In the stead of the tedious roll-calling in my more formal university classes, I started to implement a Question of the Day process. At the beginning of the semester, at the start of each session, one student was asked come up with a question and pose it on the QoD form which then circulated around the room during the session, to be filled out as decided by each individual. I placed no restrictions on content, and one didn’t have to answer at all, but at least had to note presence.
This turned out to be a marvelous way to tap into individual/personal energies that students would typically not ‘reveal’ in a classroom setting. As the paper circulated, accumulating answers, it would travel slower and slower as students read prior answers and came up with their own. The process sparked both basic human connection as well as significant discussion on occasion, and on others, amusement. After a couple weeks of me assigning the Questioner, there were usually volunteers at the beginning of each session who had come up with something to query their peers with. Also interesting was the sheer variety of handwriting samples and forms of expression.
Question of the Day, Atlas2000, 25 April 2013, CU Boulder, Colorado.
[ED:Almost 75 years ago, this essay was published in a collection accompanying the 1954 set of The Great Books of the Western World, published by Britannica Press. While that collection of more than fifty authors—philosophers, playrights, scientists, authors, economists—is mostly all ‘Western and white,’ and definitely men, there is some relevant substance to the contemporary issues facing the US education system contained (t)herein. Primarily, the background question of shared understandings about reality: when these are no longer shared, democracy cannot proceed. At this juncture, I have little hope that the wider social system in the US is capable of pulling itself back from the devolution that appears to be accelerating. Many personal worries surround that. I predict that forms of ‘martial law’ will be declared in the US before four years are up, and I will not be surprised if it begins to appear widely in the next year. By then, soft critique from the ‘liberal’ side of the country will be moot and … wholly inadequate, as has happened before in the bowels of history. Privilege continues to insulate the 1% and [social] media [oligarchs] continue to siphon off the last drops of societal life-blood: community engagement. Shilling instead a form of attention-harvesting that, as with other forms of capital, concentrates ever more power in the hands of ever fewer individuals. What could possibly go wrong?
I can barely continue reading Klemperer‘s “Language of the Third Reich” as it resonates so powerfully across almost a century to this very moment.
The countries of the West are committed to universal, free, compulsory education. The United States first made this commitment and has extended it further than any other. In this country, 92.5% of the children who are fourteen years old and 71.3% of those between fourteen and seventeen are in school. It will not be suggested that they are receiving the education that the democratic ideal requires. The West has not accepted the proposition that the democratic ideal demands liberal education for all. In the United States, at least, the prevailing opinion seems to be that the demands of that ideal are met by universal schooling, rather than by universal liberal education. What goes on in school is regarded as of relatively minor importance. The object appears to be to keep the child off the labor market and to detain him in comparatively sanitary surroundings until we are ready to have him go to work.
The results of universal, free, compulsory education in America can be acceptable only on the theory that the object of the schools is something other than education—for example, to keep the young from cluttering up homes and factories during a difficult period of their lives, or to bring them together for social or recreational purposes.
These last purposes—those which are social and recreational—the American educational system, on a very low level, achieves. It throws young people together. Since this does not take any greater effort than is required to pass compulsory school laws and build buildings, the accomplishment of this purpose would not, at first blush, seem to be a matter for boasting. Yet we often hear of it as something we should be proud of, and even as something that should suggest to us the main line of a sound educational policy. We often hear that bringing young people together, having them work and play together, and having them organize themselves “democratically” are the great contributions to democracy that the educational system can make. This is an expansion of the doctrine that was popular in my youth about the moral benefits conferred on everybody through intercollegiate athletics, which was, in turn, an adaptation of the remark dubiously imputed to the Duke of Wellington about the relationship between the Battle of Waterloo and the playing fields of Eton. more “The Disappearance of Liberal Education”
To the Honorable Björn Bjarnason, Minister of Education and Culture
As I have noted that you have put up some home pages asking for input regarding education in Iceland, I am transmitting this formal letter to you via email. (I apologize for not writing in Icelandic, but I am not very good at it even though I have lived in Iceland for five years…)
I am writing this letter to urge your continued support of the Icelandic Academy of Art.
Following I will present some personal opinions concerning the future of the Academy as well as some concrete suggestions and proposals. These considerations are based in my experience in teaching at MHÍ for the past five years as well as numerous guest-teaching positions at other Universities and Academies in Scandinavia and the US. Currently I am serving as Chair of the US-Iceland Fulbright Educational Commission (until September 1995) and as (Founding) Director of the Electronic Media and Photography program at MHÍ. My opinions are not necessarily those of either MHÍ or the Fulbright Board.
I believe Iceland is at a crossroads where the choices, opportunities, and outcomes will be largely determined by how the issue of a national educational policy is developed. As the post of Minister of Education and Culture determines this policy, I believe it to be the most critical cabinet posting in the entire government.
It is important to the future of Iceland that attention be directed to the building-up of a competitive and well-considered program of education in the arts. The recent confirmation of intent as expressed by the Althingi and the government in support of the official formation of the Icelandic Academy must be followed up by concrete action concerning the financial, physical, and ideological future of the institution. more “to Björn Bjarnason”
Continuing to pry my eyes open to the wide ignorance of growing up a privileged white male: a darkness that perhaps could have been dispelled by the obvious evidence appearing, bright, over the years. The tar-paper huts where the elementary school bus stopped, picking up many of the Black students at our rural Maryland school 35 miles outside of Washington, D.C.—south of the Mason-Dixon Line; at ten y.o., riding past “Resurrection City” on the Mall in D.C. during the Poor People’s Campaign in 1968; completely unaware of the geography of roads not taken in that long-ago rural countryside as they passed through the African-American settlements outside of the “regular” towns; blindness mixed with a slowly maturing wonder at and deep respect for African-American creativity, intelligence, and sensitivity. I surely didn’t understand the full import of the lyrics in Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City” from his Innervisions album even after doing a report on it in 11th grade English class; nor the complexities involved in a course I took, “The Economics of Poverty,” while taking a year away from engineering school back in 1979. Maybe it was Lightnin’ Hopkins who really cracked open my soul. So many points where knowledge and feeling would have fired a deeper awareness of the ongoing and severely compromised conditions of social justice in the United States. There was not enough curiosity available within privilege.
Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. Second trade paperback edition. New York, NY: Bold Type Books, LLC, 2023.
Tracing the historical roots of ‘racist thought’ in Amurika up to contemporary times, this is a challenging read. The extraordinary level of detail and huge number of players across 400 years makes it sometimes difficult to hold onto all the facts. But the main ‘plot,’ racism, is the important point to be dissembled.
Thanks, George, for recommending this one, and thanks, Rick for earlier recommending:
Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Trade paperback edition. New York, NY: Random House, 2023.
and I would also include
Hannah-Jones, Nikole and New York Times Company, eds. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. First edition. New York, NY: One World, 2021.
No! Not like the lark, didst thou circle and sing,
High in the heavens on morn’s merry wing,
But hid in the depths of the forest’s dense shade,
There where the homes of the lowly were made,
Thou nested! Though fettered, thou frail child of night,
Thy melody trilled forth with naive delight;
And all through the throes of the night dark and long,
Earth’s favored ones harkened thy ravishing song,
So plaintive and wild, touched with Africa’s lilt;
Of wrong small complaint, sweet forgiveness of guilt-
Oh, a lyric of love and a paean of praise,
Didst thou at thy vespers, Dark Nightingale, raise;
So sweet was the hymn rippling out of the dark,
It rivalled the clear morning song of the lark.
One of my favorite online feeds is from the NASA Earth Observatory along with their Image of the Day. After catching a recent article on the San Luis Valley, I thought that subscribers might be interested in some of the incredible material that NASA offers on a daily basis. This includes front-line data used in climate research.
“The Earth Observatory’s mission is to share with the public the images, stories, and discoveries about the environment, Earth systems, and climate that emerge from NASA research, including its satellite missions, in-the-field research, and models.”
An expansive view of most of Colorado looking from the south-south-west from the International Space Station (ISS). Photo credit: NASA.
The Details
Earth Observatory GIS browser – A global map index of thousands of images—one can go direct to Colorado and see more than seventy feature articles covering natural hazards, geology, atmospheric science, and other subjects.
Global Maps – A wide range of maps compiled from satellite data.
Feature Articles – Covering many important topics such as remote sensing, atmosphere, snow & ice, water, and life.
Red Rocks Park on the west side of Denver, Colorado. The red strata of the Pennsylvanian/Permian Fountain formation rests on Precambrian metamorphic rocks. Photo credit: Vince Matthews.
Originally designed to accompany Dr. Shorey’s 2008 SYGN 101 Earth and Environmental Systems Science course, both the podcasts and vlogs provide fast-paced and informative explorations of a wide range of geologically- and environmentally-oriented topics. Among these: geohazards, climate change; geography; economics; anthropology; history; and biology. The vlog includes segments on mapping, mineralogy, age-dating, plate tectonics, as well as field-trip material to some of the prime geological features in the Golden, Colorado area: Red Rocks, North Table Mountain, and around the Mines campus. The vlog also demonstrates the effective use of drone photography in geological field education. Check it out!
Saddened to receive news from Andrew that friend, colleague, artist, researcher, producer, and facilitator Minna Tarkka had passed, far too young, on 27 August after a very brief illness.
Researcher Minna Tarkka received the state award for media art in December 2017, Helsinki, Finland. Photo credit: Martti Kainulainen / Lehtikuva.
I arrived in Helsinki, Finland, gritty-eyed, after an early morning flight from Reykjavík, in late August, 1994, on the first of many visits, sojourns, gigs, workshops, and residencies. After dropping my luggage at my friend Visa’s print-making studio on Jääkärinkatu, I made my way to Arabianranta and the University of Art and Design Helsinki (Taideteollinen korkeakoulu, or TAIK, now the Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture), located then in the old Arabia porcelain factory on Hämeentie. I was in Helsinki for the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA) and, later, for an international performance event (Fax You) at the Akademie Bookstore on Helsinki’s Night of the Arts with the Finnish artist, Visa Norros and others. ISEA was being hosted that year by the Media Lab at TAIK and directed by Minna Tarkka, a person who did things, who showed up, and who inspired others to show up and do things.
I first met Minna later that morning at the TAIK Arabianranta building on the 3rd Floor at the Media Lab—actually we collided in the hallway—auspicious and a bit embarrassing! She was dashing from Point A to Point B as Director during the very hectic symposium registration. After both of us proffered sheepish apologies and introduced ourselves, she took me around, introducing me to some of the media arts luminaries attending the symposium and to staff at the Lab. This was the first of many examples of her unsparing generosity. It was during the symposium that I fully entered her energized sphere of influence there in Finland, where we had a number of memorable dialogues around the ethics and creative possibilities of the rapidly expanding field of electronic media in which she was a thought pioneer. As Associate Professor at the Lab, she later facilitated my return in the spring of 1995 to teach a four-week course. And a few years following that, she was totally supportive of the course netculture that I developed and taught at the Lab in 2000-2001. Her parallel trans-disciplinary course, “Cultural Usability,” critically examined new media design that was inclusive of sociological, cultural, and technological perspectives. Years earlier in 1987, she was the founding Director of MUU, the ‘alternative’ arts organization that has since been a major international player in new media arts. And two years later, she was a founding member of AV-arkki yet another power-house media arts resource and artists’ association there in Finland.
In those earlier days of our acquaintance (and of the WWW itself), her research and art work around spatial metaphors in virtuality, the aesthetics of immersion, and the dynamics of interaction and consumption were of special interest to me, as she explored the fundamentals of human relation as mediated by this ‘new’ technology. She made some highly original and deep dives into the aesthetic and ethical dimensions in the design of spaces for interaction. And all the while, she worked as a facilitator of human encounter, organizing, producing, and participating in many subsequent events, culminating with the formation of another cultural NGO, m-cult in 2000. Right up to the present, m-Cult has exerted a strong influence on the international critical engagement of culture with technology, leading with a profound sense of humane social activism. Yet another influential expression of her energies.
I never made a portrait of her and there seem to be only a handful of poor digital traces. She was a bit shy and soft-spoken. I have a vague memory of the epic RinneRadio concert at ISEA and a huge crowd dancing away, Minna included. She knew how to have an expansive time! That she is gone is yet another loss to many of us who are still pacing about this stage. Minna you will be fondly remembered and deeply missed.
[ED: I will add any reflections and comments from others to this posting as they surface. I’ve been reaching out to friends and former colleagues from those former life-changing times.]
Inability to focus on particulars that swarm the mind, fleeting. What to write about? Is there anything of substance to say? The world is so full of re-creations of an infinite multiverse: the universe is … whatever you want it to be. After that, it is what it is, or, perhaps, what it isn’t.
The human race consists of a small group of animals which for a small time has barely differentiated itself from the mass of animal life on a small planet circling round a small sun. The Universe is vast. Nothing is more curious than the self-satisfied dogma with which mankind at each period of its history cherishes the delusion of the finality of its existing modes of knowledge. Skeptics and believers are all alike. At this moment scientists and skeptics are the leading dogmatists. Advance in details is admitted: fundamental novelty is barred. This dogmatic common sense is the death of philosophic adventure. The Universe is vast.
[John] Dewey has never been appalled by the novelty of an idea. But it is characteristic of all established schools of thought to throw themselves into self-defensive attitudes. Refutation has its legitimate place in philosophic discussion: it should never form the final chapter. Human beliefs constitute the evidence as to human experience of the nature of things. Every belief is to be approached with respectful inquiry. The final chapter of philosophy consists in the search for the unexpressed presuppositions which underlie the beliefs of every finite human intellect. In this way philosophy makes its slow advance by the introduction of new ideas, widening vision, and adjusting clashes.
Dewey, John, Paul Arthur Schilpp, and Lewis Edwin Hahn, eds. The Philosophy of John Dewey. 3d ed. The Library of Living Philosophers, v. 1. La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1989.
One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”
Leopold, Aldo. A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1972.
Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.
… in a world whose educational systems fail to integrate current findings about education, much less […] advanc[e] fields of inquiry. Persons coming through such systems to specialize in any particular career in a field of empirically unfolding inquiry, must perforce make an accounting for things as best they can. If their basis of understandings is not much broader than the tradition and special vocabulary of their own specialty, then their accounting in turn must be narrow and therefore complex, intelligible only from within the specialty. Without an adequate provision for conserving and re-rendering this jumble of particulars into a larger and simpler whole, “knowledge” does not so much explode as disintegrate.
Either some form of general systems theory, or its equivalent in intellectual, perceptual and aesthetic convenience, therefore, should be made an integral part of the core of every curriculum.
Wenger, Win. “A General Theory of Systems: One Man’s View Within Our Universe,” 1996.
Getting more and more convinced that this should be implemented — I notice a special need in the ‘field’ that is coalescing into a ‘discipline’: Digital Humanities. Much of the coalescing is driven by a sense of desperation among Humanities academics as their mission and jobs come under attack from a higher education that evermore trends towards ‘practical’ disciplines. Unfortunately, many in the Humanities are taking yet another stale and conservative approach to the questions — similar in process to the academicization of post-modernism as a concept. Some attention is being paid to systems thinking in Europe as a powerful approach to examining the relation between technology and social systems. But a parallel trend that is given the label ‘new materialism’ is already off track, slogging through distinctly conservative and unproductive ways of interacting with or even understanding reality. I’ve introduced systems thinking to a number of folks who are moving in digital humanities circles, but with limited success. Seems like a no-brainer to me, as the approach is so powerful in understanding both macro- and micro-scaled interactions (energy flows!!) that are at the core of human-technology relation. But it is apparently difficult for text-based researchers to embrace a thought tool that pulls in a much wider span of, say, actualized social effect than that limited to post-semiotic big-data word-play research.
As a college professor, I have repeatedly observed that far too many monsters of high school achievement possess blank, dull, and uncreative minds. Although they are accomplished, never having had a free moment, never knowing what it is to draw or make music on their own, to read a book for pleasure, or to lie on the grass pondering the tiny bugs on the blades, they don’t have a clue how to directly respond to anything — let alone great books or ideas. Their passion is directed at themselves — rather than the world that’s there for them to explore — and, in reality, they are little narcissists. I’d like to say that college awakens them, but once a mind is locked into a certain way of approaching the world, it’s damn hard for it to change. — anonymous
“Some discomfort is inevitable in classrooms if the goal is to expose students to new ideas, have them question beliefs they have taken for granted, grapple with ethical problems they have never considered, and, more generally, expand their horizons so as to become informed and responsible democratic citizens,” the statement says. “Trigger warnings suggest that classrooms should offer protection and comfort rather than an intellectually challenging education. They reduce students to vulnerable victims rather than full participants in the intellectual process of education. The effect is to stifle thought on the part of both teachers and students who fear to raise questions that might make others ‘uncomfortable.'”
Rifling through the archive, I run across contract papers from when I was a GPTI (Graduate Part-Time Instructor) at CU-Boulder between 1987-1989. I was contracted each of five semesters to teach a Basic Photography course in the Photography program in the Art Department during the time I was doing my MFA studies. (On my own motivation, I also created and taught a course in Master Printing through the Continuing Education Department, but I don’t have the numbers on that one.) The Basic Photo classes paid $2730 per semester in 1989. Corrected for inflation, in 2012 dollars this would be $4980. Strange that 23 years later, in 2012, with 23 years of teaching across 20 countries at around 60 higher ed institutions, with vast experience in photo, new media, and creativity, along with a PhD, I was being paid $3800 per semester to teach at CU-Boulder in the Department of Art and Art History. Isn’t that shit! Not to mention that CU-Boulder is the highest-paying tertiary-ed school in Colorado — the rest of the state schools and many private ones pay a fraction of what CU pays. As teaching three courses per semester is considered full-time, imagine supporting a family on $25K (or far less) per year? I was making more than this on my four-year PhD stipend from the Australian government.
Clear anecdotal evidence of the great hollowing-out of higher education in Amurika. (along with tomes like this — I’m not the only person talking about this crap.) A hollowing out that crosses many disciplines, vocations, and social divisions. And one that has a tremendous social cost in the long run. One might be driven to think “Who but cretins or ignorant idealists will choose to teach?.” Certainly no one who has a shred of self-respect will do it under these present adjunct conditions! Well, clearly there are some who have dedicated their lives to it, (and who have mortgages and kids in college), no turning back now. But I drew a line with my recent CU experience. No more US tertiary ed for me.
The fiscal situation is only one dimension of the systemic malady…
Mechanical instruments: these instruments will have a great future in teaching. They are automatic auxiliaries to the teacher, the extension of the word and the book. Without a doubt, they are a long way from being perfect, but what marvelous progress has already been made. The gramophone has assisted the teaching of language greatly … It can do the same for music. The Pianola will permit the acquisition of an extensive knowledge of music, of works which one should hear. Machines for projecting fixed diapositive plates or microfilms (photoscope), the cinema in black and white and in color, with texts interspersed in the film with the possibility of interrupting it, will allow knowledge of things and actions which should be seen. The radio (broadcasting …) with its personal apparatus and its great speakers, its musical programs, its lectures, its courses, will permit one to be in direct contact with the outside world, to receive messages, to observe the usefulness of foreign languages, to attempt to understand them …
New Teaching Equipment: education based on the considerations developed here will necessitate the development of teaching materials. The poor material which educational establishments use to-day will no longer be satisfactory.
Otlet, Paul, 1926. L’Education et les Instituts du Palais Mondial (Mundaneurn), Publication No. 121; Brussels: UIA — in Rayward, W.B., 1975. The Universe of Information — The Work of Paul Otlet for Documentation and International Organization, Moscow, USSR: International Federation of Documentation.
So, Displace finally arrives from the printers — Dovile did a fine job designing it, and overall it looks good thanks to Mindaugas’ hard work as Editor-in-Chief. The editing process went on three times longer than we originally had hoped, but I guess that’s just another lesson on how to estimate the work on a complicated project. Mindaugas is sending me a case of sixteen for the record, and it will be interesting to look through the physical copy to see all the mistakes I might have made! Argh!
Subject: [MigAA] Displace: A Migrating Art Academies Compendium of Ideas
Date: Fri, 06 Mar 2015 18:59:36 +0100
Finally long awaited the third Migrating Art Academies publication Displace is out! If anyone is interested in ordering a copy, please do send a short note to info (at) migaa (dot) eu.
Best,
Mindaugas
Displace A Migrating Art Academies Compendium of Ideas
ISBN 978-609-447-143-8
This book — the third Migrating Art Academies (MigAA) publication — marks the end of the third phase of the MigAA program, which, over the course of seven years has grown into a dynamic and vital network of art academies and universities, independent arts organizations, many hundreds of people, and endless ideas. It documents the results of sixteen innovative workshops the network organized during the last four years that took place across nine European countries.
The book includes works, essays, concepts, and other documentary and peripheral material developed before, during, and after the sixteen different workshops. It is first of all presented as a source for any and all emerging artists who search for a means of creating, nurturing, and manifesting their ideas. Secondly, it is meant as a source for inspiring and fresh perspectives for professional artists experiencing a creative block or who are stuck in unproductive patterns of thought. Finally, for those seeking to understand contemporary art and its challenges, it constitutes an excellent window into the surprising variety of practices with which the participating artists addressed the issues that confronted them.
In order to emphasize the distributed nature of the MigAA network, the book is designed with no particular hierarchic continuity. The only source of continuity is the page numbering that follows the chronological sequence of the laboratories: each of them are separated into chapters corresponding to the name of the laboratory. The chapters are presented in a random order to reflect the open nature of the network. Each laboratory/chapter is formatted the same: identifying where it took place, and providing the relevant information on the input, the process, and the output, as well as an introduction section and a list of participants.
The publication of this book could not have been possible without the enthusiastic and farsighted support of the EU Culture Programme 2007-2013, Nordic Culture Point, and the Lithuanian Council for Culture.
Another interesting meeting this month — portending an engaged 2015 — this crossing with Antony “Tony” Brown, the founder of the Ecosa Institute. A possibility to collaborate or so, as they make a systems approach in their educational program that focuses on “regenerative” ecological design. They are on the verge of a major expansion of their mission as a result of a substantial philanthropic gift that allows for a new facility to be built in the Granite Dells. Tony founded the .org about fifteen years ago, and it’s a pity that I didn’t find them sooner than this week. Better late than never!
I’m still learning how to live in a small town. Can’t be a selective hermit. So, made a serious effort to ‘get out.’ Following my own advice to students — do everything [whups, got to change that — this was the original John Cage text — I did a remix on that]. Find the interesting people doing interesting things, one can hardly go wrong.
But it’s been difficult to do this reaching out with the Displace book running far over the allotted month of editing. Many ten-hour days sunk into that, and it’s not going to press until after the New Year now, I think. Mindaugas just sent the cover proof yesterday. These editing projects always run over. It’s rarely possible to estimate what effort it will take to make readable texts from unknown sources.
What would a revolutionary academy be. It must, of course, have revolutionary aims; not just with respect to the academy itself, but with respect to the broader social world. At the level of its organization, it would have to have a different hierarchy than the existing one we find organized around administration, staff, tenured faculty, adjunct faculty, and students. Here we might think of Guattari’s La Borde. It would have to challenge the “star system” of the academy—while also honoring great accomplishments of thought and scholarship—refusing to restrict itself to, for example, the history of philosophy and masters, but rather functioning as a genuine site of new knowledge production rather than merely inherited tradition. Somehow the course would have to navigate between the transmission of existing knowledge and the creation of new knowledge. It would have to produce graduates that don’t simply reproduce the existing system of neoliberal capital and privilege, but that form new ways of life. Finally, it would have to navigate these issues of livability, of being able to find a sustainable place in the world when exiting the institution.
Somewhat conservative in the fact that it doesn’t dispense with institution completely, but otherwise a solid, pragmatic call (on ears that are packed, sloughing, with the (reified!) waxen dross of normalcy). bwah…
Went in to office at 1 PM and worked on the decoy summary chart until 5 PM; this chart is different from the R/E vehicle chart.
35˚F – 1/2 Overcast
Stayed in bed until about 11:15, when LCH cut my hair, and I took a shower. My back seems to hurt a lot more; I must have overdid on Monday.
On the way to work after lunch I stopped at the office on the Town Engineer to see if he would have some gravel put on my driveway to replace what was taken away last summer. He said that he has no trucks, etc., that I should talk to the Street Department, Mr. Nelson. He wasn’t in. I suppose I should get some hauled in at my expense. The rear bkt. on the Ford tailpipe should be replaced also.
I think that the schools of education are turning out high school administrators who think that what goes on in the high school should be watered down and made simple, also allowing the students to slide by.
LCH off to DCH Open House at school.
The review of Conant’s book has made quite an impression on me.
Took Bud LeMoine to Men4s Club at PSC; Dr. Eldersveld spoke on Science.
Geo Pickering said last night that John Svara had asked him to look into the move estimates as he would be out of town for the Trustees Mtg. on 15 November. I see I’ll have a lot to do. I’ll make a scale drwg. on proposal.
A native of Anchorage, Alaska, Dr. Jay (as he is known to some) watches the sky whenever he has the chance. This despite having survived a BSc, an MFA, and a PhD. As an international teacher (or better yet, a learning facilitator) on collaboration, creativity, art, and technology, John has a long history in photography. He is a master printer despite being away from a wet darkroom for awhile: he used to promise his printing students that their eyes would bleed with see-ing by the end of the semester. He made them read “Zen and the Art of Archery.” He made one substantial detour into an education and career in Big Oil and geothermal energy as a geophysical engineer, but cameras were always at hand. John was artist-in-residence at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, Finland; at the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Wendover, Utah; and at the Gilfélagið in Akureyri, Iceland.
Finland? Utah? Iceland? For the last 25 years he’s led a peripatetic life that’s oscillated seasonally between Northern Europe and the Western half of the US (with another detour ‘down under’ for his PhD) although he’s also been spotted at many points in between, and sometimes he gets the seasons backwards.
While watching the sky, he witnessed twelve minutes of totality and twenty-six of partiality chasing solar eclipses around the world with his dad, an avid amateur astronomer and photographer who studied with Ansel Adams.
John has worked and played with (and made portraits of) thousands of really cool and creative people f-2-f in 30 countries. He’s been an online facilitator for Transmediale in Berlin, a workshop presenter at Pixelache in Helsinki and at the ADA in Whanganui, NZ; a member of the Icelandic Artists Union and the Society of Exploration Geophysicists; a volunteer at the Broadway Food Coop in Sydney; a net-art curator at the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, Tokyo; and has tracked mountain lions in several places in Colorado.
He watches the sky whenever possible. He photographs what he sees. Since 1983 his work falls under the moniker “neoscenes.”
posted
place: Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington and South Acton, Massachusetts
Jack Slade in to ask about HIRS, and what vehicles it will be on that Tradex we’ll see.
Wrote to LAB re: engineering education.
Talked to Mary Lou re: the schedule — the schedule Control Board meets 4 November & she will mark the next issue with HIRS & Tradex identifications.
RH 30%
Warmer
Went over to Lincoln Auto to pick up the rear tail gate sills for the Willys; Ed Boyer had not ordered them, so I went to the Jeep warehouse and got the part nr. again — 664416; then took it out to them.
It seems to me that this has been the longest time between paydays that I can recall.
The Prosperous Way Down site, invoking and building on Howard Odum’s work, takes a look at education here.
Conservation of information, both genetic and learned, through teaching and archiving, is the first mission of universities. Included are the biodiversity of nature and the long range memory of society, which is the library. Scarce library money should not be diverted to short range needs. The internet appears to be the short range memory of society. As in the analogous processes of the human brain, short range information has to be sifted and selected for preservation, a university function. Planning for descent should take priority in universities, not only for itself, but for its role as the long range information storehouse for society. . . Not all the great quantity of information in our current climax pulse can be sustained in the down cycle. How do we organize and save what is most important? Perhaps this is a priority for long range greening committees . . . more “educational solutions for declining systems, etc.”
Brian Holmes, who runs “Continental Drift” responded to that article on AI grading of college essays as follows:
> The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short
> written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.
Such as:
a. raw domination
b. rank servitude
c. outright revolution
[Note: You can only tick one of the boxes…]
LOL Brian! (with significant sighing on the side) — just finished a class this morning talking with my students about this very issue … (c) will occur at the interstice of the human encounter of Self with Other, so that it is indeed available instantly, all around, in the classroom, in faculty meetings, on the street. Reminding the students of this (and helping them establish a lived praxis based on the vitality of those encounters) is my choice, so that suggests changing (c) to ‘facilitating open encounter and engagement’…
The only future I can see beyond submission to the economic destinies of robotization and outsourcing is some kind of political organization, my friends. To be sure, the 60s, reinterpreted and repurposed by neoliberal ideology, trained us all against any kind of hierarchy whatsoever. We are so “free” that power is walking all over us. The capitalist democracies have gone down the very path predicted by Weberian sociology: complete rationalization for accumulation’s sake. The university is now envisioned as a largely automated service provider for the human-capital needs of corporations. That’s endgame, because without a public institution for critical perception, analysis and deliberation, the only social steering mechanism is the imperative to accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, until the last ton of coal is effectively burnt and we’re all reduced to a cinder. Isn’t that kinda obvious now? What’s the next step?
At this point I am quite pessimistic that the evolutionary drive to guarantee propagation of the species, a drive inseparable from life itself, and which includes the need for consuming any and all energy necessary for survival-to-reproduce, can be short-circuited by any altruistic or even pragmatic socio-political (community, nation-state, supra-national) agendas, ever. The social concept of ‘use less’ (promulgated mostly by the ever-unsatiated über-consumers of the developed world) cannot trump evolutionary hard-wiring. I believe we will do exactly as you say at the end of your paragraph.
That question of what to do next, now, is perhaps moot. The question of what to do, after, will present itself in the immediacy of the moment. The situation we as a species have made is not of such extremity to preclude that life in other forms will not continue, and our species will likely exist in greatly reduced numbers. This may simply provide the planet with other opportunities to re-evolve after (solar-sourced) energy has again been accumulated to a level and form that allows for another burst of life progression.
This will clearly not happen in the short term of (our) human life-times.
I was sent a DHL tracking number on March 25, whereupon the package sat for days before finally leaving Melbourne on the 04 April. 05 April, it ends up in Cincinnati where it sits for more than two weeks before I finally start blasting emails out to the La Trobe Graduate School for yet another communications failure on their part.
Every piece of mission-critical communications from them had a major glitch associated with it (admissions letter preceded by word that I was NOT accepted; scholarship letter accompanied by email that I had not been given a scholarship; dissertation revision notification never sent to me, only my supervisor; final acceptance of dissertation notification not mailed until 6 weeks after the fact, making matriculation impossible last November, and then this DHL fiasco).
I called DHL and so did the Graduate School, and finally, last Saturday, the package was ‘found’ in the ‘unclaimed’ box, whatever that means. Delivered this morning in the middle of yet another spring blizzard.
This delivery is, of course, my diploma, at long last. 1369 days after I started at UTS in Sydney, and 387 days after submitting the dissertation itself. 982 days in the actual research process, and 132 days of hard-core writing.
Prof. Ajume Wingo invited me to join in the Global Development Group that is being organized by Prof. Paul Chinowsky, Mortenson Professor of Sustainable Development, in the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities Program. It looks to be an interesting program with about 40 senior faculty from across the university participating. Not sure how deeply I’ll be able to get involved given that I’m short-timing at CU at this point, but I noted that at one of the first meetings that brought a majority of the participants together, Paul ran with my suggestion to pair people off in such a way that the disciplinary boundaries are broken down. I used the dialogue assignment as an example — where time spent in face-to-face engagement goes a long way in the construction of a shared protocol that will bridge the oft-times exclusive disciplinary languages. It is my belief that these shared protocols are crucial to the success of a transdisciplinary collaboration and that the human networks they depend on are constructed only at the speed of life (as I have said elsewhere in this blog), not quicker.
John Hopkins (BSc, MFA, PhD) has worked for the last 25+ years as a nomadic media artist and autonomous learning facilitator across 25 countries and more than 60 cultural and academic learning institutions. His workshops explore issues of sustainable creative practices, ‘big-picture’ system views, tactical media, distributed and community-based DIY, Open Source, and DIWO (Do-It-With-Others or community-based DIY) processes, and the appropriation of global IT networks as the site for autonomous creative activity: Temporary Autonomous Zones. Resonating with both David Bohm’s and Martin Buber’s ideas around the power of human encounter and dialogue, he facilitates experiential learning around collaborative engagement. His own media-arts research is a practice-based exploration into the effects of technological development on human encounter and relationship. His views on global development are informed as a former member of the Imperialist Vanguard (Big Oil), he now draws on the rigors and knowledge-base of that experience while leaving behind the fixed and fear-drenched assumptions about the Other that drives the core of the military-industrial-academic complex. A CU alumni, he is currently teaching on the “Meaning of Information Technology” in the ATLAS/TAM program along with several digital arts courses in A&AH. He maintains an extensive web presence at https://neoscenes.net/blog/ and https://neoscenes.net/ that documents his practice.
The shadows of ourselves are the passive states which we know by introspection.
The learned in the cave are those who possess empirical forms of knowledge (who know how to make predictions, the doctors who know how to cure people by using empirical methods, those who know what is going on, etc.). Their knowledge is nothing but a shadow.
Education, he says, is, according to the generally accepted view of it, nothing but the forcing of thoughts into the minds of children. For, says Plato, each person has within himself the ability to think. If one does not understand, this is because one is held by the fetters. Whenever the soul is bound by the fetters of suffering, pleasure, etc. it is unable to contemplate through its own intelligence the unchanging patterns of things.
No doubt, there are mathematicians in the cave, but their attention is given to honors, rivalries, competition, etc. more “The Allegory of the Cave”
The Status of Women on Broadband Worldwide (Intel) Women and the Web (pdf) — USAID; UN Women.
Information: divergent divide (skills development) — leads to lost opportunities in education, achievement, and social development. ICTD: Information and communication technologies for development
Market-based development — leads private sector actors to jump in …
Public/Private partnerships
Tech solutions for social & economic challenges
Burgeoning field of research.
Shared Value :: market value / social value
Societal needs define markets, not economic needs
Any research into effects of this on local community fabric? Is there any consideration given to the concept that perhaps the indigenous communications community may be negatively affected by the penetration of the internet?
growth and development (growth model) dominates thinking
Assumptions: dark side — what does access mean? (the assumption is that ICTD is necessary to life… (indispensable, etc))
Mulling over the way to go — how to carve a trajectory through the knowledge space? — perennial (no, daily!) question. Confronting the students with a more random array of inputs (texts, discussion-lectures, other material) forces a certain kind of sense-making. Or does it merely confuse? In conversation with one colleague who is involved in teaching rhetorics, a friend of EJ’s who is now a voting member of the AAUP’sCommittee A* (!), it seemed clear that the tools necessary for sense-making are gradually slipping out of vogue. They are perhaps simply too hard to acquire within the framework of the corporate education schema. This leaves learners without some crucial tools for dealing with (questioning) the nature of reality. The “critical thinking” rubric seems hollowed-out as a singular approach without more basic sensory (‘sensual’ as David Abrams puts it) awareness. This goes back to Howard Rheingold’s “Net Smarts” book which explores mindfulness as one profound and crucial way to approach aspects of reality and, specifically, the aristocracy of technology that we now abide within. A holistic approach that considers our embodied be-ing and it’s relation to the rest of reality as completely connected at all levels seems to provide such an entry point. Assuming connectedness and sussing out how — rather than invoking certain aspects of the scientific method that often assumes disconnectedness with the need to prove any co-relation — instead sussing out the nature of connected relation.
* elsewhere I’ll have to get into the contentious issues surrounding Committee A (sounds like something out of Pravda): tenure being a primary one!
Cheap energy and the short-term bloom of humanity it has fueled have given rise to some social arrangements that are not destined to survive the onset of permanent energy scarcity. One of these is the notion that a few young people will anonymously contribute a large part of their income for the welfare of many old people they have never met or even heard of.
In the days in which most of human history has transpired, parents took care of their children as their topmost priority in life. As with many other species, it was their biological imperative to do so; beyond that, most of them were conscious of the fact that if their children did not survive, neither would they: their genes, their memories, their culture, or anything about them would be erased by time. The care of children could be entrusted to family members, but never to complete strangers. The education of children took place largely in the home, through storytelling, shared labor, and through rites of passage. The elderly, and especially the grandparents, took an active part in rearing and educating children. It was they who watched and attended to young children throughout the day, and who inculcated in them much of the ancestral wisdom – the stories, the myths, and the practical knowledge – through ceaseless, tiresome repetition.
At the trailing edge of the fossil fuel age, where we find ourselves, prosperous society looks quite different. Both parents work dismal jobs, mostly away from home, in order to keep themselves out of bankruptcy. Those who prosper most attend to their careers with far greater attention than to their children, abandoning them to the care of strangers for the better part of most days. The grandparents live elsewhere, enjoying their golden years, the fruits of their labors encapsulated in some properties, some investments, and a merciful central government that has promised to at least keep them alive even if all else fails. They are living on artificial life support that is about to be shut off. — Dmitry Orlov
I just ran across this excerpt from Geert’s first internet-oriented book—way back in 2003—in the chapter on “tactical education” entitled “The Battle over New Media Art Education.” This is a section of that chapter titled Neoscenes Pedagogy:
The Digital Bauhaus concept may be a fata morgana amidst a never-ending institutional nightmare. The new-media subject appears at the end of a long global crisis in the education industry. Decades of constant restructuring, declining standards and budget cuts have led to an overall decline of the .edu sector. There are debates not only about fees, cutbacks in staff and privatization but also about the role of the teacher. For a long time the classic top-down knowledge delivery methods of the classroom situation have been under fire. In a response to the education crisis, the American-Scandinavian John Hopkins calls for a cultural shift towards alternative pedagogies. His pedagogy, close to that of Paolo Freire, is based on a combination of face-to-face and networked communication, keeping up a “flow of energies from node to node.” Hopkins, who calls himself an “autonomous teaching agent,” has roamed between Northern European universities and new-media initiatives and currently teaches in Boulder, Colorado. His spiritual-scientific worldview might not match mine, but he is certainly my favorite when it comes to a radical education approach. Hopkins prefers the person-to-person as a “tactical” expression of networking, avoiding “centralized media and PR-related activities wherever possible.” Hopkins’ “neoscenes” networks are “a vehicle for learning, creating and sharing that does not seek stasis, spectacle and speed.”
In a few instances, Hopkins’ “distributed Socratic teaching strategy” has culminated in 24-hour techno parties with a big online component to make room for remote participation and exchange. The challenge with the live remix streams was to find out collectively “how exactly to facilitate autonomy and spontaneity.” For Hopkins teaching is a “life practice,” an action that embodies “art as a way-of-doing.” He calls his style “verbose and densely grown (not necessarily meaningful either ;-). but I do try to say what I am thinking and practicing … ” Hopkins tries not to make a distinction between learning, teaching and being taught. “It is critical that I myself am transformed by the entire engaged experience.” As a visiting artist, and usually not a member of the “local academic politburo,” Hopkins can build up personal connections within a local structure, free to “catalyze a flexible response that is immediately relevant,” while maintaining a creative integrity that is based in praxis.
. . .
John Hopkins: “I start my workshops with a sketching of some absolute fundamentals of human presence and being in the phenomenal world. This beginning point immediately becomes a source of deep crisis for some students precisely because they are expecting the vocational top-down educational experience of learning a specific software platform and making traditional artifacts.” John finds people who focus on software platforms “incredibly boring. It’s like amateur photo-club members comparing the length of their telephoto lenses or having conversations about national sports. It’s a code system for communication that is often mindless and banal. While at some level, my students are forced to confront the digital device. I encourage them to be aware of how they are interacting with the machine, what is comfortable and what is not.”
. . .
John Hopkins compares Scandinavia and the USA, places he knows well. “Because of a well-funded cultural industry sector in Scandinavia, artists who are potential teachers are not forced into teaching as happens in the US. This has kept the stagnation of the tenure-track system, something that dogs US higher education, out of the way. In the US, artists who have any desire to live by working in some way in their medium are more often than not forced into academia because there is no other social context for them. They may or may not be teachers in any sense. There tend to be more permeable and productive interchanges between the ‘art world’ and ‘academia’ in Scandinavia and northern Europe, realized by cycling a larger number of idiosyncratic individual teacher/artists into contact with students.” Isolated campus life. slow and complicated bureaucracies, and the politically correct atmosphere at US universities are not ideal circumstances for a hybrid “trans-disciplinary” program to thrive. However, the campus setup does help to reduce distractions, once students know what they want and the resources are in place.
Lovink, G., 2003. My First Recession, Rotterdam, NL: V2-NAi Publishers.
An example of the sliding-scale metaphor I use often in teaching — that whatever dialectically opposed concepts (i.e., networks vs hierarchies) the actuality of the situation is that neither exist in a pure form, but instead exist always in hybrid collision of dynamic evolution — in this case, a net/archy. Another instance (see this):
Smooth space and striated space — nomad space and sedentary space — the space in which the war machine develops and the space instituted by the State apparatus — are not of the same nature. No sooner do we note a simple opposition between the two kinds of space than we must indicate a much more complex difference by virtue of which the successive terms of the oppositions fail to coincide entirely. And no sooner have we done that than we must remind ourselves that the two spaces in fact exist only in mixture: smooth space is constantly being translated, transversed into a striated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth space. In the first case, one organizes even the desert; in the second, the desert gains and grows; and the two can happen simultaneously.
Deleuze, G., Guattari, F. & Massumi, B., 1988. A thousand plateaus : capitalism and schizophrenia, London: Athlone Press. p 475.
Scientific knowledge and new technologies are the building blocks for long-term economic growth — “the key to a 21st-century economy,” as President Obama said in the final debate.
So it is astonishing that Mr. Romney talks about economic growth while planning deep cuts in investment in science, technology and education. They are among the discretionary items for which spending could be cut 22 percent or more under the Republican budget plan, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science [relevant link], the plan, which Mr. Romney has endorsed, could cut overall non-defense science, engineering, biomedical and technology research by a quarter over the next decade, and energy research by two-thirds.
Mr. Romney seems to have lost sight of the critical role of research investments not only in developing new medicines and cleaner energy sources but also in creating higher-skilled jobs. — Neal Lane, former head of the NSF.
Free Market! Free Market! Greed Market! Greed Market! It fulfills all desire and need everywhere all the time. Some of the Republican base who have changed their colors: (what, a Mormon? My former experience in (Republican) Fundamentalist circles recalls that Mormonism was branded a cult by a large majority of those folks). People are so friggin’ cynical and greedy that they will put aside their relativist belief system and vote for someone who was only recently considered to be a member of a cult — as determined by their own cult! Just more of the self-centered hypocrisy that seems to suffuse the US system. (uff) (Of course, pretty much any pathway might be considered a cult, it all depends on the metric, and the lack of autonomous self-determination of the ‘participants’. Isn’t media the foundation of any cult? The Cult(ure) of MEdiation. And the way some approach science, usually through a lack of understanding, blah blah blah…)
You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives.
And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.
The first in time and the first in importance of the influences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the sun; and, after sunset, night and her stars. Ever the winds blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of all men whom this spectacle most engages. He must settle its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his own spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he never can find, — so entire, so boundless. Far, too, as her splendors shine, system on system shooting like rays, upward, downward, without centre, without circumference, — in the mass and in the particle, nature hastens to render account of herself to the mind. Classification begins. To the young mind, every thing is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to join two things, and see in them one nature; then three, then three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anomalies, discovering roots running under ground, whereby contrary and remote things cohere, and flower out from one stem. It presently learns, that, since the dawn of history, there has been a constant accumulation and classifying of facts. But what is classification but the perceiving that these objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law which is also a law of the human mind? The astronomer discovers that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human mind, is the measure of planetary motion. The chemist finds proportions and intelligible method throughout matter; and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, in the most remote parts. The ambitious soul sits down before each refractory fact; one after another, reduces all strange constitutions, all new powers, to their class and their law, and goes on for ever to animate the last fibre of organization, the outskirts of nature, by insight.
Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending dome of day, is suggested, that he and it proceed from one root; one is leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in every vein. And what is that Root? Is not that the soul of his soul? — A thought too bold, — a dream too wild. Yet when this spiritual light shall have revealed the law of more earthly natures, — when he has learned to worship the soul, and to see that the natural philosophy that now is, is only the first gropings of its gigantic hand, he shall look forward to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator. He shall see, that nature is the opposite of the soul, answering to it part for part. One is seal, and one is print. Its beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ignorant of, so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in fine, the ancient precept, “Know thyself,” and the modern precept, “Study nature,” become at last one maxim.
Emerson, R.W., 1837. The American Scholar. Available at: https://www.emersoncentral.com/amscholar.htm [Accessed August 27, 2012].
At its core, trans-disciplinary collaboration is chiefly a test of how to find the words, and within the words, the cumulative meanings that might span what is often a wide gulf in understandings. In general, the use of language in a trans-disciplinary space is a particular challenge that, to a significant degree, determines the successful outcome of the attempt to bridge, fuse, or simply transcend disciplinary spaces altogether. Of course, beyond the words, there is the imperative for energized and embodied collaborative action, Freire’s ‘praxis'(1): change is the presumptive goal of the trans-disciplinary encounter. However, what I call the ‘meta-conditions’ of the human encounter are as or even more important than strictly linguistic exchanges. Meta-conditions deeply impress the qualities and potentialities of the human encounter that are the core of learning and change. In this White Paper I will reflect on these meta-conditions necessary to facilitate trans-disciplinary communication and collaboration. I will do this as a former engineer, a practicing ‘media’ artist, and in the context of 25 years of experience (2) teaching across art, design, engineering, and technology. The instance of my own current planning and facilitating of a (pre-existing) course I was invited to teach in the Fall of 2012 will function as an armature for the reflections. A former student of mine, Director of the TAM (Technology, Arts, and Media (3)) Program, that is hosted within the ATLAS Institute (Alliance for Technology, Learning, and Society (4)), offered me one section of “The Meaning of Information Technology” (5) course at the University of Colorado – Boulder (6). Among other threads, my reflections will touch on re-defining the term ‘technology’ in such a way that allows more powerful critical access to that often-self-obscured aspect of our social existence, regardless of disciplinary background. I will also make some critical observations about what I understand as the deep and problematic assumptions undergirding much of contemporary education.
John Hopkins Boulder, Colorado 14 August 2012
1 Freire, P., 2000. Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Continuum.
2 https://neoscenes.net/info/cv/
3 https://tam.colorado.edu/
4 https://atlas.colorado.edu/
5 https://tam.colorado.edu/teaching.php (general program requirements for the course)
6 https://colorado.edu
My educational philosophy is built on the existence of a simple phenomena that I observe on a daily basis while moving through life. It is this — where two people can come together and have an encounter. If this encounter is at least somewhat free of conventional social strictures, and the two individuals are able to find an open path for the sharing of their life-times and energies, there arises a special situation. Following this encounter the two might step away from this encounter, both are inspired, both with an excess of energy circulating within themselves, both at a higher energy level than when they arrived an the instance of the encounter.
It is this excess of energy arising from the situation that becomes a source of creative action.
This is a fundamental in learning: To face the unknown Other, to find an open pathway for an exchange of energies, and experience the potential of energy exchange.
The degree of openness in the encounter is heavily influenced by the techno-social system that the two individuals are embedded within and the meta-conditions of their encounter.
Moving away to a wider perspective, a classroom is a multiplicity of these dialogues that have the potential to generate absolutely relevant knowledge and experience sets for/among all participants in the encounter process.
As an educator and facilitator, it is my role to change the characteristic of the space/conditions for the encounter such that there are more possibilities for it to find or create open pathways. One primary task is to be aware of and push back at least a subset of the imposed social relations/protocols that govern the encounter in order to uncover possible alternative pathways for creative collaboration.
posted
place: Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, Boston, and South Acton, Massachusetts
Tried to find some material in the Library on the design of digital data systems, but wasn’t too successful.
Fog – Overcast – 55˚F
It was cool last night; I slept better than usual.
Went in to PSC for a 6:30 PM met. of the Brd. of Christian Endeavor, where I and Woody presented the material we worked up on 13 June to the Brd. It got what I thot a somewhat apathetic reception, but there were no dissenting votes. I raised the question about trying to get across to the students the material we have in mind; HJO thot the instructors would not encounter much difficulty.
posted
place: Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, and South Acton, Massachusetts
In the light of yesterday’s disc. with WLZ on data processing, I mentioned to him that the break-even cost method of arriving at the minimum data processing cost might be useful in selecting a centralized or de-centralized method.
Clear in AM
Regarding the classes that we planned on 13 June, it may be that we have over-estimated the capacity of the 7th-to-9th-graders in their ability to absorb what we have planned. I must discuss this with Woody at length. Also, a title for our program might be “Guidelines for Living.”
Worked up audio/TV Committee report for tonight, which I read. We are still $1,100.00 in the red; I think all unnecessary spending should cease.
so bumps in the road expand into mole-hills into fuckin’ Everests. ready to chuck the whole thing.
with all my travels, and participating in systems that are localized I have noted how the local participants consider that their (social institutional) system–whatever it might be—is correct, transparent, and functional (and, is optimal/optimized). In every conversation I have had with foreign graduate students in Australia’s “tertiary education” (aka – “higher ed”) system, the chief topic of conversation is how black-box the system actually is, and how locals are able to function in it much easier, setting up knowledge-tracks to quick success. Prior knowledge and simply being in the system over time (or ‘from the beginning’) is a tremendous advantage in such localized systems. Entering in the system as I have done, an outside outsider is a distinct disadvantage, and at this point, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. A ‘semester abroad’ to UNSW or such might be good fun, but otherwise I’ve not seen much to recommend pursuing a graduate degree. I have heard in engineering as well as humanities courses that there are so many foreign students with poor ESL skills, that there is no real possibility for classroom dialogue of any but the most basic level. This wasn’t a problem in the two courses I’ve taught, though I can understand it is definitely possible, given that 18% of all tertiary students are coming from overseas. That’s 375K students as of 2005! Four years on, the number is 629K as there has been a major push by the government to expand this lucrative source of foreign exchange. It’s the third largest ‘export’ industry, generating AUD 18 billion in 2009. (See this report and this one for reference.)
I was told that there would be no more ‘casual’ teaching positions available for me until at least 2013, at which point I wouldn’t be in the country anyway. The significant contraction comes on the heels of the expansion: “a combination of factors in the past 18 months has put the international education sector under pressure. . . . Preliminary evidence suggests that the entire sector could see a decline in enrolments of between 15 to 30% in the near future.” This would cause a loss of tens of thousands of FTE (Full-time Equivalent) teaching positions (according to the rough correlation of every 2 overseas students supports one FTE). Tough times coming for tertiary ed in Oz!
Though this is only a side-show as far as I am concerned. Actually I don’t care a rap about it! The primary issue is the interpretation gap between what I pick up (from what I am told) and what is considered ‘correct’ or ‘acceptable’ within that tertiary education system in Australia as I (perhaps) continue my pursuit of the Ph.D. The gap seems to have expanded to consume my entire thesis which is shocking. Or maybe not — the meta-structural issues that I alluded to above are no surprise at all. They are the rule rather than the exception everywhere that I’ve participated in a process deeply enough to touch them. Most people are local. That’s ‘normal.’ Sure, they travel, but not to the extent where they run into these issues. And to locals, the problems are completely invisible: it’s the fish and water syndrome. Surfacing any critique usually causes some affront — even a passing note as to “how it’s done elsewhere.” (Being a ‘Yank’ in Australia is to be even more acutely suspect of an ulterior motive with any observation — I noticed that right off during several awkward instances.)
The only times I’ve really been ‘local’ myself are during the occasional sojourns in Colorado over the years — ten years resident over the past 35. Though the residencies have been mostly brief themselves, and all the locals I know here expect me to be around only temporarily.
Local versus distal provenance is a strong determinant in social power structures. Close connection to the sources of system-wide protocols enhances access to energy sources and consequently, enhances survivability.
posted
place: Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington and South Acton, Massachusetts
Had some disc with JLV re: his Ascension Project. It seems to be bogging down due to lack of support from Div. 4, which was to furnish a man.
Rode with HS.
Called Douglas Instrument re: SX-62; I’ll take it over on pay-day & go to Sears on the way back.
DCH was given a condition card today in English because he did not turn in 2 papers. This, in spite of his protestations over last weekend that all his work was done. He seems to be just floating along.
Read most of Vol. 1 of the GB; it is an Intro. by Robert M. Hutchins and in my opinion a powerful statement on modern, or rather contemporary education and that the young do not comprehend the things important to understand.
In a world where education is predominantly verbal, highly educated people find it all but impossible to pay serious attention to anything but words and notions. There is always money for, there are always doctorates in, the learned foolery of research into what, for scholars, is the all-important problem: Who influenced whom to say what when? Even in this age of technology the verbal humanities are honored. The non-verbal humanities, the arts of being directly aware of the given facts of our existence, ale almost completely ignored. A catalogue, a bibliography, a definitive edition of a third-rate versier’s ipsissima verba, a stupendous index to end all indexes – any genuinely Alexandrian project is sure of approval and financial support: But when it comes to finding out how you and I, our children and grandchildren, may become more perceptive, more intensely aware of inward and outward reality, more open to the Spirit, less apt, by psychological malpractices, to make ourselves physically ill, and more capable of controlling our own autonomic nervous system – when it comes to any form of non-verbal education more fundamental (and more likely to be of some practical use) than Swedish drill, no really respectable person in any really respectable university or church will do anything about it. Verbalists are suspicious of the non-verbal; rationalists fear the given, non-rational fact; intellectuals feel that “what we perceive by the eye (or in any other way) is foreign to us as such and need not impress us deeply.” more “Huxley’s education”
The key program of a surviving pattern of nature and man is a subsystem of religious teaching which follows the laws of the energy ethic. … We can teach the energy truths through general science in the schools and teach the love of system and its requirements of us in the changing churches. System survival makes right and the energy commandments guide the system to survival.
Odum, H.T., 2007. Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-First Century – The Hierarchy of Energy, New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Hmmm, Odum outlines a radical take on the relationship between humans and the natural system of energy flows they are a part of. A bit dogmatic sounding, though, so, out of context in that dimension. But in the context of science and, for example, climate change, it might be worth it for humans to get some scientific religion. Then again, maybe it’s all dogma and the processes that thermodynamics seeks to circumscribe will be the ruling factor: they will be, unless there is an intervention by forces beyond anything that science has framed. This is possible at any time, but seems unlikely. Who wants to depend on the unlikely and the improbable as a policy driver?
With 20 years of experience with students from more than 40 countries and with educational organizations in 25 countries, I have a deep appreciation of the issues involved in multi- or trans-cultural education. My own practice as an educator looks at multi-cultural learning from both a pragmatic and a positive point of view. Pragmatically, for example, all of my classes in the past years are composed of students from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. This simple fact brings to the fore in every situation the difficulties of language, and the cultural expressions that are deeply formed by language. Most often working under second-language conditions, I have honed my sensitivities to the relative speeds of comprehension and expression that second-language imposes and to the contingencies of difference that surface. Because difference is such a core creative source, I make it a practice in my workshops that students engage each other so as to open the potential pathways for creative collaboration.
It is tremendously important that a learning/creative situation is relevant to each particular student and that they feel comfortable enough to evolve and take on an experience that reflects a personal, internal source. Teaching in up to 20 different linguistic and cultural situations each year I have developed an appreciation for what is possible, what each distinct viewpoint opens up in a collective learning experience, and how personally relevant work may be seen as an inspiring source for peers. This kind of movement through radically different domains requires me to have a flexibility to engage and facilitate under widely varying conditions. While this is a constant challenge, it is one that I seek out for its richness, liveliness, and the consequential open space that arises when learners, myself included, are faced with the unknown — both inside the Self and inside the Other that they face. Because a fundamental concept of my creative work as well as my seminars and workshops is the facilitation of distributed (that is, non-hierarchic) network systems, I specifically deal with this human-to-human dynamic both in the conceptual/theoretical content as well as the lived practices that I stimulate in the classroom.
Yes, as an originator man is solitary. He stands wholly without bonds in the echoing hall of his deeds. Nor can it help him to leave his solitariness that his achievement is received enthusiastically by the many. He does not know if it is accepted, if his sacrifice is accepted by the anonymous receiver. Only if someone grasps his hand not as a “creator” but as a fellow-creature lost in the world, to be his comrade or friend or lover beyond the arts, does he have an awareness and a share of mutuality. An education based only on the training of the instinct of origination would prepare a new human solaritariness which would be most painful of all. — Martin Buber
Buber, M., 1985. Between Man and Man, New York, NY: Collier Books.
The originatory creative act perhaps requires a (painful) level of social isolation — is this the source of the ‘tortured artist’ syndrome? This in contrast to the integrated flow of socialized encounter with the Other which is (also?) the locus of creative action. hmmm…
After eight weeks of intensive effort, sometimes re-writing almost from scratch a wide range of (English-second-language) articles, essays, and academic papers, the second and final book from the MigAA project is done and at the printers. Bravo to the Alfa60 designers, Joseph and Lina in Vilnius — perhaps this book will win awards like the last one did! And big kudos to El Jefe, miga, without whom, none of this would have come to pass, none of it!
This MigAA volume, titled Migrating:Art:Academies: invites the reader to construct their own opinion on the efficacy of the project as a field for learning and creative action. The book provides a link between the virtual school and the mobile school; it also functions as an anchor point for future research projects, and as an aesthetic package for the available documentary material. The projects introduced in the book — whether a drawing, a map, photographs, or a text — were delivered by the authors themselves, edited and assembled together with an eye on readability from multiple perspectives. The book is divided into three sections: Migrating:, Art:, and Academies:. Following these is a compendium of contributor’s biographies and finally, included with the book is a postcard containing a keyword index, the use of which is described below.
In the Migrating: section the reader will get an idea how the actual project participants worked and created while on the road and what their relation was to the general MigAA theme of migration. Personal interpretations, ideas, sketches, notions, and notes form a fertile first-draft of an ongoing process of artistic expression. Some of those impressions are included in this section along with photos, maps, and interviews.
The Art: section documents numerous art works — both conceptual and actual — along with related actions realized by MigAA participants during the laboratory deployments. The syntactically divergent projects vary from drawings to performances and installations to computer software packages and are here grouped by thematic or formal aspect.
The Academies: section contains more in-depth papers, articles, essays, and research documentations that were presented at some point during the project, or will be presented at the final conference in Berlin. Texts range from historical research, analysis of migration, to artistic and academic research presentations.
Around sixty keywords, key phrases, and key images were compiled and subsequently linked graphically across all three sections. An index deployed on the accompanying postcard offers a simple navigational beacon to follow throughout the book. The editors suggest following the red lines for objective keys and the blue lines for subjective keys. The awareness of subjective and objective functions of such indexing gives reason for further debate on what this specific book is about or what a printed book is about in general, as it is a mobile (and thus migrating) interface for ideas.
And so, encroaching on the last major procedural hurdle before the doctorate goes to the external examiners (next year sometime). The panel assessment seems to be routine and bureaucratic. Public speaking in compressed time frames is no fun. When there’s always too much to get across in the extremely limited time frame, and the highly institutionalized context allows for negligible true dialogue. In some ways, the process is a deeply laughable (chortle?) imitation of what it claims to be, or what it once perhaps was. That is, learning as a process of open and sustained dialogue between two or more humans. Facing the unknown that each other presents, or both facing the unknown of what is, or what is out there. Contemporary ‘education’ is a thin and watery drool coming from somewhere up above — meager remains of what’s left of a blasting monsoon of shared life that brings one to a deeply profound awareness of that-which-is. Instead we squelch around in evaporating puddles of shared encounter, wishing for more rain, and complaining about the weather.
Tomorrow, it happens. We shall see. No brolly, no Wellies…
So, over this hurdle, and maybe the final work commences, perhaps finishing earlier than scheduled, or at least that inspiring outcome is a concept on the radar.
Meanwhile, surviving week-to-week, in part through the acupuncture and massage treatments from Heiji Cho and some of the Chinese Traditional Medicine (CTM) students here at UTS. The gall bladder channel is the one being worked — to release rising yang from the liver. hmmm. The treatments work, they seems to diffuse the migraines that do show up and eventually, as is common, with any lock, the migraines will vanish. I am confident of this, and only wish I had come to this conclusion last year, or even earlier as these episodes interrupted life from time to time. The stress of movement came on such a regular basis, but there was no thought to find a source, find a working solution, a cure. It was only the process of gritting the teeth until a dark and quiet room could be found for the duration. Western meds never really worked, they only covered the symptoms at best, and in some cases a single pill cost as much as a full 90-minute acupuncture treatment session.
But choosing to undertake a treatment of what is known as ‘alternative’ medicine was always a difficult stretch. Despite input from trusted others who had benefited. There was the hardship of paying cash from the pocket to the practitioner when cash was never so abundant.
Rather than producing new material configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system, I chose to concentrate on a fundamental closer to the bone, as it were: the production of new configurations of the energized world as a tool for individual continuance and relevance to the wider social system. What we do changes the cosmos, always, everywhere, (because everywhere’s are not separated nor distinct).
Traditional art production is (merely) the (re)configuration of certain flows in the near (and far) surround of the producer. My approach generally falls under this model but approaches the reconfiguration process from an entirely different path. Entering a ‘residency’ is (merely) moving from one (life)-situation into another: we are constantly doing this in life, transitioning from one semi-stable configuration to another, with periods of more-or-less instability in between. If one leaves traditional temporal and spatial metrics behind, this process may be seen simply as the modulation of a constancy of flowing condition. The particular conditions and configurations of a situation dictate the potential range of reconfigurations possible, given the energy input of the individual and the embodied life-energy/life-time that is available. The configuration is merely a cumulative apprehended set of flows occurring with a reductive purview (and is always relative to the observer!) There is the ‘locally external’ factor of the accessibility of external energy sources for reconfiguring, but if one approaches the situation as a more autonomous and self-contained instance, the range of possibility is limited just as life-time and life-energy is limited. It is along this approach that I undertook this residency. (I will here omit a wider discussion of the framework of my personal model of the cosmos as there isn’t the room here to undertake it even in brief). more “CLUI residency — Energy of Situation”
I’ll retroactively begin to add bibliographic resource links with short reviews or notes on books that come to my attention. This one arrived via the usual intentional browsing. It represents several that begin to connect the dots between thermodynamics, techno-social systems, and the affect of human presence on the planet. It suggests that the movement away from a scientific approach to a technological approach is critical to the loss of our way to understanding the messy phenomena of human intervention in our world. Technological subjects are often taught without any grounding in philosophic principles of any sort. My own education at the School of Mines required only four three-credit-hour courses of (very general and poorly taught!) humanities for the entire undergraduate degree in geophysical engineering. And those courses in no way influenced the approach or the execution of any of the hard-core engineering courses. Instead they were frequently the object of derision as juxtaposed to the tough and demanding engineering classes — an implicit gendered polarity — wussy classes versus the rough and tough get-your-hands-dirty and only-the-toughest-survive macho applied-engineering classes. Things have changed somewhat in many engineering curricula (as evidenced by the fact that I do rather often have engineering students in my seminars and workshops), but there is the overt assumption that technology is above the messy fray of soft human affairs to which it brings only ordered progress, material wealth, and sustainable harmony. The former two are evidenced when examining closed (and limited) systems, the latter, nothing could be further from the truth.
Well-researched with both scientific and popular/media references, The Science of Disorder is readable, explicit, and provocative. (I’ll be expanding these reviews as I can manage: there is a huge backlog of rolling all previous bibliographic references to this style.)
The Science of Disorder: Understanding the Complexity, Uncertainty, and Pollution in Our World, Hokikian, J., Los Feliz Publishing, Los Angeles, 2002.
