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Frank Schirrmacher is interested in George Dyson's comment "What if the price of machines that think is people who don't?" He is looking at how the modification of our cognitive structures is a process that eventually blends machines and humans in a deeper way, more than any human-computer interface could possibly achieve. He's also fascinated in an idea presented a decade ago by Danny Hillis: "In the long run, the Internet will arrive at a much richer infrastructure, in which ideas can potentially evolve outside of human minds." Is this what George Seimens and Stephen Downes have been getting at with connectivism? If so i hadn't been thinking this, i had been taking a more ANT oriented focus where ideas are held within a net, where their 'truth' is created as a condition of that net...but not that they exist in the spaces between... |
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have been doing some blogging at amusingspace about Schirrmacker's provocative discussion (mentioned in the lead post above)  |
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| Hello Ailsa. I suspect Stephen follows this line of thinking, not so sure about George. The Dawkins et.al. memes/temes/singularity discussion seems to lead in this direction as well, imho. |
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This is also something that I find difficult to tease out in connectivism. This thread last year covered the ground but I am not sure there was a conclusion re connectivism. Another thing that puzzles me is where is the agency in a connectivist network? People are sometimes talked about as nodes, sometimes beings that traverse the network, and sometimes it is knowledge that traverses the network. This could just be that everyone thinks about things in their own way, rather than a lack of clarity in connectivism itself (though I am not sure). I often observe people talking about networks in connectivism as though they were specifically social networks. My other bugbear is the conflation of network behaviour with the firing of neurons, as I think that nodes can be much more complex and do 'more' than fire/connect. |
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hey, if i'm a node, i want to do more than connect and fire...i want to think, to feel, to be... Im ok with a metaphor of synaptic firings, but as a human filled with love & self importance & some regard for others, i also know i am more than this. I like to think...is that the problem?! Its what i hate about behaviourism. I'm not going to accept a theory that tells me that my humanity as a thinking feeling person doesnt matter. It matters to me that my functioning is more than based on unconscious impulses, and it matters to me that i am self choosing. I am basically a humanist with some transpersonal leanings. A humanist with awareness that the things as well as the people around me that i connect with, have significance in their impact, they alter me and i them. My identity is established in my network. (I could go very feminist here and talk of what it is to be constructed as woman, but i prefer to look at what it is to be feminist cyborg per Donna haraway...or at least a hybrid per Latour...either way, i know i am more than neurones, or a non thinking behaviourally challenged pigeon, rat or whatever) I am more than happy to know the 'ailsa with a mobile ph and with a laptop' is a different being to the ailsa at the beach without either. Or that the ailsa with a kitchen, husband, daughter...is different to the one with a phd and a lecture to give... And there is also a concurrent assemblage where i am all of these- more than one and less than many, to use Mol's term. I know i am not...so far...perhaps never likely to be...a fireman , a soldier etc. I also do not embrace a belief system that says knowledge jumps external to the nodes...or people...got to get from here to there somehow and this takes actors, human or otherwise... A flattening of the terrain to see how it gets from here to there... So, a long winded R(Ant) |
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For my webinar tonight I found this great quote “In other words, social network theories fail to account for the ontological differences between humans and non humans, explaining human agency in dehumanized terms” I think that this is a criticism that can also be levelled at connectivism, particularly the flavour that compares everything with neurons firing. |
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" The tyranny imposed by social network theories is that a node acknowledges only other nodes, and can relate to those nodes only in terms of commodified exchange. If something is not a node, it cannot be engaged in exchange, and therefore it has no value." (Mejias) Such a way of thinking denies the impact of the means of communication. MacLuhan's the medium is the message would go out the window if the only nodes considered are people. And such a network would also deny the import of local contexts? And at its most base, it is amoral (imho) I only connect with 'valued' others, with whom i have an advantageous relationship... The pedagogical implications for teaching and learning would be tyrannical. So, what's needed? ....to free the oppressed one must free the oppressors... And therefore my role ((as teacher/learner) would be to explore and create critical imagination of the internodal spaces, and of the limits of the constrained world (network?) view. |
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Is a machine a node? A book? A library? (i.e. are there non-human nodes?) Are the internodal spaces all connections? Is 'self-choosing' a prerequisite before connections occur, or do connections occur sub-consciously? What is feeling? Where does it occur? Does it involve fired and wired neural connections? |
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Within an ANT sensibility, yes to the first line. In internodal spaces, Meijas' critique of network points to their being more that morally should be considered as potential for connections. The issue of self choosing, or subconscious is going to get me into Latourian hot water. I'm going to say yes...But... Latour absolutely hates the arrogance of theorists and researchers who believe thay know better than the actors themselves what shapes them. So Habermas is about top of the list there. However, if the traces can clearly be mapped and seen to have an effect and recognised as having influence, then yes. BUT its not 'social forces' its not ephemeral, it had to be trackable every step of the way. Feelings i will concede have a chemical component, but not causal...i can be injected with adrenaline and attribute love or anxiety to the same rush. It is me, a thinking and emotional being, that makes meaning ...and acts on such meaning...not the chemistry. |
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| Free will is dead, and yet, humans yearn to express it, live it, and hope for a manifestation of its existence, what, in order to support the belief in their, destiny? Does not humankind recognize the inherit contradiction in this quest? When replicators inhabit the host, what is the destiny then of that receptacle? How may free will exist, if replicators determine the paths forward? |
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Hi All, that's it. Connectivism is a closet cousin of behaviourism. I dont mind the idea that I am a replicator host, I just require the replicator to shut up, sit down, and behave, while I do the other stuff, which is marriages of true minds, etc, etc. And reverting to digital tools/digital learning ecologies to supplment the analogue and material interaction is fine too. But its crucial to 'me' that I can pull the plug on that too. |
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Hi all, @ Ailsa Here is my view on learning principles. We are humans, not "non-human", so I would like to see more than just firing of neurons, in the connections, but the establishment of human relationship in networks, in the history of learning. At the end, I like to learn with humans, though often technology is part of that mediation (is it part of ANT??). Agents, actors mean differently to different people. At the other end of the network, it is more than a node, it has feelings, "it" is breathing air and taking water (knowledge), and it lives..and is engaging, interacting. That makes human more than just human, beyond behaviorism. I remember that when I conducted my last class with my learners, especially in my early years of teaching, I always have an emotional response. We have once upon met here together as a learning group or network, and our identities are inscribed in the history of learning. Ten years later, we might still be able to remember each other, as once upon we have been with the same network and learn together. Would networks be forever? Like diamonds are forever, when it comes to collaboration in the networks. Roy: Replicator, host, and everyone of us will become history, but the learning stays forever.  |
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John, thanks for your thoughts on learning principles in your blog. And for the picture (how do you get to embed it here? please tell). For me the difference is that some of us have different stuff to work with, different semiotics. Each of us 'lifts off' (or prizes off) information from the material, to different degrees. Viruses and genes have only the most basic, material semiotic (four protein letters, ACTG, functioning as the information switches in DNA), to work with, spectacular as that is. Animals have zoo-semiotics, essentially communication tools, not fully semiotic, as the material cannot be fully separated from the information. Indication, or 'pointing' for instance, 'sticks' to your hand or finger or eyes if you are glancing in a particular direction, and your ability to 'leave it behind, when you leave' is limited - e.g. ants Humans have socio-semiotics, i.e. fully semiotic tools, in which the material and the information link is entirely separated, in 'arbitrary and conventional' signs. That gives us, uniquely, the possibility of creating new and even unreal meaning and information, and predication. (See the link to Reed at the bottom of the page here). That, in turn, eventually (it takes a few million years) puts us in a position to alter the most basic material semiotic, our own genes, and in a sense to turn the tables on the material. The metaphor I use is that we 'lift off' or 'cut out' meaning from the material, only to re-embed it in the material later on. (See here on dis/embedding). |
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Hi Roy, Thanks for the links on CANs (Complex Adaptive Networks) and VANs (Virtual Adaptive Networks). Great for reflection. If you want to embed a picture, go to the attachment, click "browse", select a picture that has been stored in your computer file, click open to the picture selected, and click "post to forum" and you will see... John  |
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had tried that...maybe browser prob...will try again...nope not on firefox . popup window id truncated, no browse feature. Nope, not on safari, different popup but still not picture friendly, only attached files. |
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Hi Ailsa and Roy, try these steps: 1. Click "browse" in the attachment 2. Look in "My pictures" (This shows all pictures you have saved under my documents) 3. Double Click the selected picture you want to upload (S:\My Documents\My Pictures\title of picture will show up in the box next to Attachment) 4. Click "Post to forum" 5. Click "continue" The picture should appear. John  |
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might be a cross platform problem that is not mac friendly? I dont get to step 1. In firefox I have a toolbar just above this box for writing in, but when i click on this the pop up window only gives me an option for an url and when i have tried this it has not worked either. Havent found anything that lets me do a direct browse for whats on my computer... In safari I have even fewer options.  |
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| Dustcube anyone? |
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and in IE Ah ha! this picture, nicked from Ailsa's blog, is a jpeg file, maybe that makes the difference. But how do you re-size it, John?  |
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Yes, I agree. Connectivism promises a lot of possibilities sharing and connecting ideas and people, yet when it links up to Social Network theories, it reminds me of functional theory. Structural properties take over the logic of understanding the networks/society. Asako |
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Asako, "Structural properties take over the logic of understanding the networks/society" - exactly. .
The most incisive analysis of this is in the work of Knorr-Cetina, quoted here in a draft paper .
"‘Lightness’ is one of Knorr-Cetina’s four key characteristics of “recently emerged complex global microstructures” (ibid.), which highlights the radically different notion of global structures that she has in mind. She says that “the mechanisms and structures involved suggest a reversal [a ‘devolution’] of the historical trend towards formal, rationalised (bureaucratic organisational) structures … and appear to facilitate a certain non-Weberian effectiveness [which] relies to a far greater extent than hitherto on the systematic and reflexive use of systems of amplification and augmentation [which] seek to exploit the potential for disproportionalities between input and output or effort and effect” (2005:215-216).
She applies this to global financial systems, and global terrorist networks. .
Question: could it apply equally to other Internet based networks, like learning networks? |