Sometimes I think no one reads my blog, because I get so few comments. Adam is a former philosophy and BIC student now purusing graduate work in theology at Duke. He is also a Facebook friend.
He facebooked me this morning with the most amazing set of comments that I'm posting here with his permission. We are probably going to write an article together. How's that for the pedagogical value of technology?
Subject: Leeeeerooooooy Jeeenkinnnnnnns!
I saw that title for your latest blog and thought, "No, there is no way she is talking about what I'm thinking about." But you were! Gave me a good laugh this morning.
I definitely share your concern that video games and technology in general mostly serve to multiply and strengthen the illusions that already enslave us to lives devoid of critical reflection. But since I am a gamer myself, I thought I'd share my own perspective.
I would identify four classes of video games. These correspond to their different foundational offerings:
(1) Amusement. Some games are just designed to amuse you through various objectives. These would be shooters, puzzle games, and games where the objective is to out score your opponent or obtain a higher score against yourself. I think these games are mostly time wasters that distract the mind from serious thought through immediate pleasure and gratification, and contribute toward the development of ADD.
(2) Character development. Games in this category would be like World of Warcraft and EverQuest. The focus is on creating a digital avatar of yourself/alternate personality, and then living through that character in the digital world to become stronger, obtain rare items, complete quests, and partner with other gamers via their own digital avatars. These types of games strike me as the most dangerous, by far. Playing these games and actually completing their objectives requires a tremendous amount of commitment, of time spent planning, searching, and executing. They can continue indefinitely, as long as the gamer wants to continue playing it. To immerse oneself in these games is really to say, "Yes, I like the cave. It's a pretty comfortable place." There can be good things that come from it, however, as when people who interact digitally develop friendships through conversation that they can then develop outside the context of the game. But even this is not a guarantee because it is very possible and perhaps likely that such friendships will be developed only through the digital media, which, in turn, creates the illusion of friendship, intimacy, and forces the person to withdraw further from the real world into the digital world for the sake of these digital friendships and that digital life. It can thus tend to offer only the illusion of community and inhibit gamers from enjoying the real life.
(3) Teamwork. These games would be like Counter-Strike, Left 4 Dead, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. These are usually based on rounds--there is a definite beginning and end to the game (unlike character development games). There is competition, but unlike straight amusement games, this requires teamwork, the planning and execution of moves through conversation. Because these games are temporary and require conversation and teamwork to satisfy objectives, these games seem less susceptible to the criticisms leveled at 1 and 2. There is amusement and there is conversation, but any friendships developed through these media must be further developed outside them because these games end. They are at worst merely temporary caves (unless someone becomes obsessed and keeps starting new games over and over again after prior ones end); at best, they are friendly competitions and exercises of teamwork that are parallel to a tennis match, only in digital form (and without the physical exertion--unless you go really crazy with the keyboard! lol).
(4) Interactive novel. These are games that I think you would find most interesting. These would include mostly single-player role playing games like Final Fantasy series, Persona series, Xenogears, and Chrono Trigger. These games have a beginning and they have an end. The point of these games is to immerse the player into a story where they either play themselves or assume a different personality. The plots of these games can be very sophisticated and many of them explore philosophical themes. One of my favorites is Xenogears. That game is really indebted to Nietzsche, Freud, and Jung for example. Another game I'm playing, Persona 3, is really enjoyable, and my friend who recommended it is convinced that it is ultimately a critique of the Cartesian self. So playing these games can in fact be quite an exercise in critical reflection. Plus they have the elements that go to make up a good story, like heroes, villains, drama, defeat, victory, loss, despair, and romance.
So that's how I would view the video game scene. I think these categories are helpful pedagogically as they can help show the good and bad to look for in games. They are not airtight as some games overlap, but the four emphases, I think, are helpful.
I mostly play 3 and 4. 2 scares me to death--for myself and for the world-- and the one time I tried to play one (of the Star Wars variety), I realized the time commitment involved would be huge and that it would be a very vain pursuit to devote myself to the optimization of my digital character rather than use that time to optimize my actual self. That's my personal experience . I know of one guy who has admitted--and shown signs of--addiction to World of Warcraft. He knows someone who has created marital problems because of his interest in the games. The news will often run stories of type 2 gaming excesses. Very scary stuff indeed. As for 1 type games, minesweeper can be fun, but it it ultimately a time waster.
With 3 type games, I enjoy playing them. I like the teamwork and competition--to me, it really is like sitting down to play the equivalent of a tennis match or flag football. And I have actually developed friendships with some people outside of these games. Unfortunately, those friendships have to remain digitally mediated through instant messages and e-mails because of the physical distance. But nevertheless, we have talked and prayed for one another, and that seems good to me. The danger that I am aware of though is falling into this illusory sense of intimacy, or to over dependence on these friendships So while being able to pray for one another is good, and while it is good to know someone cares for you and is interested in such mundane details as how your day went, the danger is taking these friendships as substitutes for face-to-face friendships. I think I've done a good job of avoiding that temptation, however. In fact, I've hung out with more people this semester and more frequently than I perhaps ever have in my entire life. So at least in my experience, these games have proven worthwhile sources of fun and community that serve to supplement the fun and community I have with friends face-to-face.
4 type games: it is awesome to play these games and view them as interactive novels. Some of them can indeed be very thought provoking. And they are fun. They do not tend to develop friendships, though, as they are mostly 1 player experiences. But if they are approached as fun interactive novels, then they can have a worthwhile place, I think, in our lives.
So those are my thoughts, Anne. I may have covered a lot of what you have been thinking about already or discussed at the technology institute. I thought I could at least use this opportunity to gather my thoughts and share them with you for your own reflection and insight.
I hope everything is going well as the semester draws to a close!
Adam
More on the technology workshop, again I'm struck by how much I am not particularly engaged with the readings when I read them. Partly it is I took on too many obligations this semester, and don't really have the time and intellectual space to devote to thinking about it until a few minutes before class. So it has become yet another thing to do on Tuesdays, and walking across campus to darkest Peru is no small matter. but at the same time there's a community building and a diverse one in age, discipline, interest in New Media. The discussion generally stimulates real thought and I love my thoughts about it afterwards and I'm surprised by how much what we talk about relates to what I'm teaching in Ancient Philosophy and in yoga to a lesser degree. So purpose served.
In someways, participating in the seminar has given me renewed compassion for how students must often feel. They are busy, trying to do too many things, walking from the science building to Morrison, they too often find little to say about the readings when encountering them on their own... so the job of the teacher is to make the classroom a space where there is value added to the pre-work and the post-work.
The extent to which technology can help us do that is an open question to me. In some ways sure, I really like having students do an online journal before class so I can see where they are and I like that it is a mini -private conversation between me and each student. I wouldn't want to have a pre class blog or discussion board. I like the private nature of it. Philosophical reflection has this private component. This semester many of my students haven't kept up with the journals and are asking to make them up and I've told them no, the purpose is to prime the intellectual pump for class, for me and for them and if that exchange doesn't happen before class, then the main purpose is lost. Technology definitely makes this pre-class exchange possible.
I've assigned a blog for the first time this semester (in lieu of four papers tied to small group discussion days). I did not specify when the blog entries need to be done. The large majority of the students have not done anything at all yet with the blogs and there are oh, four weeks left in the semester. Some have and I'm impressed with what have seen of their work in this domain. So I see blogging as possibly having similar post-class value that journaling does for pre class value. I just haven't got the parameters set quite right, or maybe the lack of specificity will turn out okay in the end.
However, what is currently on my mind is how much "New Digital Media" affects the in class situation. I'm not talking about Power Point or Twitter here but the way in which students and to some extent faculty consciousness now resides in a domain that is not real.
Last week and this week, the subject of the technology workshop is gaming. In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a gamer. Truthfully, I have never been much for games of any sort. We played them some in my family of origin but I always found them rather stressful (But that's a blog post in its own right). Even as a teenager, I'd rather just sit and have a conversation with friends than play Pictionary or Trivial Pursuit. I did not play D and D. My step daughter is very active in gaming and it means a lot to her. She also attends Ren faires and Animae conventions so I think I tend to see gaming in this light. The deliberate pursuit of a false reality. It doesn't to me even count as Baudrillard's hyper real because it isn't an accurate map of a now decaying reality. It is more like following the path of non being. Not that it doesn't exist, but as the Goddess tells Parmenides, it is not a productive path. "do you wanna date my avatar? hotter than reality by far...." Maybe so, but the Goddess has it right, not a productive path, that's what I'd say.
Simply put, distinguishing what is meaningful and valuable in this world is hard enough, it is hard enough to find true north and stay the course, why in the world would one invest their limited time and resources in such pursuits?
I was responding to the "all subjects are interesting until ruined for us" claim on a previous post and it is that issue I'd like to revist. Sure all subjects are interesting, but not all subjects are equally worthwhile. When I was first starting to get into yoga, I would go up to Dallas from time to time to study with Ally and Randy. They studied with a woman named Jaya Waters. She talked about the importance of "digging one hole." Not that this teaching is hers alone, but I do want to give credit for the context in which I first heard it. That image has stuck with me in many ways over the years, we have finite amount of energy and if we dig lots of holes none of them are going to be very deep.
So over the years I've gone further down the rabbit hole of yoga. I'm still more diverse in my interests than some. I'm still digging many holes, but there are large segments of public experience I really have no idea about. I gave up fashion magazines ages ago because they depressed me. I watch almost no tv, I don't watch you tube unless someone I know well and who knows me well, sends me a link to watch. For example, Leeroy Jenkins....16 million views on you-tube nothing to me...until last Tuesday.
so the conversation started off with Aristotle, character, plot, good stuff.. but ended up with Halo and World of Warcraft. We had an interesting discussion about the use of computers, I primarily see a computer for work, not that I don't goof off..facebook emailing friends, but I don't really text, I don't really chat or twitter... And when I do facebook or email, generally I should be working, that's what I sit at the computer to do. Blogging is not really work per se, but the blogs I write and keep up with have to do with philosophy or teaching or yoga, so they are definitely not other than what I do. Happily, I love what I do and I see it as what Plato calls "serious play."
At some point, I just put my head down on the desk in despair. Watching these games, wow. We are pretty far in a cave of very pernicious shadows. Or at least that's my take on it. Interestingly, the two grad students in the course displayed obvious enthusiasm for the games and they might have enough intellectual eros to use these shadows in productive ways to teach their students, but I do not nor do I have any interest in doing so.
I'm glad I know what I'm up against, but I really do see it as something I'm up against, a huge obstacle to learning, not something that will lead to the liberation of conscious.
Games are on the docket again today, having ranted in my pre class blog, perhaps I will keep my in class rants to a minimum.
Perhaps.
Last night I just watched the newest episode of Modern Family, a new comedy on ABC, in which Phil (one of the main characters, a father) receives an iPad for his birthday. **Side note - for those of you not watching Modern Family, you should give it a shot. It is quite possibly one of the most hilarious things on TV.** Anyway, the whole episode is centered around Phil desperately wanting an iPad for his birthday, but his wife oversleeps and does not make it to the store in time to purchase one. So, she (Claire) is chaotically running around in order to get him one (they are, of course, sold out everywhere). Finally, at the end of the episode, Claire manages to get him one and Phil, who had previously been depressed, just lights up when he sees the iPad. There is a hilarious shot at the end of the show where Phil is caressing his iPad and telling him he loves it.
This episode reminded me of the day I got my iPhone. Embarrassingly enough, I can totally relate to Phil's feelings about his new piece of technology. You are so mesmerized by its capabilities that it takes you almost completely out of this world and into the technological world of your device. They marvel and amaze us, but are they helping us or distracting us from living our lives? Is it ok that technology has such a hold on us? I do not know. I'm still convinced that the good can outweigh the bad, but I thought this small parody on our obsession with new technological devices was hilarious if not even a little bit enlightening. You should watch it too. Catch it on hulu.com or abc.com.
The April 8 issue of The New York Review of Books has an article entitled “The Corrupt Reign of Emperor Silvio” written by Alexandre Stille, a professor of journalism at Columbia. It is about Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his enduring popularity in the face of repeated scandals. It may just be the Italians, but the article focuses on how the prime minister’s media empire influences public opinion in his favor.
First, some of the scandals. He has a peculiar relationship with a teenage girl from Naples, Noemi Letzia, who calls him “Papi.” Is she his illegitimate daughter or one of his lovers? Says his wife, Veronica Letizia: “I wish she was his daughter.” The wife has publically asked for a divorce. Then there were the photographs of a party with topless women and pantless male politicians at his pleasure palace on Sardinia. And call girls show up at parties in the presidential palace in Rome. For sixteen years he has been fighting legal charges of corruption, bribery, and ties to organized crime. He had gotten Senate and Chamber of Deputies to pass a law giving him immunity while he was still in office, but last October Italy’s highest court threw the law out.
Now comes the role of media. On December 5, 350,000 Italians attended a “No to Berlusconi Day in Rome. The defenders of Berlusconi said the few newspapers and magazines that dared criticize Berlusconi had created “a climate of hate.” Berlusconi owned television stations, radio stations, and newspapers launched character attacks on his critics. In response parliament passed another law to protect him from prosecution. His poll numbers remains high even as he appoints attractive showgirls to government positions. Probably the most important thing that Berlusconi media do is to make sure that many Italians never hear about the scandals. He has bragged, “Don’t you realize that something does not exist—not an idea, a politician or a product—unless it is on television.” The one area of media that Berlusconi does not control is new media, but so far his critics have not been able to use these effectively. Meanwhile Italian-Swedish director Erik Gandini has made a documentary about all this called “Videocracy.” AP has written of it: “Take a sex scandal, add scantily clad women in a culture where television lies at the nexus of power and politics, and the result is SEX, THIGHS AND VIDEOCRACY.” I’ve got to see it.
Last week in the technology workshop we read Bill Viola's "Will there be condominiums in data space."
Bill Viola is a famous artist, known particularly for his work with video art.
I really didn't know much about him before this discussion. Dave Hendon led the discussion and he started off having us watch a piece called
The Reflecting PoolViola makes a series of interesting claims in this essay. For example, "Possibly the most starling thing about our individual existence is that it is continuous. It is an unbroken thread- we have been living this same moment ever since we were conceived. It is memory, and to some extent sleep, that gives us the impression of a life of discrete parts."
"Our cultural concept of education and knowledge is based upon the idea of building something up from a ground, from zero, and starting piece by piece to put things together, to construct edificies. It is additive."
One of the things he finds liberating about the internet/computer/video interface is the different model of information acquistion. On the one hand there's a matrix model, where you can start anywhere, but also a "schizo or spaghetti model" Everything is irrelevant and significant at the same time."
I had just finished talking about the
Symposium and I was reflecting on how class had gone. On this particular day, I was not really thrilled with how class went. I was wanting to attend to a lot of textual detail and was having difficulty generating conversation/ reflection on why the various details of the text might matter philosophically. This is not an unusual occurrence when I teach the Symposium. Partly it is the first non aphoristic work we really grapple with, where we have an intact structure. Partly, I have spent more than half my life thinking about the details and how they fit in the whole of this text but the students have not, at least not yet. Partly, there's the attachment problem. I want them to love it and that gets in the way. Anyway, I was thinking about the whole attention to detail in the context of an ordered whole issue as we were talking watching the reflecting pool and discussing Viola.
The reflecting pool is a rather, well I might say ponderous, presentation of a person's engagement with a pool in a natural setting. On the surface, it seems like not much is happening, but a lot is. I was thrown into the same situation that my students where trying to make sense of something on a first "read" that has vast depth and I was a bit at a loss as to what to say in any analytical way. I could say how I felt watching it, but not really what it meant.
The next class went way better. We stepped back and looked at the big picture then dove into the details.
Well, I admittedly have been away from the technology blogging scene and blogging scene in general for a couple of weeks. Spring Break had me working hard for a couple days and then out of town for a couple of days, and this last week has been "recovery" week in which I have been in desperate catch-up mode. I must say, however, that I am starting to love my New Media course more and more. It has quickly become the highlight of my week. This past week we have a very lively and engaging discussion about "The Media is the Message." After much contempletive thought on it, we decided Avatar was a good example of this and somehow skillfully brought Plato's Cave into the picture (kuddos to Dr. Bowery and yay for a recollection of my not too-distant BIC past...).
I just wanted to write a quick snip-it about a thought or two that have been following me for the past several days. In reflecting on my undergraduate experience, I realized that my time studying abroad was one of the most best, fondest, and most character-shaping times of my life. And it occurred to me, what happens to students who cannot afford to study abroad? I mean this in a monetary and time-line sense. What if my degree plan doesn't allow that flexibility? What if I need to keep working to support myself or just cannot afford to go? What happens then?
So I am left with this question: Can technology help take us there, and if so, how? Obviously we can never fully recreate a study abroad situation through the use of any media, but can it help? I think of my own accessibility to French newspapers, radio stations, and TV stations, and this has helped keep my knowledge of (and love for) the French language alive and well. Can we use these new media techniques to bring people into different worlds (i.e., foreign cultures)? If so, how? What does it look like? Can we bring alive language, architecture, art, people? I really have no idea, but I am on a mission these next few weeks to really "think outside the box" on what new media could potentially do for us as educators. Let us see where the journey takes me. Your thoughts are welcome!
If I understand McLuhan correctly, electronic media change the way we experience the world. We get beyond sequential, linear thinking and restore an earlier, almost mythical, way of dealing with the world but at an enhanced level. We recover the tribal and move toward a global village. I am ambivalent about this. I think I can accept the idea that through electronic media we experience reality in a way that is different. Where I have doubts is with the global village idea or that there is emerging one world tribe. Is it really one tribe? Often what we see is people using blogs or online sources just to get information that falls within a perspective we already have. Given their power such media may make even more divided tribes. Granted, McLuhan sees his one world reality as “diverse and discontinuous.” I think the trick is finding ways to link self-selected tribes together. Just because we can talk to anyone in world almost immediately does not mean that we will. This is not entirely a new condition. It is just that powerful tools can make existing tendencies stronger. There is a good thing in the WEB in that we change talk to people from completely different cultural backgrounds. I guess my conclusion is that we as educators need to encourage our students to culturally expansive exchanges to avoid a narrow versiion of tribalism.
On a personal note I have to say that I still feel like an alien in the new world. I was not born in it. I have spent over fifty years in a book (Gutenbreg) world. I cannot and do not want to leave it entirely. I take some encouragement from the model of Homer and the Bible. There oral tradition became written tradition. Maybe something analogous can happen as we move forward. I would buy a Kindl if I had a few extra bucks.
Here's a blog posting I've been meaning to write for two weeks.
I actually haven't been to technology seminar in a few weeks. I missed a week because of the yoga workshop, then it snowed, then I was hosting a guest speaker, then it was spring break.
This blog entry is for the week it snowed, I think. In the mid seventies, Theodor Nelson wrote a self-published manifesto, Computer Lib/ Dream Machines. Our text book calls it "the most important book in the history of new media." In a nutshell Nelson articulates a vision of self-education where we all take the responsibility to teach ourselves. He sees computers as the means by which we will achieve this end.
His view of education as it currently is accords well with Paulo Fiere's description of the "banking system of education." He envisions a brave new world based upon six premises relevant to teaching..
I thought I'd respond briefly to each of them through the rubric of teaching yoga and teaching philosophy.
1. The human mind is born free, yet everywhere it is in chains. The educational system serves mainly to destroy for most people. Both my yoga training and my philosophical training tells me that the human mind/soul/ spirit is essentially free... however we qua embodied creatures, fall into a circumstance where we forget this orginal freedom. Education is only way back to this state of freedom. True it may enslave us for a long time along the way. Plato's Allegory of the Cave is instructive here. Socrates tells Glaucon to imagine our souls in their uneducated state... Without education of the appropriate sort, we are living in a cave in chains and we have been there "since childhood." Plato doesn't say we are born there, which I take it to mean that he agrees with Nelson, our mind is born free. However, he disagrees with Nelson on the value of education.
2. Everything is interesting, until ruined for us. Hmm. Maybe so. but some things are more interesting than others or at least more worthy of our attention. Computers give us the interest of immediacy. Paul Mueller Ortega teaches that we should think rather in terms of superficial and deep. Philosophy and yoga teach us to become interested in what is deep. Left to our own devices, left to wander in the universe of U tube how do we learn to distinguish between the interesting and the truly valuable.
3. There are no subjects... Well, sort of ... sure disciplines did not always exist in the way that we think of them now...They are a historical construct, but still there are modes of thinking about the world that differ from other modes of thinking about the world. Indeed part of what the earliest philosophers of any tradition are doing is defining what it means to think philosophically. What is the domain of thinking that is about thinking? The subject of yoga too, it might look like asana or poses but really the subject is the mind and its quest to know its nature. What distinguishes yoga from something that is not yoga.. difficult to say, but not impossible. The cultivation of consciousness that's the subject. Potentially everything could serve the cultivation of consciousness, but not everything does.
4. There is no natural or necessary order of learning. This one is a bit silly. On the one hand, surely Hegel and other philosophers are right to say that we've always already begun. To ask the philosophical question is to do philosophy and that can happen at any time and at any place... But order of learning matters. Nelson himself clearly believes this. He's offering premises relevant to teaching. That means we have to accept the premises and go forward from there. The premises come first and we base our actions on the premises. In yoga, there's an order to learning. In some systems, like Astangha you don't even get to learn the second pose until you've mastered the first pose completely.
5.Anyone retainning his natural mental facilities can learn anything practically on his own, given encouragement and resources. Sure, but what a great way to think of the point of education, encouragement and resource. Why deprive yourself of the learning of countless generations about the path ahead.
6. Most teachers mean well, but they are so concerned with promoting their image, attitudes and style of order that very little else can be communicated in the time remaining, and almost none of it attractively. That's indoctrination not education and maybe that's the crux of the matter. Nelson sees our current educational system as indoctrination of a deeply insidious sort. In some contexts, I agree, but true education of the soul, of the sort offered by philosophy, yoga, literature, history, the sciences offers much more. It offers the way out of the cave in a way that technology alone never can.
Well, as luck would have it, I am teaching the sophists in Ancient Philosophy on the very day that I am leading the technology seminar discussion on Marshall McLuhan's essay the Medium is the Message. There really is nothing new under the philosophical sun.
I'm up late (well, not really late, but with springing forward, my sleep is a bit disturbed.) I was thinking of that in terms of Protagoras as well. Protagoras said, "Humans are the measure of all things... Of things that are, that they are. Of things that are not, that they are not." Isn't it amazing that society/ the government just decided what time it actually is. Of things that are... that they are, time included.
Anyway, since sleep is not immediately present and I can not just "make it so." I was reading student journals and thinking about how to approach class discussion tomorrow. I've had some thought already and I really do like online journals because I can see where the students are before I make my philosophical pitch.
Of the six students who have posted responses to the sophists are mixed. There is the typical, but wait there really is truth and god is the creator of it response, actually no one has quite said this, but several students were quite sympathetic to the sophists. Lauren mentioned she was looking forward to discussion because she thought many people would view them negatively. I too am looking forward to discussion and it is quite heartening to hear that students do also. Here in a sense, I agree that the medium, discussion of ideas, is really what I'm after more than what the idea is. Sometimes the medium is the message.
One student, Stephanie is a professional writer and she wrote quite "persuasively" about how much she likes to write because she knows she has the power to persuade/manipulate the reader, actually she was mostly interested in persuading the teacher, but right now that's her most immediate audience, so not surprising her focus would be there. She looks forward to mastering logos (Gorgias' terms).I thought about Plato's description of writing in the Phaedrus, that it is a pharmakon, a drug, something that entices us and lulls us to sleep or keep us alert as the case may be, but also a poison, something that seeps into our being and potentially destroys us. That's the problem with the medium of technology, it is both drug and poison.
. Another student Steve, a communications major noted that we basically live in a sophistic world and he remarked..... Having taken several courses on speech and studied it to some extent, many people over estimate how useful and powerful a good speaker really is. It is amazing how much it can inspire; create fear, positive/negative emotions, and many other things through that of simple vocal variations and wording. Some of the most powerful people ever were so talented in this and in our age of technology, I feel we are losing some of this power. We rely on texting and emailing so much that we are starting to become numb to speech in general."
That's a fascinating observation... what is good rhetorical skill in 130 characters... Does it really even matter anymore? What if the medium is so reductive that there is not even room for itself to be a message.... But also what does it mean to become numb to speech, wow so much is lost. I was even thinking about the numbness to speech in terms of the whole Social World twitter debacle last semester. Students are numb to speech of a certain sort. Here it seems the new medium obscures the message of the old medium and if that's the message of the new medium... I think we should listen carefully.
I was joking with my friend Amy the other night about how much we each must have liked homework when we were in school, because we chose a profession that guaranteed we’d never be without it! We were talking on the phone instead of meeting for dinner because we both had a stack of papers [...]
