Re: [xmca] adult affordances

[Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>]

Martin et al,

Your suggestion to extend instruction-learning time into the other 164
hours seems to be one way to deal with the situation.
And more than anything, I like your double exam structure, once
individually and once in small groups. That's a fascinating technology!

I like Michael's punchline but it seems to turn less on the value of
technology and more on our Western ethno-psychologies of choice (what we
might otherwise term the fetish of "the sovereignty of the individual").
I'm personally very swayed by these (e.g. Carl Rogers' patient centered
approach) but I can't help but be fascinated by approaches that take the
opposite tack and reject the sovereignty of the individual. Two notable
counter-tropes can be found in the psychotherapeutic approach of Dr. Fritz
Perls and a fuller narrative of a sovereign other can be found in the movie
The Madness of King George (I so want the "therapy" that he receives to not
work b.c. it is so externally impositional - so anti-Carl Rogers!). And I'm
currently working on a paper with a friend (he is doing most of the
writing!) that looks at J. G. Hamann's rejection of Kant's notion of the
sovereignty of the individual. Hamann argues for the importance of a kind
of dependence on and subordination to others (but with constant
possibilities of reversals such that the dependence is always necessarily
mutual).

And, of course, there is a way in which, depending upon how one construes
"choice," one can characterize the "choice" to use media at any and all
times as less than a "choice"; i.e. as a kind of compulsion or even impulse
which we submit to (to return to the enlightenment tropes that say what
makes us human is our ability to transcend impulse and immediacy). I guess
that this is what Martin is hinting at when he speaks of technology turning
us into toddlers - a new kind of mediated immediacy.

So at the end of the day it seems like more a question of "which choice?"

-greg

p.s. sorry for being so "slow" to respond, I was doing writing this morning
with pen and paper and so I went a good 12 hours without checking email.
Hard to imagine!

On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 11:51 AM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:

> Mike,
>
> I'm always happy to try to reformulate. I guess my negative evaluation was
> based in part on research that claims that people multitask pretty badly,
> plus my own observations that if I ask a question of a student who has been
> texting, they have no idea what I am talking about.
>
> But I imagine that from their point of view, they are indeed
> redistributing their attentional resources in ways that are valuable to
> them, making use of available resources.
>
> This becomes a problem, though, within the context of an institution of
> learning which divides it into two hour chunks of time twice a week. This
> in turn suggests the best response may be to extend instruction-learning
> into the remaining 164 hours, with blogs, email, etc. That's more work for
> the instructor, of course.
>
> (Don't let you family catch you checking your email under the table!)
>
> Martin
>
> On Mar 15, 2012, at 1:38 PM, mike cole wrote:
>
> > Martin. Could we reformulate this statement a little?:
> > It is surely the use of this kind of technology that has reduced our
> > attention spans and our ability to reflect, while it has undoubtedly
> > enhanced our abilities in many other ways.
> >
> > While I appreciated the "fragmentation" side of this argument, might it
> be
> > that
> > what new digital, social media do is re-mediate the way we allocate
> > attention
> > and reflect? Is multi-processing simply reduced attention, or a specific
> > division of "attentional labor"? Does reflection that is delayed, or
> > brought into play in
> > some unexpected way count any less as reflection.
> >
> > To be sure, the temporal properties of the mediational process differ,
> and
> > relatedly they may feel qualitatively different (better, worse, just
> > different).
> >
> > (I am headed to see my kids and grandchildren. Expect me to grouse about
> > texting under the table at a fancy restaurant in a few days.)
> >
> > mike
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 10:20 AM, Adam Mendelson <
> amendelson@berkeley.edu>wrote:
> >
> >> Having mentioned Turkle's book, I feel a need to mention this one also:
> >>
> >> Baym, N. K. (2010). Personal connections in the digital age. Cambridge:
> >> Polity Press.
> >>
> >> Personally Baym's position resonates better with me than Turkle's, but
> it
> >> could just be that Baym comes off as more optimistic and Turkle more
> >> pessimistic.
> >>
> >> In truth though, Turkle's book is more relevant to this thread.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Adam Mendelson [mailto:amendelson@berkeley.edu]
> >> Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 11:16 AM
> >> To: 'eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity'
> >> Subject: RE: [xmca] adult affordances
> >>
> >> Another word from a would-be lurker:
> >>
> >> While I disagree with a lot of what she says, and I think she often
> gets a
> >> bit moralistic for my taste, Sherry Turkle's book addresses a lot of
> your
> >> questions, Martin.
> >>
> >> Turkle, S. (2011). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology
> and
> >> less from each other. New York: Basic Books.
> >>
> >> I continue to suggest that it's not the gadgets that are so consuming,
> but
> >> the constant access to the social network that they permit. When we can
> >> carry around all of our meaningful relationships in our pockets, it can
> >> make
> >> the less meaningful relationships in our physical co-presence
> decreasingly
> >> compelling.
> >>
> >> Adam
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]
> On
> >> Behalf Of Martin Packer
> >> Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 11:06 AM
> >> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >> Subject: Re: [xmca] adult affordances
> >>
> >> Thanks, Greg. While I find Adam's suggestions about integrating this
> >> technology into the classroom interesting, and I'm inclined to try it,
> in
> >> both directions - both sending tweets (embedding them into the Keynote
> >> presenter notes) and receiving votes (for quizzes and instant feedback;
> >> much
> >> cheaper than a clicker) - I don't think this is going to eliminate or
> even
> >> reduce cell phone use for non-class purposes.
> >>
> >> And my main interest here is not controlling it, but understanding it.
> How
> >> is it that a technology becomes compulsive? Is this why Apple is so
> >> successful? And I don't agree with Michael that "technology has finally
> >> caught up to our minds." Just last week we were discussing Latour's
> point
> >> that technology came first, and human minds are built upon a
> technological
> >> foundation (or are rocked in a cradle of technology). It is surely the
> use
> >> of this kind of technology that has reduced our attention spans and our
> >> ability to reflect, while it has undoubtedly enhanced our abilities in
> many
> >> other ways.
> >>
> >> One of which, of course, is communication. Is it the sociality that
> makes
> >> cell phones irresistible? My exams in this course have a social
> component:
> >> students take the exam first individually, then a second time in small
> >> groups, ostensibly to gain a small bonus, but from my perspective to
> turn
> >> the exam itself into an occasion for learning.  I wonder whether cell
> phone
> >> use will go down during group work in the classroom (of course cell
> phones
> >> are banned during the exam. Which is not to say...!)  I will try this,
> and
> >> report back.
> >>
> >> Meanwhile, any other suggestions about why cell phones turn grown men
> into
> >> toddlers? Or how to distract students away from them? Or how to
> integrate
> >> them into instruction?
> >>
> >> I should add, perhaps, that this is a class where the students appear
> >> enthusiastic, engaged, and interested. We have discussed cell phone
> policy,
> >> and talked about the difficulties of multi-tasking. Nonetheless, a good
> >> number of them seem to need to check for texts every 10 minutes.
> >>
> >> Martin
> >>
> >> On Mar 15, 2012, at 12:59 AM, Greg Thompson wrote:
> >>
> >>> And here I was about to suggest (somewhat jokingly) cell phone and
> >>> wifi jamming devices (some schools already have these in classrooms).
> >>> But judging by the tone of the conversation, it seems like that would
> >>> be akin to joking about using medieval torture devices in the
> classroom!
> >>>
> >>> Nonetheless, I will try to present a counterpoint to the "embrace new
> >>> media" vibe that has been running through this thread (and somewhat in
> >>> the mode of the field of media ecology, but hopefully not quite that
> >> far).
> >>>
> >>> To start, I don't have a problem with students going on flights of
> >>> fancy in the classroom and would even encourage it. I'm all for
> >>> imagination, but, imho, that's not what facebook and twitter and the
> >>> internet do (and maybe I'm romanticizing in the same way that book
> >>> readers did when the radio came along and radio listeners did when TV
> >>> came along - but I'd still say that there is something more humane
> >>> about the temporality and pacing of nightly reading of a book that you
> >>> don't find in a nightly TV show [NB: I just returned to this email
> >>> from my weekly dose of Criminal Minds! Go get 'em Hotch!]).
> >>>
> >>> But it seems to me that these media suck you into events that are
> >>> "less robustly imaginative" (I put that in quotes so that anyone
> >>> interested can easily find it and criticize appropriately) than what
> >>> happens when you stare out the window in a history class wondering
> >>> about a pretty girl in some historical scene. That kind of flight of
> >>> fancy or imaginative play seems to me to be very different from what
> >>> you do when checking your email or shopping for a new pair of jeans
> >>> during class. There is a fundamental difference in the entanglements
> >>> that each creates and how these are caught up with, or not, the
> >>> substance of the course being taught. In line with Martin's original
> >>> note, I do feel that these new media are "seductive" - they pull on us
> >>> in ways that take us away from our own pursuits - even from our
> >>> flights of fancy. [did I mention that I'm supposed to be working on a
> >> paper right now as I write this email?].
> >>>
> >>> For a break in the action, I'm reminded of Kurt Vonnegut's story
> >>> Harrison Burgereon when Harrison's mom, after watching her son shot
> >>> dead on tv, can't recall what just happened and when she tells her
> >>> husband, who had seen Harrison's picture but then immediately forgot
> >>> it because of the transmitter in his ear that makes it impossible for
> >>> him to maintain his own train of thought. When her husband comes back
> >>> from getting a beer, he hears a loud noise too that disrupts his query
> >>> about why she was crying. They both note "boy that one was a doozy."
> >>>
> >>> What was I saying again?
> >>>
> >>> Ok, just looked back at what I'd written, think I've got it. Thank
> >>> heavens for the written word...
> >>> So anyway, maybe I'm a luddite, but it seems that there is value of
> >>> quiet contemplation and reflection. When teaching my General Semantics
> >>> course last year, during one class I had students sit quietly for just
> >>> a single minute while we all tried to grasp the world in its immediacy
> >>> (an impossible task to be sure, but a useful practice to engage in
> >>> nonetheless). I can't tell you how disquieting that single minute of
> >>> solitude was for many of them!
> >>>
> >>> Frankly, I'm fine with the argument that we need to do away with
> >>> higher ed as we know it, but as long as we are only together for 3
> >>> hours a week, it seems to me that it would be nice to spend that time
> >>> entangled with one another, at least entangled in one another's
> >>> virtual spaces - and I should add that this places a major burden on
> >>> the teacher to provide sufficient entanglements (and is increasingly
> >>> impossible as class sizes increase - more than 20 or so students and
> it's
> >> a lost cause).
> >>>
> >>> Moving from Vonnegut to Orwell, don't they have computer tracking
> >>> programs that you could use to track what your students are doing
> during
> >> class?
> >>>
> >>> But seriously, Michael, it might be interesting (with their permission
> >>> - and if anonymity could be maintained), to see exactly what flights
> >>> of fancy they are taking during class. I think we'd certainly be
> >>> surprised by some who are googling terms raised in class and making
> notes
> >> and such.
> >>>
> >>> And also seriously, I know that there are far too many holes in this
> >>> dyke to hold back the flood so if anybody knows of any good programs
> >>> that can be used on a PC to integrate twitter and such in the
> >>> classroom, I'm all ears (the programs Martin suggested were Mac based).
> >>>
> >>> Looking backwards in front of my class, greg
> >>>
> >>> On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 7:48 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> OK, Michael, but what's the punchline to your story? With Facebook,
> >>>> twitter and texting, did they pay any attention at all to what you
> >>>> were trying to teach them?
> >>>>
> >>>> (Actually, I didn't finish reading your message. I went for a
> >>>> snack...)
> >>>>
> >>>> Martin
> >>>>
> >>>> On Mar 14, 2012, at 9:33 PM, Michael Glassman wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> Hi Larry, Martin, Adam,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Thanks for the great post Adam.  A couple of years ago under the
> >>>> tutelate of a graduate student I had all students in my class bring
> >>>> the laptop and keep it open.  I told them they don't have to be
> >>>> listening to everything I say, they could be on Facebook or they can
> >> text
> >> or twitter.
> >>>> They didn't have to hide it from me.   My students were shocked.   No,
> >> no,
> >>>> this can't be happening.  Every other class is a battle against this
> >>>> new technology.  I told them a story about when I was in college lo
> >> these
> >> many
> >>>> years ago.   I took a class in Russian literature with someone who was
> >>>> considered one of the great professors on the subject in the country
> >>>> - not just as a scholar but as a teacher.  And he was amazing, and
> >>>> passionate, and caring, and one of the two or three best professors I
> >>>> ever had.  I would go to class and dutifully open up my notebook and
> >> focus my attention
> >>>> on the professor.   My eyes never wavered but my mind certainly did.
>   A
> >>>> little while into the class I would start thinking, "Hmmm, what's for
> >>>> lunch" and then, "I wonder what I should do tonight".  Oh I would get
> >>>> pulled back to the class again and again, I remember him waving his
> arm
> >> and
> >>>> shouting,   "And think of the scene of Napoleon riding into Moscow and
> >> his
> >>>> men cheering and the subtle irony in the scene and what lies ahead."
> >>>> I saw in my mind the soldiers gathering around their beloved emperor,
> >>>> but among them was this woman Lori who I wondered if I should ask to
> eat
> >> with me at
> >>>> the dining hall that night.   That is the way our mind works, jumping
> >> from
> >>>> point to point, and there is a method to the madness of our minds, the
> >>>> jumps are meaningful and perhaps keep us in the game.   The idea that
> >>>> anybody is paying attention to anybody one hundred percent of the
> >>>> time is pretense and the idea that even the most vibrant speaker has
> >> control over
> >>>> another's thoughts is an illusion that gives the speaker warmth.   The
> >>>> Facebook, the texting, the cell phones, all of it, just outward
> >>>> manifestations of what our minds have been doing all along anyway.
> >>>> Come one, be honest, how many reading this were thinking for a little
> >>>> while about their next snack or perhaps checking Netflix.  Technology
> >>>> has finally caught up to our minds.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Michael
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ________________________________
> >>>>>
> >>>>> From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu on behalf of Larry Purss
> >>>>> Sent: Wed 3/14/2012 10:09 PM
> >>>>> To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> >>>>> Subject: Re: [xmca] adult affordances
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Martin
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Reading your post, I was thinking about Harre's explaining
> >>>> Wittgenstein's
> >>>>> notion of rule following and language games.
> >>>>> Harre gives the example, When I say *6 times 6* persons
> >>>>> participating in our *way of life* will respond [immediately?
> >> automatically?
> >>>> intentionally?
> >>>>> with self-control?]  with the answer *36* If cell phones as a form
> >>>>> of technology are now part of a *way of life*
> >>>> for
> >>>>> many students [part of our grammar] who is in control?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Larry
> >>>>> On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 6:31 PM, Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>
> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> An odd conjunction of issues of content and management  in my
> >>>>>> undergraduate developmental psychology course has me puzzled, and
> >>>>>> so I'm appealing for xmca help!  A few weeks ago I was expounding
> >>>>>> on the notion that the toddler lives in a world not of permanent
> >>>>>> objects but of affordances - irresistible offers to action, made by
> >>>>>> the things and
> >>>> people
> >>>>>> and places that surround him or her. Gibson, filtered through
> >> Vygotsky.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> At the same time, I was waging an unceasing war against the use of
> >>>>>> cell phones in the classroom. (Today I actually got to the point of
> >>>> confiscating
> >>>>>> them when I saw them, and telling the students they could buy them
> >>>>>> back from me later in the city center. With humor, I hope!)
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Finally, it struck me. These young adults, too, are victims of
> >>>>>> irresistible offers to action, made by their little iPhones or
> >>>>>> Nokias or whatever.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> So what is it about a cell phone that completely overwhelms any and
> >>>> every
> >>>>>> facet of self control? Why is it that I can forbid cell use at the
> >>>> start of
> >>>>>> each class, yet in seconds they start to appear? What is it that
> >>>> transforms
> >>>>>> a young adult into no more than a toddler?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Martin
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> __________________________________________
> >>>>>> _____
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> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> >>> Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar Laboratory of Comparative
> >>> Human Cognition Department of Communication University of California,
> >>> San Diego __________________________________________
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-- 
Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
Sanford I. Berman Post-Doctoral Scholar
Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition
Department of Communication
University of California, San Diego
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