[Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?

Wed May 20 06:31:12 PDT 2020

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> 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 <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of mike cole <mcole@ucsd.edu>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 19, 2020 10:46 AM
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <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> 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$> the
> ad-hoc home schooling programming that teachers and families across the
> country had been forced to cobble together during this public health
> emergency as “a massive experiment in remote learning”.
>
> The goal of this experiment, he said, was “trying to find out: how do kids
> learn remotely? And with that data we should be able to build better remote
> and distance learning tools which, when combined with the teacher … will
> help kids learn better.” "
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/may/13/naomi-klein-how-big-tech-plans-to-profit-from-coronavirus-pandemic__;!!Mih3wA!UtOnlGOTSgEwH0To-haFyS3S1zM-LK7x1cF18NmtebovD9tr1S3fLNoVppl0hDUaVrHKfg$ 
> <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$>
>
>
> Just asking
> Tom Richardson
> Middlesbrough UK
>
>
>
> --
>
> "How does newness come into the world?  How is it born?  Of what fusions,
> translations, conjoinings is it made?" Salman Rushdie
> ---------------------------------------------------
> For archival resources relevant to the research of lchc.ucsd.edu.
> For narrative history of LCHC:  lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
> For new MCA-related website see: culturalpraxis.net
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!V4rtgUKjjshdiOxbIML_kuerunhUbHYomcCKiRVA5FkPs1WJIJwbuavyFoG613bJeWFP-g$>
> .
>
>
>
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