[Xmca-l] Re: Trying to frame studies of the web through perezhivanie

[mike cole]

I would be helped in following this interesting discussion if people
brought it back to *perezhivanie *. It is my reading of the recent special
issue on perezhivanie that there is no firm agreement on its meaning. My
unease was evoked when I read a note where the word perezhivanie had been
replaced by the word experience. When I read the word experience I think
Dewey, not Vygotsky, not Stanislavsky, not Vsiliuk.

Mike
PS
What is the best discussion of experience and perezhivanie that covers a
lot of Dewey, particularly “*Art and Experience” ? Deweyites out there,
speak up!*

On Wed, Sep 26, 2018 at 3:11 PM Edward Wall <ewall@umich.edu> wrote:

> Henry
>
>       Interesting subject. I have always thought Newton somewhat more
> ‘digital’ and Leibnitz somewhat more ‘analog’ (he used infinitesimals which
> Robinson much latter put on a firm mathematical basis) in how they, in
> essence, treat something like a point. I’ve seen a few calculus texts that
> do use Leibnitz’s method and there are some arguments that, mathematically
> speaking, extensions of his method (due, in part, to Robinson) bring some
> things into view that may be hard to see otherwise.
>
> Ed
>
>
> On Sep 26, 2018, at  4:52 PM, HENRY SHONERD <hshonerd@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It took me a long time to understand the calculus, because I couldn’t
> "get" the limit theorem, which allows for a way to use digital means to
> arrive quickly at as-precise-as-you-like approximations of rates of change
> (in differential calculus) and sums (in integral calculus) than would be
> possible and/or practical with analog means of counting and measuring.
> Without such quickly gotten precision, modern engineering would be
> impossible. I thought that Newton and Leibnitz discovered the calculs
> independently and at the same time, but a quick look at the wiki on the
> calculus is much more complex than that. It’s a history, it seems, that
> adds to the issue of concept and a word for the concept.
> Henry
>
>
> On Sep 26, 2018, at 7:53 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Hi Ed,
>
> This is a kind of interesting topic, including from a cultural
> perspective. My knowledge on this is relatively superficial.  Bruce
> Robinson made a really good point to me – also in your message – that
> analog computers were better for things like differential equations and
> more pure mathematic stuff (I think).  But that when it came to information
> processing digital was far superior.  My thinking though from the cultural
> perspective is that analog thinking is more representative of the way
> humans actually think, at least the way I believe they think. The big
> argument I have with information processing is that the argument is that
> the way the computer works (mostly software) is isomorphic to the human
> mind. But I wonder how much of the direction our society has gone in the
> last thirty years, with the timed testing using multiple choice questions,
> if we are attempting to make the human mind isomorphic to the computer.  As
> a friend who has worked at IBM for a lot of years told me recently, they
> are beginning to wonder if the computer is not training the human. I had
> wondered if we had gone the analog route (and right now I think I’m
> agreeing with Bruce, but I change quickly) if we might have gone in another
> direction, a more pure human-computer symbiosis.  Just rambling on a
> Tuesday morning.
>
> Michael
>
> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> *On
> Behalf Of *Edward Wall
> *Sent:* Tuesday, September 25, 2018 3:11 PM
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Trying to frame studies of the web through
> perezhivanie
>
> Michael
>
>      I don’t know if my comments are germane to your discussion of digital
> and analog, but I was involved in the 60s towards the tail end of the
> ‘competition'. Your reading makes sense to me; however from where I was
> sitting there were some nuances. In those years there were, in effect,  two
> kinds of computing using ‘computers’: information processing and scientific
> computing. Both of these had an analog history stretching far back.
> Information processing was, in a sense, initially mechanical, a mechanical
> that became driven by electronics and eventually with the advent of various
> graphic devices (I include printers of various kinds) became what we see
> today. The situation with scientific computing was a little different as it
> has even a richer analog history. Initially, electronic analog devices had
> the upper hand because they could, in effect, operate in real time.
> However, as the digital devices became faster and faster, it became
> possible to, in effect, simulate an analog device on a digital machine and
> pragmatically the simulation was “good enough.” Thus for, in a sense,
> economic reasons digital ‘computers’ won the ‘battle.’ In a way the
> evolution is reminiscent of that of audio reproduction or using mathematics
> to model physical reality; it is amazingly effective.  The battle, by the
> way, is still going on. If I tell the Amazon Alexa to play music a little
> louder, the increase is done in a digital fashion. If I turn the volume
> control on one of the original versionsit is done in an analog fashion. So
> I think you are right, the digital path doesn’t completely reproduce the
> analog path.
>
>
> Ed
>
> On Sep 22, 2018, at  9:46 AM, Glassman, Michael <glassman.13@osu.edu>
> wrote:
>
> Hi Greg and Andy,
>
> I wonder if, based on what Andy has said, is might be more worthwhile to
> focus on the Web as (Dewey’s ideas on) experience rather than perezhivaniye.
> I don’t really have a good grasp on perezhivaniye, can’t even really spell
> it.  But if you used Dewey’s ideas on experience the Web  becomes both
> artefact and event in our actions.  Dewey makes the argument multiple times
> I think that we cannot really know our tools outside of our experience in
> using them, and that in attempting to separate them we are diminishing the
> meaning of both in our lives. So I think experience actually would be a
> good way to describe what you are trying to do.
>
> Oh, also another take on analog and digital.  There was a battle between
> digital and analogous in computing but my own reading of the history is
> that had more to do with how we treated how computers processed information
> and solved problems.  I believe the crux of the battle was a bit earlier
> than the 1960s.  Actually Vannevar Bush who some (me included) consider the
> father of both the Internet and the Web (well maybe a more distant father
> but the actual name web is based on one of his ideas I think, web of
> trails) was working on the idea of an analogous computer in the late
> forties. I am sure others were as well.  The difference as I understand it
> is whether we wanted to treat the processing of information as analogous
> (sort of a linear logic) where one piece of information built off another
> piece working towards an answer or whether we wanted to treat information
> as a series of yes no questions leading to a solution (digital referring to
> the use of 0 and one as yes and no, although I always mix that up.  Digital
> became dominant for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is because it
> is more precise and efficient but it is also far more limited.  I often
> wonder what would have happened if we had followed Bush’s intuition). There
> are analog and digital circuits of course, but at least in the early
> history of the computer I don’t believe that was the primary discussion in
> the use of these terms. Of course that’s just my reading.
>
> Michael
>
> *From:* xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu> *On
> Behalf Of *Andy Blunden
> *Sent:* Friday, September 21, 2018 9:46 PM
> *To:* xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> *Subject:* [Xmca-l] Re: Trying to frame studies of the web through
> perezhivanie
>
> A few comments Greg.
> It seems to me that the web (i.w., www, yes?) is an *artefact *not
> events; each unit is a trace of perezhivaniya not a perezhivaniye as such;
> it is important not to conflate events and artefacts; just as an historian
> has to know that what they see are traces of real events, not the events as
> such. What you do with that evidence is something again.
> Just by-the-by, "analog" does not mean "original" or "real"; it means the
> opposite of reality. The terms "digital" and "analog" originate from the
> 1960s when there were two types of computer. Analog computers emulate
> natural processes by representing natural processes in analogous electronic
> circuits based on the calculus. In the end digital computers won an almost
> complete victory, but for example, if I'm not mistaken, the bionic ear uses
> analog computing to achieve real-time coding of speech, or at least it did
> when I knew it in the 1980s.
> Andy
> ------------------------------
> Andy Blunden
> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
> On 22/09/2018 12:57 AM, Greg Mcverry wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> I have been spending time this summer reading up on the concept of
> perezhivanie after our article discussion on identify of funds.
>
> I wanted to share a draft of my theoretical perspectie for feedback.
> Granted due to word count it will probably be reduced to a paragraph or two
> with drive by citations but I am trying to think this through to inform my
> design.
>
> https://checkoutmydomain.glitch.me/theoretical.html
>
> -I got a little feedback but from Russian scholars in other fields
> (literature mainly)  that I missed the meaning by being too neutral and I
> needed to get at "growing from one's misery" or another person said
> "brooding over the bad stuff that happened that makes you who you are" So I
> want to make sure I capture the struggle.
>
> -I am not diving into this now but I am also considering the identify and
> culture of a local web and how that plays out into how we shapes funds of
> identity as we create online spaces.
>
> -Finally is applying this lens with adult learners not appropriate? What
> does it mean when you actively want to tweak the environment of learners to
> reduce experiencing as struggle and increase experience as contemplation.
>
>
>
>
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