[Xmca-l] Re: Dynamic Land

Wed Aug 29 04:40:12 PDT 2018

Dear Sébastian, really nice to read a new voice! And rich text is richer, so go ahead and give us fortune sharing as many links as you feel worth sharing. I am a big fun of Ingold, by the way, always opening horizons for thinking (although seldom showing paths, a task you really have to take up if the inspiring metaphors are to become more than text).

When I begun studying/working at InterMedia in Oslo, a research center focused on technology in and for formal and informal learning, some of us were very excited to be designing and exploring "technology-enhanced learning environments", and did so (and still do) cooperating with science museums, art galleries architects, etc, exploring how different tangible, motion-based, and visual technologies could be integrated in space to facilitate the creation of places (we've been using the notion of "place-making" in a couple of works, some co-authored with Rolf Steier, a colleague and member of this list who continues doing great work with VR and other tech in art galleries.

However, as an early member and scholar, specially when working on the "educational" side, I found it increasingly challenging to try out some of what I considered more risky ideas by those who, as Bret Victor says in one the presentation, was trying to design without having idea of what they were trying... On the one hand, I always felt the pressure to "experiment" in ways in which "learning" should be made visible as an outcome somewhere before actually going for pursuing the idea. Specially working in collaboration with school teachers and school researchers, the learning outcomes, and the publish-ability of the findings of those outcomes in educational (technology) research journals was a condition. Also, to be addressing whatever idea was hot in the literature on learning with technology seemed important. On the other hand, there was the pressure to work with certain technologies, independently of the aimed "outcomes", for catching up with whatever trend that was being made available and marketable seemed important too, so that, specially from the tech side, there was eagerness to embrace given gadgets, and see what it could be made with them.

This seems to be a fundamental dichotomy in any creative enterprise, for you always deal with a tension between "ends" and "means"... All this to say that I find the postulation of "designing more humane things" a beautiful and promising "end" or aim, and I would be very interesting to learn more about how you create cultures in which a fine balance between that end and the production of means is achieved (may this be connected to Annalisa's thread on Carl Rogers' positive psychology and positive regard?).

In connection to the latter, Jean Luc Nancy is inspiring to me, precisely because he is proposing to take another turn to the idea of "ends", which seems to be often interpreted in a problem-solving rational key (like the one that has the "learning outcome" in mind when designing technology-enhanced spaces), and treat it ends as endless:

"The kingdom of ends is the kingdom without end, not in the sense of meaningless absurdity, but as thought removed from goals, from orientation. When we love, when we drink, when we write, when we sing, we are not directed by goals: we expose ourselves to the finitude of love, of drunkenness, of text, of song" (Nancy in "Davis & Turpin 2015, Art in the Antrhopocene).

That looks like a very human end, at least one to put an end to this rambling post. Surely many other tech savvy and passionate in this list who will have your post stimulating.

Cheers,

Alfredo

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of Sébastien Lerique <sebastien.lerique@normalesup.org>
Sent: 29 August 2018 11:01
To: 'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'
Subject: [Xmca-l] Dynamic Land

Dear XMCA list,

I have been following the activity here with much interest for a few years now (although not always able to keep up with all the extensive threads), originally discovering this list through the Tim Ingold articles that are hosted on the Research paper archive (here<http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/ingold/ingold1.htm> and here<http://lchc.ucsd.edu/MCA/Paper/ingold/ingold2.htm>, both of which initiated somewhat of a revolution for me, so I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for hosting them!). This is my first post.

I recently stumbled upon dynamicland.org<http://dynamicland.org/>, and have been wondering since then if any of you would have thoughts about such a place/system. If you are not familiar with Bret Victor<http://worrydream.com/>'s work, it is very much inspired by Seymour Papert's Mindstorms<https://www.worldcat.org/title/mindstorms-children-computers-and-powerful-ideas/oclc/263655916?referer=br&ht=edition>: it revolves around the idea that computers and computing in general will probably dramatically change the way we learn and think, from birth into adulthood (as the printing press did), and that there is now an opportunity to make that a move towards more humane things, instead of developing devices that physically and mentally isolate us from one another by having us stare at screens most of the day.

That idea is not new -- the interesting part is that it is being concretely explored in new implementations: real places such as Dynamic Land are currently emerging based on these ideas, also rehashing other creative developments that occurred around the birth of the personal computer in the late seventies but fell into oblivion in tech communities (see The Future of Programming<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4>).

You can find a 1 hour presentation of what led to Dynamic Land here: The Humane Representation of Thought<https://vimeo.com/115154289>. They also published a zine<https://github.com/stevekrouse/futureofcoding.org/blob/master/media/dynamicland.pdf> with more concrete details about the place.

After inserting so many links I feel I should point out that I am not affiliated in any way or even in contact with the Dynamic Land people! They simply figured out a way of concretely exploring a theme that became central to me after reading Ingold, namely the materiality of thought, meaning and interaction. So I would be very interested in your thoughts about all this!

Best,

Sébastien -- slvh.fr<https://slvh.fr/>
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