[Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?

Wed May 27 09:48:12 PDT 2020

Hi Tom, Henry, and VO's,

I'm glad that Henry was able to be of some comfort to your concerns Tom.

I might also encourage you to read "Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity" (2009) by Rebecca Goldstein, as well as "Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain" (1995) by Antonio Damasio.

Betraying Spinoza is one of my favorite books ever.

The reason that I find Damasio so important in brain research is that he has been able to ascertain that we require our feelings first in order to reason. It's not that other way around, as much as steel and concrete rationalists want to believe. Damasio was able to ascertain this based upon a patient of his who suffered a brain injury to the part of the brain that we understand necessary for feelings.

To direct a comment to Henry, I think the difference between emotion and feeling as you indicate does have distinctions, and thinking out loud, it is that emotions have something to do with the limbic system, while feelings arise from executive functions (hence as you say the narratives we have about ourselves).

Another great historical account about Spinoza is "The Courtier and the Heretic" (2007) by Matthew Stewart, which focuses upon the lives of Leibniz and Spinoza and an account of their only meeting. It's a great page turner.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> on behalf of HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2020 10:25 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?

  [EXTERNAL]

Glad it was helpful, Tom:)

On May 27, 2020, at 3:24 AM, Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com<mailto:tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>> wrote:

Good Morning Henry
Your confusions and eventual clarity explain and help a great deal, mirroring my own as I read Damasio's account.  I shall dig further with gratitude to you.
Best
Tom
[https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0B0zqMvyA6XEhZkdKSUk5eUxRUnNkbWZFdHlaRlpJci1fQ1lJ&export=download__;!!Mih3wA!W6jl03rhkaivCFRhjzKI3sJQIHeWznUxy0me28cgzNSRzqz-lnGv_-rukkL8n_GXi6KsMw$ ]
        BoWen

On Tue, 26 May 2020 at 22:29, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com<mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Tom,
No problem enabling your laziness with my shallow reading of Spinzoa. I confess that I have read nothing directly from Spinoza, but have read about his philosphy and about his life. It’s been a while since I read Looking for Spinoza: Joy Sorrow and the Feeling Brain. I am looking at the book now and am amazed with how much highlighting there is and how little of it I remember in detail. What got me into it was the distinction between emotions and feelings. Damasio is a neuroscientist, and the book are full of the neural correlates of affective states, being the “easy” problem of consciousness. The “hard” problem of explaining the reason any arrangements at all of matter can possibly result in consciousness is not explained. What got me into it was the distinction between emotions and feelings. Damasio associates emotions (fear, anger, surprise, disgust, sadness and happiness) with primal parts of the brain connected to homeostasis of the organism. Emotions are evoked prior to the more narrative experience of feelings. To tell the truth, I am still not entirely clear on the distinction, largely because he explains the difference through case studies of people who have suffered damage to different parts of the brain, losing me. Maybe I got it at the time, but looking through the book now, it’s not so clear. One interesting thing is that we can have social emotions, which means homeostasis is not just internal to the human organism.

Anyway, the book is worth digging through. Hope that helps a little. Whew!

Henry

On May 26, 2020, at 1:31 PM, Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com<mailto:tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>> wrote:

Hi Henry
Thank you for your thoughtful, fact full reply.

It would save me continuing to plough through Damasio's well-written but fairly lengthy book 'Looking for Spinoza', if you were to send me a brief personal summary of what he means intellectually for you - (or am I being lazy?) - since it is always illuminating to understand what our thinkers mean to/for our peers. I have not broached Baruch S's work for myself.

Best wishes
Tom

On Tue, 26 May 2020 at 17:09, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com<mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Tom,
Thank you for your rich, well-thought-out response to my question. And thank you for recognizing that I wanted it to be generous. Perhaps a quibble is that you associate the first stage of Stalinist rule as capitalist, rather than industrial, as I understand it. I think that’s important. Stalin’s top-down planning had the same hall marks as Mao’s, Castro’s and the current North Korean leader. I appreciate your optimism that any system devised by humans can create human thriving that is not destructive of of humanity itself. We seem to have boxed ourselves into a corner by destroying our niche, the world. COVID-19 and climate change, IMHO, we are all, indvidually and collectively complicit. I hope that we can get beyond romanticism and cynicism in meeting our fate. I think that Vygotsky and Spinoza represent what can come of wrestling with open hearts and clear thinking with our condition.
Henry

On May 26, 2020, at 3:09 AM, Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com<mailto:tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>> wrote:

Good Morning (GMT+1) Henry

I'm touched by your mail today. My life experience does not include such practical engagement as yours, with any of the major social disruptions / attempts at new organisation, of the C20.

It seems dismissively facile to criticise amazing historic re-organisations of social life like the Cuban  Revolution, but it is necessary. Otherwise the same mistakes will happen again and again.

The political strand which I accept as most accurately analysing historical and current reality characterises the liberation movements (particularities, differences, I'm ignoring for sake of quick explanation) post 1900, as nationalist, and mostly state socialist/capitalist. IE they are top-down, state directed anti-imperialist/colonialist movements. The self-organisation and free association of the producers that is the essence of communist organisation is absent. Often there is some commitment to a Kautskyan / Stalinist "two stage theory", requiring full capitalist development to prepare the ground for the next step of proletarian rule - eg in  the South African struggle. We can see where that has led so far.

But the analysts I accept, posit that socialism in one country cannot be created nor sustained while the basis of total global social reproduction is the money based economy, taken forward by the capital-labour relationship of commodity production - the so-called 'free market' whose anarchy ensures an absence of any organised relationship to global human needs, since it is driven by the value-based circulation of commodities dominating all global production.

The freedom is that of the individual / joint-stock company in the pursuit of surplus value. And, yes, Marx, does provide an analysis of "money" which indicates how a future system of production would/could not be based on the use of money and therefore wages.

There is so much literature about this to be investigated, (much of it written by US authors, extraordinarily, given the Chicago School and the legacy of McCarthy). I started with Engels 'Socialism, Utopian and Scientific' which explained in a way that my pro-market, individualist history teacher could not, why the Anti-Corn Law League had 'won' and the Chartists had failed.

Anyway, I am only recycling, from my own limited understanding, the sort of analysis that the original authors of the literature I value provide in overwhelming but convincing detail.

While the way forward towards a future that communists see as essential if the planet is not to be destroyed, or at least human life on it, is not in prospect as far as any realist can foresee, at present, the reality of the Barbarism that Capital brings (together with the technology necessary for the possibility of real change), is clear every moment in our lives.

Human resistance and creative answers to apparently insoluble problems, and the reality that the working class has nothing to gain that sustains real fulfilling human life from capital's continuation, sustain my knowledge that my commitment to moving beyond capitalism, is both essential and realistic.

I trust that this attempted answer to your generous question makes sufficient sense .

Best wishes

Tom

On Mon, 25 May 2020 at 22:26, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com<mailto:hshonerd@gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi Tom,
What is it about “free market economies” is the cause of wage slavery? Is there at least some jiggering of the market that could end “destructive anarchy”? Do we do away with money? And I am serious here. I take it that capitalism is the problem, not the market, or money. I was in the doctoral program in economics at UC Berkeley during the late 60s. My concentrations were comparative economic systems and economic planning. I dropped out after only getting a masters degree in economics there, and went to Cuba to cut sugar cane with the Venceremos Brigade. I felt strongly Che’s call to make the New Man (though women were there too, and check out the film “Lucia”) of that era, but I think that central planning (Castro’) of the Cuban economy had a destructive and anarchic side. Castro apologized for his mistakes during the year of 10 million tons of sugar cane production, but the damage was done. Cuba has been a shining light in some ways for me and others, not least the health care workers, the original Doctors Without Borders, that beautifully exemplify the new human.

So, really, what do we replace markets and money with? Or is it the “free” part that’s the rub.

Henry

On May 25, 2020, at 2:21 PM, Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com<mailto:tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>> wrote:

Hello Annalisa

"All that I figure is possible from the worldview you frame is:"

Since I have suggested neither of the alternatives you state as the only way forward, it would surely invalidate your further argument.

But I must admit that the idea of thirty thousand working class families and then some,  organising to change the wage-slavery employment system that they are exploited by, would be a great idea.
Here's to that day, as the freely associated producers of our social life organise to end the destructive anarchy of our present free-market economies.

Regards

Tom

On Mon, 25 May 2020 at 19:58, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu<mailto:annalisa@unm.edu>> wrote:

Hi Tom and others,

I agree that Capitalism is bad, and that it causes wealth and poverty in extremes. Which then creates social injustices that would be much lessened with less economic inequality.

I do not think that I ever said (did I?) to ignore the traditional power structures. I said that every day we negotiate the power structures. And when we decide it's not working we can create change. That possibility is always an option, but it demands diligence, discipline, and discovery.

All that I figure is possible from the worldview you frame is:

1. it's futile. Give up. The structures will always be against us. Settle in to your given hand of bad fortune.

2. grab a gun and kill as many people sitting in seats of power (which means the chair of power remains to be replaced by someone else).

Forgive me if I reject both those options.

As I said, perhaps in another post, the liberal position of citing data and objecting to the existence of that data, isn't going to make power structures change.

What would make change is for those 15K-30K families to organize and among themselves decide how and what they can do to make their lot better.

It's called organizing.

Civil disobedience works because it is civil.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com<mailto:tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>>
Sent: Monday, May 25, 2020 3:25 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?

  [EXTERNAL]

Hi Annalisa
Good Morning - just a correction to figures about poverty in our town - I should have been more careful,; fortunately the figures from memory were an underestimate rather than an exaggeration:

Almost 30,000 children are living in poverty across Teesside - and half are from working families.

And stark new statistics reveal that the picture is worst in central Middlesbrough<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/all-about/central-middlesbrough__;!!Mih3wA!UzpqqoKO1pITTk2fSACEPEAKdX9lS-DB6KRcN_OsqP68UjnBttHBF_Z-qSWQ8KfjrXPuWg$> - as hyper-local, official Government data reveals three quarters of all kids in one neighbourhood are living below the breadline.

Regards

Tom

[https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0B0zqMvyA6XEhZkdKSUk5eUxRUnNkbWZFdHlaRlpJci1fQ1lJ&export=download__;!!Mih3wA!W6jl03rhkaivCFRhjzKI3sJQIHeWznUxy0me28cgzNSRzqz-lnGv_-rukkL8n_GXi6KsMw$ ]
        BoWen

On Sat, 23 May 2020 at 22:17, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu<mailto:annalisa@unm.edu>> wrote:
Alas, hello again Tom (& VO's),

While I accept your assessment of our differences in approaches and understandings, I do not see that it is obvious that there is no meeting point.

For example, innovation exists in science and in art, in business it is entrepreneurship. I believe that there are good things that come from business entrepreneurship, and there are bad things too. We love that art and science are innovative, when they are, but there can be failings there too.

The captains of industry who believe they are self-made men, and who believe that anyone who decides for oneself being on the assembly line of the manufacturing floor is only a dumb pawn in a larger game, would be in my estimation the worst that kind of human that entrepreneurship generates. Elon Musk is one example, perhaps.

As much as I likely would not want Elon Musk over for dinner, I can admire that he has been able to steward the creation of an electric car in the midst of a sleepwalking auto industry that cannot envision automobiles without a gas-eating combustible engine.

At the same time what he gives he takes away: I'm not sure that I can ever get on board a space rocket to inhabit Mars. I actually object to that project because as long as we haven't worked out how to feed everyone on this earthship, we should not be escaping it by polluting another planet, even if, as Carl Sagan told us, there are billions and billions of them out there.

"They" in the form of (other they)'s do not have power unless we give them that power. That power is always up for debate every minute, every day, every year.

Given that there are now 38 million unemployed in the US (I can't name the numbers elsewhere and I'm sorry about that), that's like the entire population of California being on the dole. It is a significant number, and it may be that many of those people start their own businesses, not because of education or desire, but of necessity.

Many of the young and unemployed are educated. That could be a combustible cocktail, depending upon their self-awareness and outward worldview.

One strange article in NYT described a scene designer who has been out of work since the health order shutdown, and hasn't received any unemployment yet because she filed in New Jersey, while her partner did because he filed in New York. Then she got an offer to work in a company who is making ... wait for it.... facemasks, so now she is toiling over a machine, sewing facemasks.

I don't think I could live in that situation because of the stark irony, if that is a just word for that. I mourn the loss of her creativity, but I hope it is temporary.

Now out of necessity, she's had to travel that path. So I can agree with you that because of the government order to shut down business, and because a company who hired her decided to make facemasks, because what other ingenious product would or could one manufacture right now? they have shaped her working life. Have they shaped her social life, though. I mean completely? She still has her contacts on her iPhone, she likely returns home to her partner to cook dinner and search for more work. Her desires and dreams are likely impacted, but has she completely given up? Should she?

I am not pro-revolution, only because they create rivers of blood in streets, etc. I'm more of the mind that incremental choices can together create a tipping point of social change.

For example, consider the tiny house movement. Or how young people will share resources, or reevaluate buying things, or what they eat.

People make the best lemonade only with the best lemons.

There is going to have to be a reckoning of having so many unemployed people. It can't be ignored. To just pretend that everyone will be happy with a lower wage job (lower than when the pandemic hit), is only going to drive people to desperate measures. The country will want to put people to work and this could be an opportunity for collective change, for creating meaningful jobs.

Because who wants a civil war.

So there will have to be some sort of appeasement for the social reality that people must have their basic needs met. The temporary stimulus is a lifeline, but the real economic difficulties will start when people start to return to work, and there are less jobs with the result being there is less money circulating in the economy overall. With interest rates so low, and pumping more money into the economy is only going to raise the prices of things, possibly wages, but not the buying power.

People will cut bait from the lives they once had, and simplify. Moving to less crowded cities and towns, returning to live with parents. Perhaps creating cooperatives. One area for discovery with so much time on one's hands is handcrafting. I think there will be a blooming of new businesses that incorporate *real* labor. This may also usher in more vocational training programs.

One article I read today discussed the eating of meat, and how it is a destructive social practice including its impact on climate change. Largely that industry depends upon of automation, and now with slaughterhouses being virus hotspots, do you want to trust that the meat you buy is not tainted with COVID? Or that you are forcing a worker into an unsafe work environment and catch the virus?

If people were decide to stop eating meat, or reduce even its consumption because it's too expensive, and if the government stops giving subsidies to these agro-corporations, then these polluting companies will fail. That would be great news.

Then the writer pointed out that if we returned to diets higher in plant-based food, that would increase demand for real farms, real entrepreneurship and generate jobs, as it takes more people to grow vegetables, than it does to raise pigs or chickens. We would also become healthier as a population. There is already a network of farmer's markets for local produce, so it may mean a growth in that area.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is I do not think it is so cut and dried that we are subject to the worst forever. I think with so much time on our hands people are free to organize and decide to help one another in mutual aid. We do not have to rely on traditional power structures, and we do not have to resort to bloody revolutions.

Depending upon what you are looking for in life, there is a third way arising.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com<mailto:tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>>
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2020 4:24 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?

  [EXTERNAL]

Hello once more Annalisa

Our difference of approach to and understanding of the modern state and the production of social life obviously admits of no meeting point as far as I read your astonishingly wide-ranging and impassioned response.

Without the simplicity  of my reply intending to signal a facile sarcasm, I must bluntly state that I begin from the acceptance that nefarious or not, 'They', in the sense of government and corporations, do have the power to control and shape the organisation of social life. We can, if enough socio-political pressure can be brought to bear through social movements, rebellions, revolts, shift certain aspects of that fashioning of our lives.

But at present, the relationship of wage slavery imposed by Capital ,and the society shaped by that relationship, are dominant throughout the life of our planet.

Sad at such an impasse, since we both wish the best for humanity

Tom

On Fri, 22 May 2020 at 21:46, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu<mailto:annalisa@unm.edu>> wrote:
Hi Tom, and VO's of XMCA

Concerning your questions about our new normal now that COVID19 is with us and here to stay, I think your guess is as good as anyone's. I am not sure if we as humans have ever been burdened with such an event as this, and at the same time are able to watch the unfolding events and respond (or not respond if you are a stable genius) quickly from the feedback of data, news, anecdotes, and other forms of perception of how the virus is impacting us.

What is worth remembering as well, is that epidemiologists have been warning us for decades that a pandemic was a clear an present danger to the way we live and negotiate the modern world. We see in sensurround how right they were.

As I consider your question, I have to think that people mow might be sorted into two classes, well at least two classes:

  1.  People who seem to think the virus is just another flu and once we find a vaccine, all will return to Christmas 2019 (or whatever December Holiday or pre-pandemic time you mark your calendar as before the pandemic hit, which of course depends upon where on the earth you are located).
  2.  People who seem to think the virus has changed us and there will never be going back to Christmas 2019 (or whatever December Holiday...)

I suspect the Americans of the neo-conservative persuasion who have been motivated to protest health order social distancing believe that not only this is a conspiracy to control fredom-loving people, but that we should return to Christmas 2019 as soon as possible, they are of Cohort 1.

I think Cohort 2 are going to be people who take in the facts and the data and are actively attempting to sort out where do we go from here. I feel confident you are in Cohort 2, as ar most people on this list.

Now, as Carol M has pointed out, in a lot of ways our discussion about online learning is a first world concern, for those who have an internet connection that is ubiquitous not only at home, but at school, work, on the bus, on planes, in cafes, and other public gathering spaces, like city halls, or town squares. That's another reason why it's hard to take Klein seriously, in terms of *tone*.

I recall reading something from George Lakoff when he indicates that there is a liberal stance that seems to believe that if one objects loudly enough with "sky is falling" rhetoric and then feed out various data, that using this strategy the audience will become motivated to protest in the streets, write letters to congress, run for office, or whatever civil action must be done, and with alacrity. It doesn't work. I do not think being against anything ever "works." I think only being for something works.

Let's look at Klein's article as an example. If she were to be rhetorically successful she would outline the problem she identifies (Mr. Schmidt goes to Washington), but instead of all that is wrong, talk about what can be right. Not to say she should agree with Mr. Schmidt and his ways.

I feel her article could be a lot heavier on what works with education and how to enhance that further. She does mention how money should b used more for school nurses, smaller classrooms, etc. This is where she could have expanded beautifully into a viable solution to spark everyone's imaginations. But she didn't do that. She is more motivated it seems to mark Mr. Schmidt and his technological minions to masterminding a New World Order that will steal our souls and tether us to the Matrix from now until the end of time.

I also feel she would have been more conducive to discourse by writing an open letter to Cuomo and Schmidt, and to invite a response. This is also leading by example to cultivate democratic processes that are near and dear to all of us. Instead she "otherfies" them, and this is also not useful. And I am not saying that as a stance to defend Mr. Schmidt or Gov Cuomo, in any way.

So back to your question, I do not think that there is any way we will be extricated from this reality of COVID 19. We will have to pick our stones across the river carefully so that none of us slips and is carried down the rapids. I feel it is more useful to say we are a family of one kind, and all of us have to stay together to make it across. And that all of us deserves a life jacket as a measure of survival because not all of us will get to the other side without getting wet, or falling in.

The tension between CEOs and their contempt for the slow-food of democracy is well known. If only they could persuade all of us to eat fast food, then they could take over the world as the next McDonalds, in terms of technological vision, whatever a McDonalds would look like on a screen, as an app, whathaveyou.

Unfortunately what seems to elude folks who have not worked in tech, or those who see tech as just another new Ford in the garage, is that technology is always in flux. There is always development of new hardware that needs new software written to use it, so there is a double-quicksand of events upon which technology is founded (and funded) upon. That's what Moore's Law is about.

Technology in order to "be itself" must always move fleetingly, like the shark must to breathe. Technology will never be able to last the halls of government. For that reason, any rendition of technology in government (and school systems for that matter) will be like bad combovers that are meant to convince us that we are now more attractive and appealing (not meaning to offend those who live by their combovers...)

Where I feel technology could best serve us is to help create grassroots democracy tools, to support what we know is possible and could even threaten the basis for representative democracy and bring it closer to a straight agora democracy.

Some might call this anarchy, and I could argue along the lines of David Graeber that anarchy is a more pure form of democracy practiced in all "primitive" or "ancient" cultures, it's not a perfect fit, and I intend to make that reference loosely. My point is to say there should be what David K calls involution of what government is, to what government was, and to supplant that, or rather what causes those parts to be pushed to the margins is to imagine a government where there is mor connection to agora-like venues where one person speaking in a Zoom-like frame is of equal stature of any other person speaking in the frame. One can sort of imagine this with the Zoom-empowered senate hearings which I watched for a while on the NYT front page. It was really strange to me. I suppose the danger is that we get to hear Sally Mc? from Arizona use her time to blame the Chinese for the virus, etc, for more time that we would like. But that's democracy.

So one fallout could be that grade-school kids and their resulting perezhivanie from Zoom-based classrooms, will adopt the tool for political discussions as adults. Might that be a good thing?

Maybe.

At the same time, do you remember a book that came out in the mid90s called "Silicon Snake Oil"? This is yet another phenomenon of technology, that people oozing charisma will claw their way to the microphone and pitch an idea about the next vaporware, who will then make unsubstantiated promises and claims directed to feed our fantasies and dreams, and who will then abscond with all the money, only to request not to look at the man behind the green curtain, or if pulled by the ear into a senate hearing will say "I thought it was a good idea at the time." etc.

I think that is the view of Klein about all technology, and there are merits in that, but there are also other ways to think about it.

This article about Marc Benioff in Wired recently discusses about the social entrepreneurship of his wealth: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.wired.com/story/gospel-of-wealth-according-to-marc-benioff/__;!!Mih3wA!W6jl03rhkaivCFRhjzKI3sJQIHeWznUxy0me28cgzNSRzqz-lnGv_-rukkL8n_FeFH4BSw$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.wired.com/story/gospel-of-wealth-according-to-marc-benioff/__;!!Mih3wA!QlFQ9K0fpCeY8Ago6eD8wEZsCoPsUNbxY-9nGASn68fLoIl7bpzI7P4YyuMxRNSRIbnKqA$>
Who by they way now owns the magazine Time, the way Jeff Bezos bought the WaPo, and Lauren Jobs bought The Altlantic, and Pierre Omidyar funded The Intercept.

I do invite, as much as you can stomach, anyway, for any educators or other members of our vibrant list to make regular reading of Wired Magazine, which is a far more interesting read on technology than something like Fast Company. I encourage this reading, if only to know the enemy, as it were. Wired articles are far more nuanced and sophisticated than when the magazine first got off the ground in the early 90s. I find reading it helps to connect some dots for those who do not consume technology culture all the time. Just pick and choose what you are curious about.

We must become familiar with the vernacular of technology if we want a hand in the game of how it plays in education, our stomping grounds. This will require effort on our part. That is not to say we must adopt all the shiny new toys. But we can be like a Consumer Report for education, and evaluate and measure the good the bad and the ugly of technology and its use in the edu sphere.

We cannot sit on our laurels and wait for someone else to decide for us how technology will be deployed. That stance is what the mythology of inevitable technology rests and self-perpetuates.

We must be more tech literate, and we must be the first to coin words and how they manifest in edu venues. What works what doesn't. I don't see any other way to fight back and to keep control of the educational narrative, where of course we want to hardwire zopeds, manifest and lead critical and nourishing perezhivanie, and model by example sterling mediated learning experiences for students and teachers.

What other projects can there be?

For me, this is "fighting back" because it makes the sort of shark-like entrepreneur recede for a time (as they will always be looking for a way into edu's tax coffers), because we are successful getting education right.

I do not accept that entreprenuership is what took the sanctity from teaching and learning. But that's an argument to be made. I feel it is only one side of the argument.

Once I had an male acquaintance tell me that one reason women are in inferior roles is because they let this happen to them. As you might imagine, I had a real hard time with that argument and I had to clench my jaw to now spew various vitriol upon him. But after I thought about it, in a narrow sense he is not wrong because not it is true that enough women in history identified the value to struggle for rights even if they would not see equality in their own lifetimes. There are many explanations for why that did not happen, that are not facile to depict. But then I also had to think of how much women's struggles have succeeded because they did decide to not let this happen to them anymore. But now women are learning in the US, anyway, that nothing fought for is a permanent fixture, and so we must become resigned to the perpetual struggle for equality, as all marginalized people must.

So now I direct this to our context of education in the venue of online learning. This is not an easy question, and it is not intended to trivialize the work and efforts of many on this list, but it is instead a question of inner reflection, or a taking of inventory of one's own life:

How much has each of you done to take measure and fight for meaningful education in the classroom?

Could you have done more? Can you do more?

Then the same for asking yourself how have you integrated technology appropriately into your learning methods and general perezhivanie.

I hope this might provide some further food for thought concerning preservation on the sanctity of learning and instruction in the classroom.

So all this is to reply to you Tom, that in short, the nefarious They can only take control if we let them.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

ps please excuse all typos, which are all made on my own.

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com<mailto:tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>>
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2020 11:26 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?

  [EXTERNAL]

Hi Annalisa

Thank you for providing the details of your deep and committed background in distance / online learning. Mine is obviously shallow, which must have triggered you and 'Robsub' somewhat.

But my questioning is in the newer context of the Covid19 threats to global society and the solutions being sought to extricate us from them.

Governor Cuomo's conversation with Schmidt to examine solutions to the problems of present coping and future emergence from the pandemic is understandable. Two persons with power and a need to act, discuss what technology (in its widest hard- and software aspects) has to offer.

In a democracy we can assess the solutions they propose and shape them to what we know to be as near to optimal for our society as possible. Your assertion of the efficacy of our agency which Klein seems to deny,
with her politico-economic caveats.

Schmidt has an evangelism for the potential of technology, but expressed with such restraint - he's no zealot. He also, in the video of the ECNY conversation with Marie-Josee Kravis, sees the lack of 'simplicity' in the three-tier democratic system of the US. He is a CEO with an organisation geared to problem-analysis, solution choices, and operational capability which can be put into action without delaying debate. He expressed no hostility to 'democracy' but as he said, it does not work simply.

Klein reminds us to be wary if not alarmed, not because she is despairing (I believe), but because that direct entrepreneurial drive has profit making as its unavoidable aim. Whatever Schmidt's humanistic feelings, if profit doesn't result from his and his companies actions, they will not survive. That competitive drive is also present in his aspirations for international dominance (see his remarks on the rise of China's technology).

So far, the sort of distance / online learning you have worked on, has been nested in the context of family and (normal) school life. That normality had implicit in it human values, customs and structures, whatever differences of class, race, gender and culture were present. The melding of state and enterprise in a newly-developing novel (5G?)high-tech 'solution' to mediating education presents a situation which need to be examined I believe. And my query, in that 'Kleinian' context was looking for answers from those, like yourself, with wide experience of previous technological 'answers' and their implications for the results within the learner.

I affirm, along with you, the irrepressible resistance and sheer cantankerousness we humans bring to unjust situations. But such fighting back will often be unsuccessful in its aims, when the need to reduce labour time with new technology is driving events - Luddism and machine looms? Our human drive to change and adapt, our use of our agency to create or alter our lives must not be suppressed. But what Klein is reminding us of is just how tilted is the balance of power - the power of the state and behind it, the drive from the vast corporate world, for profit. Our agency is so often undone by the arbitrary intervention of those forces.

Those are the forces which have destroyed what you name the 'sanctity' of teaching and learning. I would name it the basic need for those goals, but we share it. With the need to re-invigorate just such a precious resource, we will continue to fight like hell. Despite their mere humanness, corporations and states at present have greater knowledge and power than 'mere' citizens. My intervention in xmca discussion was really to say "They're looking to take even more control of daily life.
Within academia, you can analyse how they are making such changes happen and continue to alert the rest of us, if you fear the consequences of their changes."

Best  wishes
Tom

On Wed, 20 May 2020 at 22:29, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu<mailto:annalisa@unm.edu>> wrote:
Hi Tom,

May I, in turn, thank you for your civil disagreement? 🙂

Online learning is one area of study in my educational background. We looked at Second Life (SL) and tried to create a learning space there, once. I think that there is always room for innovation, but there is always a transaction of what one forfeits for what one gains. I was underwhelmed by SL's prospects.

In the heyday of SL, which as a platform is barely in a coma right now, I'd once heard that a medical school created a giant kidney sculpture, that students' avatars could walk around to investigate and discuss with one another how various kidney processes worked.  It was a virtual biological fountain in the town square. I'm not sure that this learning context would ever beat out a human anatomy class, but I found the solution interesting.

Blackboard was another platform we used, which I detested. It was like looking at the teacher's chalkboard through a slice of swiss cheese. Perhaps it is more "evolved" now.

What was interesting about SL is that one could project a sense of place, which we know is helpful for memory and retention. There was a lot of open space for play involved in SL, enough to make it interesting, but it was perhaps far too much work to create viable learning environments.

I think what we have to accept (which I feel all experienced educators already know and feel) is that flattening all education to an online learning space of a 2D screen, as may be experienced with grade-schoolers during the pandemic today, is destructive to learning, *because* of associations of place with learning.

In a way, online learning venues that we may enjoy as adults, such as the AUP conference on Psychology in Global Crises, is a bit like driving, drinking, and smoking. What I mean is that one must pass a certain age in order to decide if it is good for me or not, or that I have the hand-eye coordination to negotiate (as with driving). Consider recent ZOOMbombing abuses, which would make any parent want to unplug the computer and constrain learning to books.

We live in a time where the classroom holds no sanctity whatsoever. We must put the sanctity back into teaching and learning.

I still maintain that we are not powerless to debate the ways in which the situations and environments we determine are viable to create contexts of learning.

I find the lack of detail in the Klein article is not by accident, but out of convenience. There has been plenty of online learning happening for quite sometime now. But this has largely been in adult or in college-aged learning venues . Not with grade school.

I do think that there has been some online tutoring venues for grade-school kids, but I'm not certain how much that has been formally studied. I also wonder what answers homeschooling might contribute as well, although that venue for learning has a decidedly conservative sheen upon it, for all the homesteading mythologies those folk abide in. I would guess that this is form of learning is one that they would welcome, because parents would get to pick and choose what their children learn.

I don't think this could ever be construed as a liberal arts education, nor would it deliver new generations of critical thinkers.

What I feel may be a part of the pushback against these propositions is childcare, and how parents will require this to provide for their own families. I found this NY opinion piece insightful: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-parenting-burnout.html__;!!Mih3wA!W6jl03rhkaivCFRhjzKI3sJQIHeWznUxy0me28cgzNSRzqz-lnGv_-rukkL8n_FfpGokew$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-parenting-burnout.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article__;!!Mih3wA!SZSEYLggVkbsFhK2-SLWJT1oidlnry4UU07CU8yscHieuVTRIi4U3vkjwqo1GLIpcTD9PA$>

It may be we witness in a shakeout for free childcare that it is a right, not a privilege. That would be a huge boon for many. But the pandemic may also show us a new aspect of the validity of classroom education and why we must fight to preserve it. We use it or we lose it.

It may usher in more critical discourse about the meaning of the classroom to the child's learning. if only for the attentional affordances that the classroom provides to a cluster of young minds and their teacher.

Last, in reply to your, "I cannot grasp what is intended/visualized by the AI/digital experts," may I remind you that Thomas Edison believed that he could turn the classroom upside-down with the invention of film, and that education would be significantly transformed by watching movies. People then worried if that meant there would be no need to learn to read, etc. We see that what Edison visualized was simply not realistic. But is it the case that watching films in a classroom doesn't provide some facet of learning? Yes. But has it supplanted traditional forms of learning? No.

If teachers discover there are legitimate technological additions to already successful evidence-based learning environments, that support well-known learning theory, technology can be welcomed if it can be integrated with existing models.

If teachers do not find such technology useful, then it's just another way to enrich the pockets of Mr. Schmidt and other technophiles, where money will be spent but the products unused. That would be tragic and wasteful.

One of the aspects I do not like about the idea of grade-school online learning environments is how it inures children to surveillance, which may also turn off a great many kids who would prefer wandering backyards, or riding bikes in the park, to play with friends. I don't think learning and surveillance is a constructive combination.

There is a lot to consider, and perhaps this is where the alarm is more appropriately felt, because these are new challenges, and there are not yet words to describe what we find wrong with these problems, and so we must better ourselves by searching for the arguments and stances we can unite behind. Perhaps we feel alarmed because we must grapple with an unknown interloper. We are fatigued because our senses are already shredded from what is already difficult about living in a pandemic.

This is why I do not feel Klein's tone is helpful to us. It stands upon a mythology that technology is inevitable. After much study and introspection, I will never accept that reality.

To listen to Klein is to believe that a town crier were to some and say "They are coming take all our tools and all they will leave us are hammers and pins."

I just do not believe this narrative.

We cannot give up.

Is there a fight ahead? Yes.

Should we rally together to protect what needs protecting? Most definitely, yes.

Kind regards,

Annalisa
________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com<mailto:tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>>
Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2020 7:31 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?

  [EXTERNAL]

Hello Annalisa
Thank you for your reactions to the Klein article. I agree with almost none of your opinions about the content nor the form. About the capacity of human nature for both heroic altruism and lethal self-interested behaviour acted out by the same person, I have no doubts.

  *   What I really wanted an answer to was: 'What will the environment created for this new online learning actually consist of, in the widest sense of the situation for the learner and the context in which such learning takes place?'.
  *   What can be confidently forecast about the nature of these changes for the perezhivanie  of the learner, which shapes her social being and that which she perceives as being 'normal/abnormal', 'acceptable/unacceptable' and 'changeable/unchangeable' in her society?

Since little practical detail is given in Klein's piece and I haven't yet listened to the complete video from the ECNY meeting, I cannot grasp what is intended/visualised by the AI/digital experts.
I would welcome some approach to answers to those questions if that is within your area of expertise; if not, I am content to let it rest.

Kind regards
Tom

On Tue, 19 May 2020 at 22:07, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu<mailto:annalisa@unm.edu>> wrote:
Hello Tom,

Thank you for posting the link.

I did finally get around to reading the Klein article, and it is fairly dismal the manner that she outlines the intentions of Mr. Schmidt. That is not to say that she is far from the mark, but we are not just unthinking pods in the matrix, powerless to articulate the way technology is distended into our lives.

I think what bothers me most about the Klein article is the tone. It reinforces through negation a fallacy that technology is inevitable (and resistance is futile). I say this because she presumes this narrative has become the hegemony upon which she reacts. It is far too doomsday.

At the same time, a lot of her concerns are valid. The trawling for power in Washington by Silicon Valley is not unknown to us.

Yet, I also had a real hard time with her juxatposing Schmidt with Bill Gates. Gates is working to do actual good in the world by projects such as the humble toilet in geographic locations without waste treatment facilities, or low water infrastructure (and we might as well include Warren Buffet in that equation, because the lionshare of the funding flowing into the Gates Foundation is from him. Buffet did not make his billions through technology, unless you want to include the telephone).

I happen to know that the Gates Foundation is funding efforts to encourage agricultural developments in places like Columbia to grow coffee to replace illicit crops, in order to scale down the violence that coincides with the drug wars. These efforts are working.

Why does she leave this out of the discussion? That's the general problem I find with Naomi Klein, is the chicken-little-sky-is-falling perspective.

She seems to be similar to those trumpsters who blame the genesis of COVID (if not upon China) upon Gates, as some strange mastermind move to control the world.

Tom, I think it is right and human that you responded to the bleakness of the tone, but that doesn't mean this worldview is correct or accurate. Technology will always be a tool for use. It is not monolithic. There is the off button. We do still have a democracy and processes in place to deliberate the way forward.

As long as humans desire freedom there will always be resistance to control systems, generating a constant search for the chinks in the armor, or other loopholes to squeeze through. People will always use technology in ways that were not anticipated, but just as that can be assertion can be construed as dismal, it can also mean good news, that we always have agency to decide how to use our tools.

Also, one stick in the spokes that was glaring for me is that Mr. Schmidt will never be able to address the laws for mandatory education for disabled children with his goals for flattening the classroom into two-dimensional online learning screens. He will never be able to walk around that law.

So there are many ways this "technology is inevitable" narrative simply does not hold water for me.

I hope this might be a little encouraging.

Kind regards,

Annalisa

________________________________
From: xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu<mailto:mcole@ucsd.edu>>
Sent: Tuesday, May 19, 2020 10:46 AM
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu<mailto:xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?

  [EXTERNAL]

Hello Tom Richardson
     This topic has been the front and center in the "Re-generating Chat Project" that has just finished its
planned two year efforts that focused on the challenges to human development, and theories of "Development
in the Anthropcene.  Two months ago, the word Anthropocene was replaced by the code word, covid-19, a pandemic.
Both crises pose huge challenges to theories of development as well as to actual development of huge numbers of people around the  world.
     The MCA-linked website, CulturalPraxis currently has a number of essays on the challenges of this historical moment, and the opportunities.
      In the United States, the crisis has deschooled society in the most dramatic way one can imagine -- A way that literally forced
a massive re-mediation of human life.  Education, the wheel house of most members of this discussion over the years,
is now a family affair big time. Simulaneously, home-worksite relations have been disassembled,  both modes and relations of production are getting a shock that is crumbling institutions (home, school, work,).

We can really get the feel of Roy D'andrade's comment that doing social science is like studying rocks in a rockslide.  This rockslide moves a warp speed and its invisible.

Remediation of existing classroom structures is what we have been about for 100 years.
Seems like there has never been a more appropriate time to start providing working models of effective practices that do NOT
assume that things will return to Christmas, 2019.

Thanks for asking.
mike

On Tue, May 19, 2020 at 9:07 AM Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com<mailto:tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>> wrote:
Greetings Xmca-ers
I would   like to raise a question.
In the article by Naomi Klein linked below, apart from all the major questions about  our futures  - personal freedom, health protection, democratic control and the power of Big Digital Tech_AI, international competition etc. that she raises, I wondered what from a Vygotskyan approach to child/human development/education can / should be a reply to these sentences on the 'home schooling' that has (or hasn't) been happening  recently:

"Indeed, Schmidt has been relentless in pursuing this vision. Two weeks after that article appeared, he described<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtAyGVuRQME__;!!Mih3wA!VRgkzssOuSyNvpVQWR2QH7dShhiXD5eWtYs2HahNwv_pKUU7G9GOQZMrzIpGsa_-KDBGFw$> the ad-hoc home schooling programming that teachers and families across the country had been forced to cobble together during this public health emergency as “a massive experiment in remote learning”.

The goal of this experiment, he said, was “trying to find out: how do kids learn remotely? And with that data we should be able to build better remote and distance learning tools which, when combined with the teacher … will help kids learn better.” "

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/may/13/naomi-klein-how-big-tech-plans-to-profit-from-coronavirus-pandemic__;!!Mih3wA!W6jl03rhkaivCFRhjzKI3sJQIHeWznUxy0me28cgzNSRzqz-lnGv_-rukkL8n_GAMBGoJQ$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/may/13/naomi-klein-how-big-tech-plans-to-profit-from-coronavirus-pandemic__;!!Mih3wA!VRgkzssOuSyNvpVQWR2QH7dShhiXD5eWtYs2HahNwv_pKUU7G9GOQZMrzIpGsa-SnnFGDg$>

Just asking
Tom Richardson
Middlesbrough UK

--

"How does newness come into the world?  How is it born?  Of what fusions, translations, conjoinings is it made?" Salman Rushdie

---------------------------------------------------
For archival resources relevant to the research of lchc.ucsd.edu<http://lchc.ucsd.edu/>.
For narrative history of LCHC:  lchcautobio.ucsd.edu<http://lchcautobio.ucsd.edu/>.
For new MCA-related website see: culturalpraxis.net<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!V4rtgUKjjshdiOxbIML_kuerunhUbHYomcCKiRVA5FkPs1WJIJwbuavyFoG613bJeWFP-g$>.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200527/12bfb179/attachment.html 