"The Idea of the Ideas" TTIX 2009 Keynote Address

8/14/2019 "The Idea of the Ideas" TTIX 2009 Keynote Address

1/26

TTIX 2009 Presentation - The Idea of the Idea

Chris Lott

May/June 2009

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

When I was considering what to talk about here at TTIX, it seemed

fitting at a conference whose raison detre is the exchange of ideas to

consider what ideas are, historically and conceptually, how they have

informed (and been informed) by technological progress, and how our

educational system does (and does not) and can (and cannot) help us

have them.

The Idea of the Idea

For those who slept through intro to philosophy, Ill begin with a briefhistory of the idea of the idea which spans two vastly different

conception of human industry and our place in the world.

Plato and IdealismThe term idea comes first from Plato and his Doctrine of Forms.

Existence was comprised of two realms: the intelligible realm of

perfect, eternal Ideas (Forms) and the sensible realm of familiar,

concrete, solid objects like my head. The intelligible realm is

necessarily comprised of shadows and echoes and imperfect copies of

these ideal forms (much like ideas as they circulate through the

blogosphere) the -ness of things that cant be pinned down

(particularly by slippery, somewhat shady philosophers) but that we

know exists: chair-ness and monkey-ness and bacon-ness that kind o

thing.

So ideas were these perfect, invisible things outside of us. The highest

calling of men (and women, if you are one) was to reveal aspects of

these forms, to uncover something of the essential nature of things.

Our capacity to do so necessarily asymptotic, the dividing line coming

arbitrarily close to-- but never quite transgressing-- the golden curve

that separates our intelligible realm from the realm of forms.

Platos analogy of the cave illustrates our predicament. In this famous

illustration, we in the intelligible realm are prisoners chained together


2/26

[6]

[7]

[8]

in a dark cave between a fire and the cave wall, our heads fixed so tha

we can only watch the play of shadows on the wall which, knowing no

better, we believe to be real things... we can learn, at least, to free

ourselves enough to turn our heads and see the actual things making

the shadow-- the actors and puppets of this planerecognizing that

even that herculean effort involved in this is not to actually access the

ideal realm, which is outside of the cave, represented by the sun, which

we know from Phaethons ill-fated ride is beyond our grasp.

Now, I dont want to put Plato on too high a pedestalhe did, after all,

famously expel the poets from his ideal Republic, accusing us of

creating third-rate and third-removed imitations of an already mimetic

worldbut this idea of the idea as an uncovering persisted and

informed our creative consciousness without serious competition for

close to 2000 years (which is about 1996 years longer than any idea

Ive ever had has lasted), in part becausedespite being conceived

during that Godless Greek Interregnumthe theory of forms very

neatly dovetails with the significant religions that followed.

And while not typically a literal philosophy held by many today, Id

argue that this conception remains, not just in religious refractions of

the world, but underlying the complexities of many fields of thought,

such as aesthetics, where our notion of the intensity of the beautiful

painting or tasty, delicious bacon is still in part derived from a

subconscious, apposite frame of idealized beauty, again, beauty-ness

and bacon-ness.

HumanismIt was as a reaction to the educational and philosophical traditions buil

upon the Platonic ground that we were given our second idea of the

idea (not to mention a new conception of education that continues to

inform our graying and decrepit system). The Humanists, convincedthat the Greeks and Romans really had it going on except for a few

*tiny* caveats regarding the potential power and perfectibility of

people developed a new idea of the idea that put human creation

squarely at its center.

The role of humans wasn't one of toil to uncover what was already

there, but to create as capably as possible, new, beautiful things that

most powerfully realized our potential and divinity; rather than seek to


3/26

[9]

draw as close as possible to the sun outside the cave, instead move

incrementally toward increasingly sufficient mimesis. Those wild and

wacky humanists maintained we could create new things that were

composed of the human spirit and reflected, through realizing our

potential, the "real" spirit of the god that gave that potential to us.

Consider how fundamental this change is in understanding who (and

what) we as humans are... In the humanist light we are makers, with

creative powers of our own, in our own small way made of the stuff of,

not just by, the gods. It's no surprise that along with a new conception

of ideas came the first instances of "creativity" as a discrete action

undertaken by humans, as a state of mind, as a happening.

So, no matter how we put the pieces together now, the modern idea of

the idea and the problematic of creativity are fundamentally aspects of

the same undertaking.

Brief Technology ProgressionNow, with that brief philosophical description in mind, consider the

outlines of the technological progression that brings us to this place:

In the early 1700s, Jacques de Vaucanson is obsessed, essentially, with

uniting these two visions of the idea through the creation of mechanica

life. He creates-- remember, this is the early 1700s-- stunning

automatons: The Flute Player is a life size reproduction of a shepherd,

complete with flexible skin for fingering the flute, that could play 12

different songs. His crowning masterpiece was The Digesting Duck,

comprised of more than 400 moving parts, a replica which could flap it

wings, drink, eat grain and even defecate. He believed that by

replicating every function of the duck he would be creating life because

it would be indistinguishable from the real thing... perhaps the earliest

instance of the idea of the Turing Test.

Inspired by Vaucanson's intricate creations, particularly the flute

playing automaton, Joseph Jacquard creates a loom that weaves

patterns based on punch cards, the holes in which determine where

hooks pull threads, creating the desired pattern. Jacquard wished to

automate the human action involved in a limited kind of creation. And

he succeeded so well that he narrowly escaped with his life after being

attacked by a mob of weavers, who rightly feared they would be


4/26

[1

0]

[1

1]

replaced by Jacquards machines.

And then Charles Babbage-- inspired by both Vaucanson and Jacquard-

creates the first mechanical computer, aka the difference engine. Not

content with this signal achievement, Babbage spends the rest of his

life attempting to create an "analytical engine" which would use punchcards to provide instructions, the language of which would be Turing

Complete before there was a Turing.

The analytical engine encompassed the fundamental attributes of the

computers you are using right now to Twitter, check sports scores and

sift through email-- the separation of the data and the program (a

collection of instructions), conditional execution and loops, and

separate units for input and output, and a processor. Each created in

purely mechanical form. The difference engine and particularly the

never-completed analytical engine so fascinated The Countess of

Lovelace, Ada King, that she created a method for calculating Bernoulli

numbers, becoming the first computer programmer.

And Babbage and Lovelace begat Stibitz and the Harvard Mark I, which

begat ENIAC, and through connecting ENIAC's children in the service of

protecting the United States during the inevitable nuclear conflagration

the ARPANET was born, which thanks to the squeeze of the not-so-

invisible hand came the Internet, which allowed Al Gore to invent the

network of the people, the World Wide Web, from which today we

derive social networks which allow all the lonely people to connect to,

hookup with, and hate on, each other.

Legacy of IndustrialismI'm dwelling on this history a bit because it's important. Because

through history we understand the vast themes from which ideas areborn and culture built... and a significant theme emerging from this

history that influences our stance towardand use oftechnology

today happens to be one that is considered least by the geeks, gamers

facebookers, bloggers, and the twittering digerati.

Babbage lived during the industrial revolution, when the Victorians

were perfecting the machinery of mass production. Babbage figured


5/26

[1

2]

out that through the division of labor-- by breaking down the processes

of production into its constituent parts-- mass production of a

consistent product was possible. Rather than creating something new

holistically, people were enlisted to create the individual parts and

assemble them into wholes. Babbage and others, propelled by the

current of commerce, put the world's eye to the other end of the

telescope and put man into the machine.

Babbage was the ultimate reductivist.

... it is said that he [Babbage] sent the following letter to Alfred,

Lord Tennyson about a couplet in "The Vision of Sin":

Every minute dies a man,

Every minute one is born

I need hardly point out to you that this calculation would tend tokeep the sum total of the world's population in a state of

perpetual equipoise, whereas it is a well-known fact that the said

sum total is constantly on the increase. I would therefore take the

liberty of suggesting that in the next edition of your excellent

poem the erroneous calculation to which I refer should be

corrected as follows:

Every minute dies a man,

And one and a sixteenth is born

I may add that the exact figures are 1.167, but something must,

of course, be conceded to the laws of metre.

Another illustration: Babbage famously listed the value of a horse in

terms of its parts: flesh worth 1 pound, 8 shillings, the hooves 1

shilling, 6 pence, even the maggots that ate the horse were assigned a

value (they were worth as much as the hooves).But in this accounting of the horse there is nothing of the ride. Babbage

believed himself to be an heir to Vaucanson, perfecting the individual

cogs in his productive mechanisms, whether those cogs be mechanical

or human. And in a sense he was correct. With the industrial revolution

came mass reproduction beyond the capacity of any individual, each

pin produced in the pin factory indistinguishable from the rest and non

of them able to be distinguished from those created the old fashioned


6/26

[1

3]

way.

In the service of commerce and progress, the factory was itself a vast

automaton that subsumed and consumed the indentured humans

within it. So I ask you if we function perfectly within such a machine,

receiving input and producing output just like everything else beingingested and shat out around us, then havent we, in essence, become

machines ourselves?

As clearly as the technologies we use continue to mirror Babbage's

principles of what came to be computing, so the world that has been

made from it continues to reflect the relationships and principles that

he-- and others of that era-- promoted. It is a vision of inevitable

progress through production, of incremental improvement and

augmentation, of technological utopianism that blurs the lines where

the human ends and the technology begins.

This matters because we live in-- and in many cases, including mine,

often promote-- a complex, partially inherited machinery that we also--

in the tradition of building airplanes in the sky-- build as we go. And

from-- and in support of-- that machinery we've haphazardly

"developed" (a term I use loosely given the varied motivations,

irrationality and levels of obliviousness that characterize the processes

an educational system that has managed to retain most of the least

productive characteristics of the original educational systems that grew

around two conceptions of the idea of the idea I outlined (in the first

case scholasticism, in the second humanism).

And in this machine, we attempt to create.

Kinds of Ideas

We all know there are many different shades in the spectrum of ideas:abstract, fulfilled, unfulfilled (valueless), sarcastic:

abstract, plot wheels

unfulfilled, without value

sarcastic, well-- that was a good idea

fulfilled, good ideas, ideas that manifest (or uncover) something o

value


7/26

[1

4]

If were going to concern ourselves with ideas, I see no reason not to

concern ourselves with the goodeven greatones. Given the

resistance we will encounter in directly addressing this concern it

doesnt make sense to play for the traditionally small stakes wagered i

our everyday commodified, NCLB-ized, institutionally bounded

activities.

Good IdeasWhen we speak positively of ideas we almost always speak of ideas

paired with their execution or implementation or at least some plan

for doing so. Traveling faster than light and discovering oddly human-

like seductive green aliens is an idea its only a good idea in the form

of Star Trek.

There's an essential solipsism in the abstract idea or the idea of the

idea. In one sense there's very little exchange of ideas, even at a

conference like this, but much exchange of the practices and products

of ideas. When we say "that's a great idea" we are usually referring to

the product of an idea, the practice, or the process. Every idea we

contemplate is subject-- or vulnerable-- to the query "what's the idea

behind that?"

Good ideas engender their own questions. Good ideas-- and this was

the great, liberating and thus terrifying, insight of postmodernism and

post-structuralism-- constantly undermine themselves, creating new

ground we can build upon only with new ideas.

Good ideas are wily, difficult, unpredictable, unsure, chaotic things... as

tend to be the people who come up with them. The fact is, the

educational system we labor within has never been much good atrecognizing or supporting great ideas and creativity because it's never

been particularly good at dealing with the people who have them. In

attempting to create a consistent, egalitarian system of education

we've wrung out the chaotic and capricious elements in (and on) which

genius thrives because they are unpredictable and difficult to assess

and above all qualitative and so a potential source of "unfairness."


8/26

[1

5]

[1

6]

And thanks to an American ethos that mistakes self-help for self-

realization and substitutes rationalization for understanding and

awareness comes a belief system-- an aesthetic, really-- that can't

contemplate the simple logic distinguishing between necessary and

sufficient conditions (in other words, work and talent) and would thus,

in affirming that there's nothing special about good generative ideas

and the genius and talent that creates them, kill them off through an

ironic neglect.

Quite simply, talent and creativity and genius operate, by and large in

spite of-- if not in direct opposition to-- the academy. This isn't a wholly

bad thing... fine edges can be keenly honed by the friction of the

stones which they are drawn against... but those same stones can also

batter blades into plowshares and the life out of an intellectual body.

What Is Needed for Good, Even Great IdeasWhat is needed for good, even great ideas to exist is to consciously

foster them-- meaning supporting both creativity and its application.

This demands a manifold of abilities and affordances: Places for both

connection AND contemplation to occur; activities of mind and life that

are conducive to creativity and supportive of a creative life, including

cultivation and training of attention; an understanding of what work is

and a habituation to engaging in it; a capacity for trust; the ability to

self-evaluate in a historical context rather than just that of the reflexive

moment, and an ability to find one's own chaotic state of flow.

Some of this is readily embodied, even natural to, social networks and

applications, but much of it is not. And where it is, such activities and

capacities are squelched by a conformity that stems from well-meaning

attempts to provide consistency (which is often mistaken for fairness)

or out of simply being overwhelmed by the demands of the media ontop of all the other demands of teaching.

Social networks and software, of which this conference, like every

educational conference today, is obsessed, provide immense

opportunities for educator and educatee... but also pose a very real

threat to learners. No matter the medium there are strong and weak

ties, productive and unproductive connections. Without conscientious


9/26

[1

7]

[18]

[1

9]

attention (and right there we have one of the most significant

problems) the networks we participate in take only a few basic forms

familiar to all of us: the ghost town, the shouting match, the arena, the

echo chamber, or the coffee shop. We don't expect to make significant

connections in most of these places. If we're smart we value the

informal and serendipitous relationships which comprise the individual

threads of our grand tapestries. However, the technologies we attempt

to use, too often, as simple tools are in truth an environment which

applies a constant, ubiquitous pressure that warps the ways of the

unprepared and erodes the will of the insecure.

We have an obligation as instantiators and tireless promoters of these

networks to walk the walk, to learn ourselves how to put these

networks to productive use rather than having them use us. Because,

as we well know, few of those with the capacity to create the systems

we harness care about the quality or intent of the use the tools are put

to or the needs engendered by those uses, they simple want to put

*us* to harness.

If youre philosophically inclined you can call this technological

determinism... or, as I prefer, "technological somnambulism" (coined in

an essay by Langdon Winner titled "Technology as a Form of Life"),which encapsulates the idea that the problem isnt technologys

neutrality or not, which can be argued along many different vectors,

but the fact that most of the time most of us aren't disengaged from

the machine-- which can be a very valuable state to be in-- but

sleepwalking within it, blindly wandering through Babbages digital

legacy. Disengagement can be a positive, productive action...

sleepwalking rarely is.

The short-circuit inherent in this disconnection, which gives the

technology unwarranted power and primacy, can be illustrated by a

joke:

Old "Doc" Bloom owns a hardware store, but he's become famous

for his miracle cures for arthritis. He always has a long line of


10/26

[2

0]

[2

patients outside his store, waiting to see him.

One day a little old lady, completely bent over, shuffles over,

leaning on her cane. When her turn comes she creeps into the

store... and emerges just 20 minutes or so later walking

completely erect, her head held high and a beatific smile on herface.

"It's a miracle!" says a woman waiting outside. "You walked in

bent practically in half and now you're walking like an 18 year old

What did Doc Bloom do?"

And the woman looks at her and answers "He gave me a longer

cane."

Depending on your perspective, this joke can be taken differently. Do

our students-- do we?-- just need longer, better canes?

OK, since that joke [did/didnt] go over, let's try this one on for size

(that's an advance pun attack, as you'll see):

A man goes to a tailor to try on a suit he's had made. He says to

the tailor "I need this sleeve taken in! It's at least two inches too

long!"

The tailor says "no no no... just bend your elbow like this... see,

that pulls up the sleeve."

The man says, "OK, but now look at the collar! When I bend my

elbow the collar goes halfway up the back of my head."

"So?" the tailor says. "Just raise your head up and back... perfect.


11/26

1]

[2

2]

[23]

"Wait!" the man says, "Now the left shoulder is three inches lower

than the right!"

"No problem" the tailor says, "Just bend your waist way over to

the left and it evens out."

So the man leaves the store wearing the suit, his right elbow

crooked and sticking out, his head up and back, and all the while

leaning down to the left. The only way he can walk is with a

jerking, spastic gait.

As he's making his way down the street, two people walking on

the other side notice him.

"Look at that poor crippled guy," the first says. "My heart goes ou

to him."

"Yeah," says the second, "that's sad. But his tailor must be a

genius! That suit fits him perfectly!"

I often wonder as I attempt to find the best way to use blogs or am

asked again how to use X or Y in the classroom, with X most often

being, right now, Twitter or Facebook, if I really am a genius... or at

least as much a genius as that tailor was.

There are no guarantees-- those living in a bubble of willful

technological utopianism in which genius thrives in multitudes, art is

created without concentration and humans productively multitask, in

which there is no problem technology cannot solve and always will, jus

in time, can proceed apace, looking for the next longer cane for

communication and teaching students to properly perambulate in their

ill-fitting technological suits. This isn't the first nor will it be the last


12/26

time of intense technological change, nor is awareness of the

limitations of our (any) system new. All this has existed before and we

can see how little change has resulted. I was recently reading John

Henry Newman's Idea of the University, written in the 1850s, and with

a bit of tweaking to modernize the language, much of it would fit right

into any contemporary journal of education. And, to a great extent, our

broken system does work because all that is demanded of it is theworkaday.

But I ask you, is that enough?

We can coast... or we can attempt to take this opportunity-- and this is

a time of great opportunity that we all recognize-- to change our

practice by engaging in an honest assessment of the context we

operate in, learning from the past and putting the tools and

technologies at our disposal to resist the tide and incorporate

subversion.

Fundamentally, to support creativity is to help learners, including

ourselves, develop the capacity forand an understanding how to

engage inself-critique and self-realization. We have to support our

learners being a different kind of learner than most are even aware

exists and then guide them towards mechanisms which will support the

creative and generative state of mindand continue to do so after our

part in the process is over.

So the operative question is: what do we do? If we care about ideas,

and particularly if we care about having and supporting good ones,

which means supporting creativity and, yes, talent and even genius,

what can we do to create a better environment for them?

Training Attention and Cultivating Mindfulness

Attention is simultaneously the single most important and neglectedskill, capacity and trait in our educational environment today. The

research is clear; the verdict is in: there is not only no such thing as

multi-tasking, but attempting to multi-task has an inevitably negative

effect on our productivity, efficiency and accuracy.

The positive effects of continuous partial attention, which is an


13/26

[2

4]

attractive theory for which there is no evidence, and witty repartee

aside (I'm particularly fond of Stephen Downes' idea that by directing

his intelligence toward four activities he is magnifying his IQ four-fold),

the idea that multi-tasking is an emergent cognitive property is so

much wishful-thinking engaged in by those who want to believe they

perform better doing multiple tasks or who can't find any obvious

escape from the demands that require it.

The brain possesses remarkable plasticity, its true, but research

consistently shows that our brains have evolved for single-focus

activity... if multi-tasking ability is an emergent cognitive property, and

thats arguable to say the least, the process of that emergence has at a

minimum tens of thousands of years remaining before multi-tasking

exists as we wish it did.

From research into tasking and focus we know that attention benefits

from-- and needs-- training. There's a wealth of research demonstrating

both the largely negative effects of burgeoning communication and

entertainment technology on our ability to pay attention and simple

(but not necessarily easy) ways to improve it. Ironically, the currency o

the "attention economy" quantifies and rewards intermittent,

lightweight engagement... working in opposition, most of the time, towhat we tend to mean about when we talk about attention.

Unsurprisingly, the key to improving attention is to increasingly pay

attention. Engaging in the practice of paying attention increases the

ability to pay attention just as using a muscle increases the strength of

that muscle. In fact, cognitive scientists have come to treat attention

as an organ system akin to our systems of circulation and digestion.

Research results and anecdotal evidence both support theeffectiveness of attention training activities and software.

At the very least, attention is something that needs to be addressed in

our curriculum, if not be integrated as a 21st century learning and

literacy skill.

Listening, Concentration and Meditation


14/26

[2

5]

[2

6]

[2

7]

Listening is perhaps the most common manifestation of attention. To

actively listen is to pay attention. Listening demands concentration.

This is going to sound crazy to some, but one of the best ways to

improve concentration and the fundamental skill of listening, and one

which directly ties into the activities of self-criticism and meta-cognition, is meditation. Research over the last few years has

demonstrated the physical effects of meditation on brain activity both

during meditation and after. I dont know that I see much prospect of

formal meditation becoming a regular part of our curriculum and

activities

But meditation doesnt necessarilymean sitting in the lotus position

and considering nothing or attempting to open our third eye orchanting a mantra. Engaging in meditative "practice" in the form of

mindfulness-- developing the meta-cognitive ability to choose to pay

attention and engaging in the overt practice of mindfulness--in daily

activities, has consistently proven to be an effective antidote to the

omnipresent distractions of our noisy environment and is a

fundamental part of learning.

How can we invite and instill mindful practice?

ContemplationI continue to believe that the vast majority of significant creative acts

are essentially individual... or perhaps its more accurately to say they

wouldnt exist but for an essential component of individual activity.

True co-creation is exceedingly rare (though rightly sought after). No

matter what else informed their activities, no one held Da Vincis handwhile he painted or made a Vulcan mind-meld with Einstein as he

worked through his thought experiments.

Which isnt to say that there isnt a social phenomenon engaged in

setting the stage for-- and following through with-- ideas, but to say

there has to be space for, and promotion of, individual contemplation,

space that is increasingly being overrun by our pursuit of connections


15/26

[2

8]

[2

9]

[30]

and the ubiquitous pressure and demands of social systems?

Relative to our understanding of how to productively increase

connections and engagement, our understanding of how to provide for

productive disconnection and thus room for contemplation is

rudimentary.

Its easy to promote productive solitude, particularly if it is paired with

skills at concentrating and paying attention, but its not as clear how to

make these a recognized part of our educational activities, particularly

in light of the push towards social technologies and public

performances.

I do recognize that the chaos of sociality, which can be a kind of

prophylactic for the conception of ideas is consistently necessary for

their birth.

But he moments that we feel the power of co-creation, melding, getting

a groovy jam on, or experiencing simultaneous discovery, cant exist

without the solitary intellectual work that precedes them.

FlowMihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Me-Haj Tjixent-MeHaji) has published anextensive amount of information on the idea of flow, aka being in the

groove or in the zone. Which is, I think, a way of summarizing the

greatest state of mind for creativity (and happiness)

Some characteristics of flow include:

Operating in a state of clear expectation

High concentration and focus Distortion of ones sense of time

Recognition of intrinsic reward

Action awareness merging

I suspect that not only is achieving a state of flow something we have

all experienced in the past and would like to experience more, but


16/26

[3

1]

[3

2]

[3

3]

[3

4]

[3

5]

having the ability to do so is a fundamental part of why we do what we

do, what brought us to our disciplines in the first place.

One of the best ways to achieve a state of flow in education is through

overlearning, or the practice of skills beyond initial mastery, leading to

automaticity and the ability to focus on the performance rather thanthe individual activities that make up that performance.

Its one of those strange paradoxes that the path to flow, as the path to

a creative state of mind where ideas can be conceived, comes through

what is often dismissed as rote practice

Avoiding the Echo Chamber (the Lure of Wishful

Thinking)

The participatory web and the rise of social networks and reputationsystems makes it easier than ever for each of us, no matter how

uniquely individual we are (or think we are), to connect with our peers,

colleagues and fellow enthusiasts. Monkey dance coaches, extreme

knitters, Twitter poets, and particle physicists alike can find

communities and cultures relevant to them.

But with these easy and valuable connections comes the double-

barbed lure of hearing our mellifluous words resoundingly cheered in

the echo chamber and confusing reality with wishful thinking when

that doesnt happen. Healthy communities (healthy democracies for

that matter) and meaningful learning demand individual capacity for

diverse engagement and self-criticism. And not just self-criticism, but a

critical ability that includes perspectives of history and tradition, not

just the culture of the moment. Building this capacity demands

undertaking that diverse engagement, which doesn't happen if you

remain solely in the network of affinity and familiarity.

Lack of diversity in engagement and perspective is as characteristic of

many of our communities as it is those of our students. In fact, given

our ability to influence many people, the sameness of many of our

communities could be considered even more dangerous.


17/26

[3

6]

[3

7]

[3

8]

[3

9]

[4

0]

These echo chambers serve a purposeI dont just turn to my network

for information or to answer a question, but also for moral support,

commiseration and sometimes pity. The danger comes from being so

wrapped up in a particular configuration of our learning environment

that we can no longer distinguish clearly between these activities.

In addition to the danger of the echo chamber leading to an often

unnoticed form of groupthink, it can also reinforce a scourge at the

heart of the intersection of education and technology which is on

display every day in those communities: wishful thinking. I'm the last

person to defend the abysmal record of quantitative research in

education (which to a great degree is refuted by the state of our

current system) but we have to question whether we are promoting

and adopting positions which *are* true-- as contingent as one's

definition of truth may or may not be-- or that we just, for reasons

positive and/or negative-- *wish* were true.

The defense of a productive capacity for multi-tasking is a prime

example. Ignoring the evidence of a decline in reading skills, cultural

knowledge and engagement, and attention skills is another.

It's easy to dismiss the thinking in books as diverse as the hystericalThe Dumbest Generation, the generally clueless The Cult of the

Amateur, and the incisive but uncomfortable Raptdue to either obviou

logical and interpretive flaws or philosophical differences (or both).

It's also easy to less-than-critically accept the agreeable assertions

made in books filled with enthusiasm and conjecture but not much in

the way of facts or examples or any convincing argument of what the

few facts and examples mean such as Everything Bad is Good For You

and What Videogames have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy.

Both kinds of wishful thinkingdismissive disagreement and uncritical

agreementare serious and consistent mistakes (the allure of which is

quite familiar to me it take me a while to like ideas that arent my

own), because lost in the first are important facts and themes that are

difficult to argue with except by pretending they don't exist or radically


18/26

[4

1]

[4

2]

[4

3]

mischaracterizing them, while the latter positions many thoughts and

ideas which should be the starting point of our own investigations as a

kind of inherited summation of truth.

Some less abstract changes:

Conceptualizing Intellectual Property and Closing theVirtuous CircleAssuming we can pay attention, we naturally wish to see that attention

rewarded. Beyond the purely pragmatic-- the invisible hand of self-

interest embiggening us all-- the virtuous circle-- the interaction

between investment of intellectual currency and the reward of social

currency-- is the primary driver of our social networks and systems.

Our activities need to explicitly engage this artificial (in the literalsense) economy, making it real. The beauty of the virtuous circle,

which is explicitly rendered in collaborative systems that provide a

sense of reputation, is that it indeed does work even when it is overtly

artificial... we respond to recognition even when that recognition is

prompted...

The ourobouros that is the virtuous circle can't exist without a sensible

philosophy of-- and mechanism for handling-- intellectual property. Thedistorted, complicated, mass-media-interest driven system we are

slaves to is a yoke worn by individuals inside a prison that confines--

and is slowly leaching the vitality from-- an information commons.

Our copyright system is tied to an understanding of property and

duplication wholly misfit for today's environment (and arguably hasn't

*been* fit for approximately 200 years). I have scant hope I'll live to

see significant copyright reform, but we have strong alternatives thatprovide regular "teachable moments" in which we can help expand the

understanding of intellectual property and enhance the information

commons at the same time.

There's no point in making contributions if we do so in the equivalent o

company towns and trade in obsolete currency that can only be used in

the bare-shelved company store.


19/26

[4

4]

Information Fluency and the PLEI've spent a fair amount of time now working out a coherent model for

considering technology and the contemporary learning/living

environment focusing primarily on two intertwined concepts:

information fluency and the PLE.

Information fluency provides-- through the triad of domain knowledge,

critical thinking, and participation-- the philosophical foundation for

creating rich, relevant learning experiences while the PLE, as

amorphous and indefinable as it in part is, provides the place where

many of these processes happen, free of the boundaries of the LMS,

and free of necessary connection to the institution both of which limits

its usefulness for "lifelong learners" (in other words every learner).

Most importantly, these are the concrete skills and the operational

place where we can solidify and become something more than lost,

functionally lonely somnambulant specters wandering inside our

cavernous machines, self-consuming commodity zombies we can

realize some of our potential to be mindful walkers, eyes wide open,

embedded in genuine communities.

A Posture of Openness - Fast, Cheap, Out of Control

At this point it goes without saying-- or at least it goes without mesayingthat many of these mechanisms simply wont work, and might

even be detrimental without adopting a posture of openness and a

willingness to work in a way that is out of control as often as it is

meditative and contemplative.

VirtueA few years ago, through interactions with people like Scott and Brian,

who youve heard from here, and other idols of mine, including Gardne

Campbell, Barbara Ganley and Nancy White, I had a sudden, blazing

personal insight into this whole ball of wax of teaching and learning.

I realized, in a deep and very direct way that everything I talk about

w/r/t education, everything I seek for myself and to share, everything I

hope for all are profoundly informed by and intertwined with two

emotions: trust and love.


20/26

[4

5]

[4

6]

It might seem obvious, but I realized that in the end what I am trying to

do in my work and teaching is to A) find ways to trust my friends and

students and mentors alike and to trust my resilience while being

vulnerable in the ways necessary to learn, and B) discover and

rediscover my love for learning, for the subjects I learn of and teach,and for my friends, students and mentors. Trust is really a refraction of

love, and both are products of vulnerability and humility.

Now, I may be one of those crazy banished poets, but this realization

stunned and scared me, not just for obvious personal reasons-- these

emotions can be terrifyingbut because they represent personal

character traits and virtues, which were once considered the most

essential features of humanitas, toward which education was directed

but are now dismissed if not the victims of outright hostility.

We can return to Plato now and recognize that when he says to love

what is rightly and orderly means to love what feels right and fits in a

fundamental way we recognize in those fine moments of flow.

But it turns out that Im not alone. Positive psychology is a relatively

recently named branch of psychology that studies the strengths andcapacities needed for individuals and communities to thrive and

methods for nurturing genius and talent.

Positive psychology is derived from humanist psychology, which itself

has deep roots in ancient greek philosophies, including Platonism and

stoicism, as well as the humanism of the Renaissance and some

Romantic conceptions of emotional expression.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Me-Haj Tjixent-MeHaji), mentioned earlier is a

prominent example, of positive psychology as are Christopher Peterson

and Martin Seligman. The latter are part of the Institute on Character

and they have worked out a classification of these character

strengths that they are studying with very concrete, positive results

in the same way that the mind and attention have become objects of

organic study. The six strengths/virtues are:


21/26

[47]

[4

8]

Wisdom and knowledge

Creativity, curiosity, love of learning

Courage

Bravery, perseverance, honesty, zest

Humanity

Capacity to love and be loved, social intelligence

Justice

Teamwork, fairness, leadership

Temperance

Modesty, prudence, humility, self-regulation

Transcendence

Awe, wonder, gratitude, hope, humor

I would argue that THIS encompasses what we are really trying to

teach, what informs and underlies and propels everything else we see

here and elsewhere anywhere educators who want to excel for their

students and themselves gather. It is my contention that by:

taking an honest assessment of the world around us and some of

the assumptions built into our approaches to the intersection of

education and technology

by directly addressing training of attention, cultivation of

contemplative and mindful behaviors and habits in the service of

honest self-criticism and, ultimately, self-realization

and by not fearing to reintroduce and reinvigorate a modern

tradition of virtue

we have the opportunity, right NOW, to transform teaching in the waysthat we wish for, that we intuitively know are possible, and that I have

to believe we all know are right.

Thank you very much for gift of your time and attention.


22/26


23/26

[4

9]

[5

0]


24/26

[5

1]


25/26

[5

2]


26/26

[5

3]

Date post:	30-May-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	chris-lott
View:	219 times
Download:	0 times

"The Idea of the Ideas" TTIX 2009 Keynote Address

Documents