the pain. Similar to the five minute test that all face to face lecturers get from me before I walk out.

3. Which new techniques did I practice and with which degree of learning? I learnt that I enjoy interspersing my writing with visual materials and that I believe it is effective. I suspect that I overdo it at present like a kid with a new toy…but I’ll learn to control that. I learnt that storyboarding is an effective tool and that getting the balance between sound and visual is an art that requires more practice for me to master. I learnt many new techniques in ethnography from my peers especially and that there are many more highly creative people out there than I ever suspected. How extraordinary that You tube has so many more accomplished directors than television has…

4. What did I learn from the key cyber themes? I learnt to evaluate the cyberworld, to feel comfortable in reading about cyberculture, to asess its utility as a concept and to appreciate the directions in which it is heading.

5. How do I now see the future of learning? I see a space in the cyberworld which potentially is waiting to be filled but I do not yet see sufficient academics and teachers to effectively people and police it outside of the military-industrial-academic complexes. This may be a grass roots revolution where the digital world changes from the bottom upwards. Yes we can but with the same resistance Obama faces.

6. What were my learning outcomes?
Extremely successful; I learnt about cyberspace and ethnography and realized that there is far more opposition to the growth of multinational controllers of the ether than I ever imagined and I learnt to let go and trust myself with new technologies in the web 2.0+ environments. I also learnt what stresses there are in balancing three jobs, a household and an academic course; the tightrope requires so much concentration that one fit of vertigo can throw you.

Week Ten Summary

I used Sian Bayne’s latest article as a basis to personally reflect on the uncanny nature of learning space in an academic environment. I found myself in agreement about where ‘machining and dreaming’ belong in a house of learning. I do see uncanny pedagogies as being a futuristic approach to academic, school and personalized learning. I welcomed uncertainty as a learning factor and indicated its link to both motivation and creativity using personalized examples to do so. I think this haunting approach can bring greater flexibility and liveliness into learning with a movement away from both teacher-centred and factual learning towards discursive-centred individualized learning. I believe, haunted, anxious, uncanny and uncertain to be adjectives which describe the state of creative posthumans.

I listed the points made by Usher and Edwards but they had nothing new to say to me.

Week Nine Summary

An enforced absence; having a medical problem myself, trying to teach effectively, looking after a household, two dogs, five cats and two rabbits plus a wife recovering from a major operation showed me just how much clay my feet were made of.

Key pointers from 'Lost and found'

(dis)location

From Usher and Edward’s paper I have tried to garner the key pointers offered which will help me to interpret the changes implied for teaching, learning and research.

the reader becomes the potential author
experts are dislocated in the security of their roles
the traditional and emerging blur expertise boundaries
there is a ‘diaspora space of hybridity’
the self-regulating human-machine system causes the intermingling of nature/culture,technology/nature, bodies/subjects and active agents/involuntary machines (Beller 1996)
the learner’s path changes from being centralized, on the margin, subject to hierarchy and linearity to being multi-linear, being at the nodes of personalized learning operating through links and networks (Featherstone 1995)
the linear nature of question and answer is replaced by the branching and process forms of comment elaborations (Tabbi 1997)

diaspora_160421b

Who produces research will broaden to include many of those previously excluded.

The curriculum will be dynamically organised around the needs of individual learners rather than those of the teacher.

The presentation will be hyperlinked and visual rather than book-based and textual.

The teacher will become a facilitator; the spider at the centre of the web of learning.

Institutional education will accommodate individualized learning or become less relevant.

Reference:

Usher, R. and Edwards, R. (1998). Lost and found: ‘cyberspace’ and the (dis)location of teaching, learning and research. SCUTREA 1998, Exeter.

'uncanny digital pedagogies'

This marks my return to my blog after an enforced absence; having a medical problem myself, trying to teach effectively, looking after a household, two dogs, five cats and two rabbits plus a wife recovering from a major operation showed me just how much clay my feet were made of.

I celebrated my return by starting with Sian Bayne’s ‘Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies’ because I suspected it would be to my taste, bring me back into academia and so, as you will see, it was and did (if somewhat belatedly).

This paper and in particular the ‘uncanny’ resonates strongly with the quality of learning environment I have always set for myself as a learning space. That learning which has stayed with me over the years and on which I was able, in my modest way, to build upon has always contained within it the elements of the uncanny; that borderline which you cross and find yourself in mid-air, without bodyhold; spectrally suspended between tors of ideas, wondering if you have a parachute to land sanely. For me the experience began in puberty and there were seminal figures in my personal, non-school education all of whom contributed to such feelings:

Conrad’s ‘Shadow Line’ which showed me the line I was literally crossing
Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’ and ‘The Waste Land’ which enabled me to begin to understand the significance of time, history and civilizations
Anais Nin’s ‘Diaries’ which enabled me to see that the masks I was obliged to use at school in my writings were absurd and unnecessary
Henry Miller’s ‘Tropic of Cancer’ which showed me the difference between writing from the mind and writing from the heart
Russell’s ‘Prologue’ to his autobiography which stated the purpose of life better than I ever could
Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet’ which made me dream of a longing for ‘hypertext’ never believing it would become a reality

in the mind's eye

… and of course there were many more. Significantly I think more from encounters literal or figurative which related little to my school education; later at university, the meetings of minds happened with everyone but almost always beyond the bounds of the classroom or lecture hall. Therefore, as long ago as I can remember, I have preferred to inhabit a world unbounded by bells, buzzers and classroom doors. I choose to visit twitter from time to time; I revel in delicio.us and google images which supplement and engage my memory and creativity. I decline to give more than nodding acquaintanceship to facebook because it simply isn’t me. So my uncanny academetron freed me from the confines of the traditional one. Therefore I was able to react to the wherever, whenever and however rather than be confined by the classroom even if the price was enforced bodily imprisonment at times – nobody can enslave my mind and soul unless I will it so. This freedom which I demanded for myself enabled me to reflect as deeply as I wished before acting; to allow images, ideas, concepts to mature like fine wine or whisky before crossing my tongue. From the unheimliche comes the uncanny idea out of memory modified by time and space. This, to borrow Koestler’s terminology is represented by ‘The Act of Creation’ and ‘The Ghost in the Machine’.

The nurturing of intellectual uncertainty as prerequisite for education rather mere teaching has always been the duty of educators; I am thinking of Plato’s Socration dialectic, Neil’s learning space, Lyward’s ‘reweaning from dependence toward independence’ and Illich’s de-schooling which have all sought to fulfill such aims. Hauntology as cited here reminds me again of Eliot in Burnt Norton:

‘Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.’

Intellectually universities have always offered chosen successful scholars ‘a place of ghosts’, the chance to work alone, on their own initiative, to align themselves in exchanges with peers and students with the aim of forging an academic excalibur from the spectres of other scholars or from their own haunted imagination.

imagination

The new ‘Distance Diversity’, as I like to think of it, could offer that loose-tight freedom to all students which I find here called ‘flexible fluid movements’; it being one of the cardinal strengths which the uncanny offers to digital pedagogies. Fortunately, most of the time, there is the chance to shut out the source of the inspiration, to allow us to reflect and savour that inspiration, before allowing the source gratefully, graciously and seamlessly back in. A podcast or a video stream can be paused, re-run and re-invented on the spot; no other educational form or forum offers such flexibility as virtual environments do.

Now, reluctantly, under time pressure I want to close this blog entry with ‘Creativity, fulfillment and flow’ by Mikhaly, Czikszentmihalyi from TED talks:

References:

Bayne, S. (forthcoming, March 2010). Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies. London Review of Education. [revised version uploaded 10 November 09]

From Cyber Space to Cybernetic Space: Rethinking the Relationship between Real and Virtual Spaces

The above titled article by Ananda Mitra and Rae Lynn Schwartz from Wake Forest University caught my attention.It argues persuasively, in my opinion, that we claim to be inhabiting presently two worlds which should be seen in terms of space as one world. We inhabit geographical and cyber spaces. However posthumans (my term here) in reality glide seamlessly from the one to the other. There is a dichotomy which need not be. On the one hand we require maps or GPS to know precisely where we are on the earth’s surface yet on the other hand we visit and inhabit cyberspace without giving it a second thought. Since the term ‘cyber space’ is already taken they propose to call their newly defined area ‘cybernetic space‘.

It is the seamless movement from one part of our space to another which interests me and which I believe permeates the everyday life of posthumans.
CyberneticSerendipityPoster
I’d like to touch upon two examples of this. Firstly at home my wife and I often chat in my study where she will sprawl on her couch and I will spin round on my revolving chair to face her. As soon as we touch upon a musician one of us hasn’t heard or an item of news the other hasn’t read about, it’s normal practice for me to spin round, locate it in cyberspace and play it or even read it aloud. The net is integrated ’seamlessly’ into our routine. My second example comes from my university students who always have their notebooks or netbooks present (business economics students) and who go straight to a reference I mention or use Leo to translate a word they haven’t quite understood. When they write dialogues as reinforcement many of them automatically type them or even take computerized notes as I talk. We and they are not in one space or the other; it’s cybernetic space we occupy.

Reference:

From Cyber Space to Cybernetic Space: Rethinking the Relationship between Real and Virtual Spaces
Ananda Mitra and Rae Lynn Schwartz
Department of Communication
Wake Forest University

Week Eight Summary

This week was a very hectic week after my wife’s operation but somehow I got through lots of the readings. After reflecting on Haraway I posted ‘Cyborg Alice’ which portrayed how I think she portrays her cyborg. I found Shields’ comment to be realistic:
‘Cyborg analysis suggests the body as a lived site and surface, it suggests processes of regeneration rather than rebirth, and the nano-scales of biotechnology as a potential counter-space. This challenges the privilege given to the social, the identity of world historical actors and the traditional locales and practices of politics and justice.’
In ‘Powerful Cyborg Heteroglossia’, I castigated Haraway’s prose style and tone and summarized briefly in my first paragraph what I took from her ‘manifesto’:
‘The ghost in the new image of the Cyborg machine-being, new diverse voices, styles of discourse and viewpoints promise a post feminist Cyborg-ism. This is the message which I take overwhelmingly overwhelmed from Haraway’s ‘a Cyborg Manifesto’. Only from new ideologically neutered constructs and concepts can the phallus-centred baggage of the past be swept aside in such male defined and dominated concepts as home, market, paid work place, state, school, clinic-hospital and church. Without this exorcism there can be no culturally, politically, genderless C3I freed from meaningful communication and advance.’
In my posting ‘What is the difference between being a cyborg and being posthuman?’, I adopted the following working definitions:

‘A cyborg contains the elements of a human allied with some mechanical, electronic or even bionic elements. It can be humanoid in form as with for example a human with an electronic hand or it can be primarily robotic with human elements implanted like memory. It can be creatively non or superhuman in form but often exhibits some human characteristics which are primarily non-emotional.

Posthuman is a philosophical term referring to humans who are able to act ‘in transition’ and react to change. They operate in change and respond appropriately to changing situations. They are unpredictable and personally motivated by circumstance. They are not bound by -ologies or-isms. They adopt varying personas, hold varying viewpoints, act relative to their inner feelings and not to predetermined notions of the human condition. Just as humans developed from Neanderthal man so posthumans are an ontologically advanced stage of human. I think posthuman is an advancement on existentialism…’
Because of the link back to existentialism which I sensed I quoted Prevert’s poetic existentialist manifesto ‘ Je suis comme je suis’.
Reacting to Hayle’s ‘Toward embodied virtual reality’ I made the point that I felt there were two points of confusion: those between ‘information’ and ‘memory’
memory2

and between literary dream and reality state-of-the-art.

illusion or reality?

References:

Haraway, D. (2000). A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late 20th Century. in D Bell and A Kennedy, The Cybercultures Reader. Routledge.

Hayles, N.K. (1999). Toward embodied virtuality, chapter 1 of How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature and informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. pp1-25

Haraway, artefacts of knowledge and communicative synapses

I have just read Sarah Payne’s ‘Horizon, Haraway and artifacts of knowledge’ in which she writes about the need for Haraway to be deciphered by other academics for her to be accessed by a wider audience. Sarah makes the interesting point that although Haraway is a cultural artefact in fact the ‘producers of artifacts of knowledge’ (who are in this case the disseminating academics) have made a greater contribution to the spread of knowledge than Haraway herself.
This set me thinking about how we access knowledge and the way in which it is disseminated. Paralleling Sarah’s Horizon experience was mine with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. It was inaccessible to me until I read Bertrand Russell’s ‘ABC of Relativity’ which made it a lot clearer for me.
abc-of-relativity-bertrand-russell-paperbacks--b_57475vb
The parallel with the process of the brain struck me with the original impulse being transmitted and the synapses being the disseminating academics in this case. Thus the original idea is communicated to the few who interpret it for the many. But what they pass on is their interpretation (often with their own input, slants, comments, or even changes in focus) added. The knowledge product grows by accumulation and mutation until it has a generally acceptable form – not unlike the literary growth of the cyborg trope. Additionally historicity plays a role. The form acceptable in the 1980s may not be acceptable now either to the literary or literal Zeitgeist. The factors prevailing then may no longer be as significant today.

To quote T.S. Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Little Gidding No 4: ‘Four Quartets’

A glimmer of hope on the horizon - no shit!

After the doom and gloom and banishment of my mortal body along with all hope for the future of mankind and our replacement by cyborgs it was refreshing to read Muri and discover that Ascott, Weibel or even the philosophically cautious Heim see some reasons for hope. Just as well because I was beginning to wonder if I had become a cyborg by writing this on an electronic machine. Orlan’s claim that the body ‘is no longer adequate for the current situation’ ring hollowly from someone using the inadequate adroitly to proclaim its inadequacy. If the ’soul, mind or consciousness’ (to quote Muri) now have what seems an inadequate housing in the body that is another matter. That is a yearning for a kind of immortality which the poets and philosophers have known much about. The overreaching of Faust, the desire to improve bodily design by Leonardo and the striving after the purification of the soul from Plato onwards. That is an eternal dream of man, the yearning for the stars perhaps best put by the agnostic Bertrand Russell in the Prologue to his autobiography:

‘What I Have Lived For

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy – ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness–that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what–at last–I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.’

: soul-existence

References:

Hayles, N.K. (2006). Unfinished Work: From Cyborg to Cognisphere. Theory Culture Society, 23/7-8.

Shields, R. (2006). Flânerie for Cyborgs. Theory Culture Society, 23/7-8

Muri, A. (2003). Of Shit and the Soul: Tropes of Cybernetic Disembodiment in Contemporary Culture. Body & Society, 9/3.

Nakamura, L. (2008). Cyberrace. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 123/5.

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