tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27287415.post59257681299627448..comments2024-02-15T21:58:26.524+13:00Comments on a musing space; a performance in progress: Exploring the dark wood. #CCK09ailsahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10247094621951852148noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27287415.post-20896133241005613752009-11-06T08:59:01.874+13:002009-11-06T08:59:01.874+13:00Thanks Roy, I think in education, or at least in i...Thanks Roy, I think in education, or at least in its institutionalised forms, there's a lot that alienates those involved. Knowledge producing schools might be one way back into a material reality (http://kps.wikispaces.com/publications).<br />Or authentic project work' I watched a really sweet programme on our news last night of teenage school children doing a class for older people on how to text. Seemed to have authentic value for all involved. One child said she liked old people now :)<br />Again, takes a step into the internodal space to look at how things might be done differently.ailsahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10247094621951852148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27287415.post-37608157538670359542009-11-04T10:39:58.071+13:002009-11-04T10:39:58.071+13:00Hi, wow! The picture is wonderful. And a challenge...Hi, wow! The picture is wonderful. And a challenge. WHY can't we embed pictures like this in the forums? (or am I just illiterate?). I spend most of my time in research going 'beyond text' and find myself 'strung out' in the thiiiiiiin lines of text in the forums. <br /><br />See me reply in the linkded forum on nodal topographies, and elsewhere (Week 3) on resonance and energy as an alternative to 'connection'. <br /><br />What stikes me here so forcefully here is Latour's simple, insistent, emphasis on the description of the assemblages. Who and what are assembled? Who are drawn together, and to the centre, and who are pushed to the arid periphery? Anyone for 'assemblage-ism'? <br /><br />And who cares what fancy 'networks' they can be part of? The traces from the networks might tell us something, sure, but it probably tells us how alienated the connections are from the material reality that they pass through (many of them are geo-synchronous extra-terrestrial, in the age of satellite communications - what a metaphor). <br /><br />Maybe there is a new volume for a new Marx to write, on the new alienation? It has all the hallmarks on it - for my sins I wrote a piece some time ago in Theory and Psychology on Metasemiotics, in which I describe the homologies between the alienation of the metasemiotics of language, science, finance, bureaucracy and law, and the internet. Not that I want to do without any of them, but we need to be able to see the dark from the trees, as your picture says, no?roy /dustcubehttp://www.roys-discourse-typologies.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27287415.post-18145441855085466412009-11-03T02:05:48.345+13:002009-11-03T02:05:48.345+13:00Hi Alisa: It sounds to me like you're in a fla...Hi Alisa: It sounds to me like you're in a flattened topography where describing associations will yield an emergent explanation. The conversation between Latour and the doctoral candidate in "Reassembling the Social" was maddening for both and the reader (me). We're all so accustomed to "getting a better perspective", applying a valid framework, organizing the data, etc. -- without that process being associated with "Merlin's castle popping up in the lake". Proceeding without modernism, social explanations and global perspectives is an enormous challenge to take on.Tom Haskinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12658791778134826289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27287415.post-19300836245645683092009-11-02T11:47:43.513+13:002009-11-02T11:47:43.513+13:00Thanks for the comments and for stopping by. I am ...Thanks for the comments and for stopping by. I am continuously trying to understand the world i am in and how to function in it. This is what got me into my phd, the wonder of how to make changes...what makes change happen...and seems you hit the nail on the head here. Seems to me it is nothing like the rolling out of the diffusion innovation take on things but instead requires a loosening of associations and an associating with unknowns. <br />Whoops, now I'm a bit scared...this sounds strangely like madness.ailsahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10247094621951852148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27287415.post-28467383818216282972009-11-02T08:46:55.695+13:002009-11-02T08:46:55.695+13:00Hi ailsa, I've been following your contributio...Hi ailsa, I've been following your contributions to the CCK09 Moodle forums of late and read "Reenacting" and "Prince" to delve into ANT for the first time. Last year I was reflecting on the over-emphasis on nodes in a parallel vein to your thinking here. I was wondering about the possibility of "nodeless networks" where the connection was made to the absence of a node. In a cognitive network, this might be a question, defined lack of knowledge, or a receptor site to new information.In a social network, the nodeless space could be a coming together of paths of discovery, actors tracing connections, crossing paths among more than one mediator/translator, or intersections of "connection seeking / action at a distance". <br /><br />What I liked about this particular exploration was the accomodation of what is sometimes called emptiness or not knowing. It privileges what Latour might call a "laboratory mindset". It invites us to be free of macro frameworks, global concepts, labelling evidence and being too smart for our own good. <br /><br />Having read this wonderful exploration of yours, I'm now seeing a connection of this possibility with "ties that don't look like social ties". In lieu of associating with actors and actants, it allows for associating with unknowns, active questions, explorations in progress and free style searching. <br /><br />Thanks for all your provocative thinking.Tom Haskinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12658791778134826289noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27287415.post-29489244772873798212009-10-30T11:21:17.133+13:002009-10-30T11:21:17.133+13:00Hi Ailsa,
Well said, and I fully agree. We attend ...Hi Ailsa,<br />Well said, and I fully agree. We attend to the noisy students, and neglect those quieter... we reshape course based on those who give feedback..what of those who took flight so much earlier...or who never got in the door... That's so reflective of our current education system and learning ecology. How could we listen and respond better? How could we reach out better to those disadvantaged, and may be neglected "majority"? Will networked learning provide what those people want? The solution? Or would we need to look at education from a more humanistic perspective - in order to make one more thoughtful? How could we do that?<br />Thanks for your insights and elaboration.Sui Fai John Makhttp://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27287415.post-35490593646030732142009-10-30T10:17:25.072+13:002009-10-30T10:17:25.072+13:00Hi John,thankyou for your comments and provocation...Hi John,thankyou for your comments and provocation for me to take this a bit further.<br />I do think there is a risk to one's soul.<br />(Latour does not talk of souls, he stays with what is visible.)<br />Mejias's talk of the tyranny of network nodes is in part a critique of ANT. In being so attentive to particular groups or people, we neglect others. Whether so self absorbed all we think of is our own narrow wants, desires and neglect those of others...For example, we might fight for particular resources or space in a curriculum for our own passions and neglect the passions of others that might be just as justified. Or another example, we attend to the noisy students, the squeeky wheel, and neglect those quieter...we reshape courses based on those who give feedback - what of those who took flight so much earlier...or who never got in the door...<br />What of those the connections don't reach, is there a disenfranchisement in education where those without broadband internet (money) get left behind?<br />Another writer Loewy, in talking of moral strangers and moral friends, talks of the need for critical imagination, to have awareness of the lives of others, that otherwise we would not. I think this is the role of education: to make one more, rather than less, thoughtful.ailsahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10247094621951852148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27287415.post-28304753135518857682009-10-30T03:48:05.861+13:002009-10-30T03:48:05.861+13:00Ailsa, I enjoyed reading your posts, since CCK08, ...Ailsa, I enjoyed reading your posts, since CCK08, and this has inspired me to read Latour and John Laws articles on ANT. The readings are really amazing. You mentioned that: "But what I am trying to say is that to the extent that the network is composed of nodes and connections between nodes, it discriminates against the space between the nodes, it turns this space into a black box, a blind spot. In other words, networks promote nodocentrism." Is this space a fictitous one or spiritual one separating the nodes? What is nodocentrism? What do you mean by dark matters? I often notice that the "power", "knowledge" and "light" of the networkers are often falling into a spectrum - from self-growing (sometimes may be too egocentric) to the other end of being "trapped" or absorbed into the "group think" as he/she would need to comply with the "community" and so turning the network into lots of "black or dark holes with matters" that none of the nodes could "escape" <br />So, would the dark space be weakening one's soul?<br />Like to learn...<br />JohnSui Fai John Makhttp://suifaijohnmak.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.com