[Xmca-l] Re: remote_online learning?

[Tom Richardson]

Thanks Annalisa
Wow - more reading, and they all sound fascinating and indispensable. Just
at the moment I've discovered the Vygotsky Archive - and found
'Understanding Vygotsky'  -der Veer, Valsiner , on my shelves -
auto-didacticism is becoming a little exhausting, but well worth it and
fun, especially sharing with colleagues on XMCA- treasure.......
Tom




On Wed, 27 May 2020 at 17:50, Annalisa Aguilar <annalisa@unm.edu> wrote:

> 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> 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
>         BoWen
>
>
> On Tue, 26 May 2020 at 22:29, HENRY SHONERD <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> 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> 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> 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> 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> 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> 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 <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>
> *Sent:* Monday, May 25, 2020 3:25 AM
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <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
>         BoWen
>
>
> On Sat, 23 May 2020 at 22:17, Annalisa Aguilar <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 <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>
> *Sent:* Saturday, May 23, 2020 4:24 AM
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <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> 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!SqdH8UX4B61Ki0PXvLufNks5npdfRoYVcGfLPoUWqADutVUZwtjrMn07CbVJOfmjYPxJpQ$ 
> <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 <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>
> *Sent:* Thursday, May 21, 2020 11:26 AM
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <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> 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!SqdH8UX4B61Ki0PXvLufNks5npdfRoYVcGfLPoUWqADutVUZwtjrMn07CbVJOflhpYQyLQ$ 
> <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 <xmca-l-bounces@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> on behalf of Tom Richardson <tom.richardson3@googlemail.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, May 20, 2020 7:31 AM
> *To:* eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity <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> 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!SqdH8UX4B61Ki0PXvLufNks5npdfRoYVcGfLPoUWqADutVUZwtjrMn07CbVJOfkY14Qiaw$ 
> <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$>
>
>
> Just asking
> Tom Richardson
> Middlesbrough UK
>
>
>
> --
>
> "How does newness come into the world?  How is it born?  Of what fusions,
> translations, conjoinings is it made?" Salman Rushdie
> ---------------------------------------------------
> For archival resources relevant to the research of lchc.ucsd.edu.
> For narrative history of LCHC:  lchcautobio.ucsd.edu.
> For new MCA-related website see: culturalpraxis.net
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://culturalpraxis.net__;!!Mih3wA!V4rtgUKjjshdiOxbIML_kuerunhUbHYomcCKiRVA5FkPs1WJIJwbuavyFoG613bJeWFP-g$>
> .
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ucsd.edu/pipermail/xmca-l/attachments/20200527/a70cad76/attachment.html