I love how I cannot think of another title for this post except by alluding to a (note, not "my") religion. I love how I began a new post with "I"- still the "I" in this era of de-centering and decentralization. Anyway...
Thanks to Coursera and the course E-learning and Digital Cultures, this blog came to be. Thanks to a number of small things, I've decided to update this blog. These so-called small things are: a call from Japan from a Peruvian asking if I have ever taught or trained in a 3D environment (say what? Digital Culture at its finest), an email from my thesis adviser giving a go to enroll in "Popular Culture" for summer in UPD as my current research is on one-to-one online English teaching (pop poppish, yeah), and...no more small thing left. I just was trained that examples in triads look and sound better. Creature of habit and formation, we are.
As with older posts, where there was always an assignment from the course which compelled us to post, I will end this update with an output using a tool I picked-up from class: Sparkol Videoscribe. First 7 days are free! Easy to use and manipulate, too.
Just like many of the voices in class have expressed, I, too, have some sort of tendency to mistrust those terms with "post" or "trans" as a prefix and "ism" as a suffix.
To be honest, I still can't fully "see" what all this discourse on the post or trans [human] is all about. (Shoot me).
Post-human... really? Try sub-human. There are still too many [humans] who live in conditions that the supposed humanizing projects should have "fixed".
Anyway, I wasn't as sparked up by the fourth week's materials as I was the first three. I guess I just couldn't operate on samples from SciFi.
There are humans that are more robot than robots.
(Okay, I get this. All I have to think about as an example are the millions of people who mechanically survive their Mondays!)
There are robots that are more human than humans.
Really? Where? WHERE?
(Referring to a movie or a book or a comic series doesn't count.)
So, for the fourth week, all I can say is, I am glad it was the week for the digital artifact At least, that makes up for a sloppy post like this.
Another dead white man lords over this post, but not without reason.
"Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: "I seek God! I seek God!" -- As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter... The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his eyes. "Whither is God?" he cried; "I will tell you. We have killed him -- you and I. All of us are his murderers...
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him."
I take off from one of the most misunderstood statements of Nietzsche from The Parable of the Madman and, for the purpose of the 3rd week's discussion, replaced "God" with "Human". The human is dead. We have killed him/her, you and I.
Before one can argue on the meaning of this statement above, first, the following terms must be defined. Human.
Steve Fuller discusses that it is not an easy feat to define what "it is to be human" because of:
1. ambiguity in drawing a line between human and non-human
"homo sapien" is modern [hu]man- neanderthals weren't [hu]man?
2. diversity in physical and mental qualities attributed to the human
sample from Badmington: Descartes- "reason is the only thing that makes us man and distinguishes us from the beast"- those with mental illnesses aren't human?
3. all or nothing "not everything about us...is necessary for us to be humans"
lose or add a physical trait (say, prosthetic)- would the person be more or less human?
4. valuable yet elusive - one can "move in an out of it"
mental competence now is ok, so person is more human; moral action at a given point was questionable, so person is less human- projects are needed to "promote and maintain" this humanity
I want to pause a bit here for, with the 4th item above, another Nietzsche driven thought comes in. From Thus Spake Zarathustra: "“Values did man only assign to things in order to maintain himself—he created only the significance of things, a human significance! Therefore, calleth he himself ’man’, that is, the valuator."
The very idea of "humanity" is a creation, and as Fuller puts it, "humanity is artificial".
Throughout time, there have been "projects" that made sure that the "homo sapien", indeed, became more "human".
Fuller uses Paideia as a starting point, where people are "educated" on how to become "ideal member[s] of the polis". Then came the "universitas" in the middle ages which had "higher learning" as its purpose. Finally, Fuller says "engineering" is the contemporary humanizing project where human enhancement is an option so as to "overcome limitations", physical or otherwise.
Let's backtrack: * The human is artificial. It is created. * The human project has been going on for some time now in the hopes of "creating" humans/humanity. Since the idea of the human is just a creation and its definition has been changing depending on the times and the environments in which it has been promoted and maintained, how do we now define "dead"? Dead. This human is fluid and flowing, formed and fashioned to fit the times.
So, how do we define the death of this (yesterday) human Consequently, how could we define the life of this (today) human? Some initial questions I thought of were: 1.How did we kill it? 2. What aspects of the(yesterday) human died completely? 3. Is there anything that replaced these aspects? 4. Are there other facets of the (yesterday) human that may still be alivein the (today) human? One way we killed the human of yesterday is by making it possible for the center (the self) to be at many different places all at the same time. While omnipresence is an attribute of a supposed higher being, it is not one of humans... until now (well, not so "now now"). "I" can be on Facebook and Google+ simultaneously, nay- I can also be on Twitter, Tumbler, gTalk, YM, Skype, my mobile phone, Voxer, Viber, and What'sApp and what not. So, to answer the next question, following the answer to the first, one aspect of the yesterday human that is completely dead is that it can be only at one place at a given time. The replacement to this aspect, to answer the third question, are enveloped inside those that I have mentioned above. With the help of social networking sites, mobile phones, applications, our indestructible self has become our many digital selves. Finally, there are a multitude of answers for the fourth question. But I will focus on the human touch (as I have mentioned this in my first post under the topic of technological determinism).
For me, the human touch doesn't have to be literal. For my mom, an educator herself for 35 years, it has to be. I teach English to French kids and teenagers. I am in Manila, they are in France. We communicate through Skype or phones. We laugh about their weekends and talk about their favorite music and sports. The human touch is alive and kicking despite the oceans that separate us. For my mom who taught in the traditional classroom, she has to be able to hug her students, do high fives with them, and so on. The human touch to her is very, very literal. At any rate, we both agree that the human touch us still alive in the (today) human. It hasn't been completely obliterated. To define what it is to be human today is not something I will attempt, rather, let me illustrate what a typical HUMAN Sunday is like at home. We.
Today's people. Who says it is less (or more?) human than other people's Sundays? And with that, I end with these vids that also attempt to define what it is to be human.
However simplistic for some, I found the categories designated by Prensky back in 2001 to be useful and representative of the "great divide" amongst my friends and family.
Uhuh, the 8 year old niece who was born into the so-called digital age knew how to manipulate those touch screens, tiny fingers flipping and sliding photos- one display image to the next- with ease, at age 3. Prensky calls her a digital native.
As for me (let's not go to age) who opened Twitter and Blog accounts just for this class, I don't feel too antiquated as I'm still able to catch up a bit in terms of some apps and a few gadgets (teehee), but I still print out (on occasion) those process documents at work for me to jot down notes on (as opposed to doing it on the soft copy). Clearly, I am a digital immigrant.
It doesn't matter if I have trickles of that accent or "foot in the past", as Prensky calls it. I want to adapt. I am motivated to adapt. I am able to adapt.
Adapt to what?
Well, in my case, we could start with EFL teaching online... to kids and teenagers... in France... from Manila. Hmm. That doesn't sound so mind-blowing, does it? Try telling the parents just that.
In his speech, John Daniel states that learning involves independent and interactive activities. The former is where technology may be heightened as producing copies in volume isn't too costly once the "first copy" has been created. The latter involves another person responding to the activities of a specific student.
Great. No problemo. The interactive aspect of the learning involves our conversation classes whereas the independent aspect is the learner working on "homework".
Where is the adaptation?
First off, the material for independent learning that I have been used to are flat. Yup, photo up here, caption down there, a bit of text to explain the grammar point, some sample sentences to show application in context and, voila, that's one page of teaching material right there.
Thanks to "e-learning and digital cultures", I have come across some of the most interesting and helpful tools/platforms to make those FLAT lessons become more engaging.
Here's my first attempt at adapting my Word doc lessons to something Xtranormal :)
Secondly, adaptation must come from the parents. Their buy in is so crucial if some change is to truly happen. The shift from just face-to-face lessons for EFL (which don't come in cheap) to online learning (independent + interactive) for 10-18 year old digital natives is now an option, nay- a solution!
The future doesn't necessarily have to be as it is depicted in this ad by Corning below...but who knows?
Even if many of us think that this utopia is just from the eyes of the producers and those consumers who can afford all that glass can offer, we just can't dismiss the possibilities that were presented. And when these do arrive, we can't ignore them.
At any rate, this digital immigrant is ready to accept and adapt what the future (especially in education) may bring. So, with Hermann Hesse, Digital Roux is bidding farewell without end.
I always thought of Thorstein Veblen as a giant due to "Theory of the Leisure Class". And, I always was enamored by him because of his quirks:
"...he gave all his students the same grade, regardless of their work, but when one student needed a higher mark to qualify for a scholarship, Veblen gladly changed a C to an A"
"...he once told a girl who inquired what his initials T.B. stood for that they meant Teddy Bear; she called him that but no one else dared"
"He wrote of philanthropy and called it "essays in pragmatic romance"; of religion and characterized it as "the fabrication of vendible imponderables in the nth dimension. He wrote of the main ecclesiastical organizations as 'chain stores' and of the individual church as the 'retail outlet'- cruel but telling phrases"
Didn't think I would come across his name in my MOOC class "e-learning and Digital Cultures" (thanks, Coursera!).
Anyway, my two "take-aways" from week 1's readings on technological determinism:
technological determinism: "presumes that a society's technology drives the development of its social structure and cultural values" wiki 1. technology is not neutral - "the absolutely erroneous assumption that technologies are "neutral", benign instruments that may be used well or badly depending upon who controls them... Many technologies determine their own use, their own effects, and even the kind of people who control them. We have not yet learned to think of technology as having ideology built into its very form" (quoting Chandler quote Mander)
2. technologydoesn't drive itself
-"technology does not, indeed cannot, determine itself"... "the medium in itself cannot give rise to social consequences, it must be used" (quoting Chandler quote Finnegan)
At the core of these two is still the human touch. And with that, I end this first entry with the quasi-philosophical Daft Punk.
