Comments on: Tactics and Haptics and a Future That’s Now (by Holly Willis)

By: Suzanne Aurilio

Suzanne Aurilio — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:44:47 +0000

“The use of technology merely to support minute-by-minute social change is merely to perpetuate the ‘higgledy-piggledy’ laissez-faire planlessness that has brought our world to the brink of multiple disasters.”

I get what Bruce is identifying here and it resonates with me too. It may be a frame of reference that takes a broader or different view, perhaps one that takes history into account as well.

The views that come to mind for me come through seeing the issues in terms of late-capitalism and consumerism. I just can’t ignore the outcomes and implications of these systems on our personal and civic lives. I lived in Europe for most of the 90s and my view is most definitely influenced by that experience.

Laissez-faire planlessness means letting the market and profit-making write, direct and star in the entire show. Policy is what enables sustained and broad changes in a social system such as education, if we indeed want it to remain a publicly available social system. I’m not sure we do. As an example voters in California don’t want to pay more taxes, yet want their children to have a decent education.

One way to frame the topic is to view it through a historical lens. Historically the American education system has functioned with much of the same aimlessless as it does today. It has responded to social trends, bogus research promoted by an elite, often white, male few, and by the loudest pundits. It’s always been ideologically driven and politically motivated.
The dismal fact that our poorest communities have the crappiest schools after 100 years of public education should be evidence of this. We don’t really want everyone to be equally free and capable of achieving the same things.
I’ll take a slightly different tact than Bruce’s by saying that one-up-programs are all we CAN do, at this point. For people who care, they’re psychically vital. They make us feel like we’re affecting change and we are. It’s just not the breadth and depth of social we’re told we should aspire to.

Finally, I personally need the sobering, social and political discourses of critics abroad as well as their personal accounts of a life that is different than ours.

Would love to hear from others.

By: Anne-Marie Armstrong

Anne-Marie Armstrong — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:57:19 +0000

The Environmental Working Group is providing similar data nationally. ttp://www.ewg.org/

By: Anne-Marie Armstrong

Anne-Marie Armstrong — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:56:09 +0000

The Environmental Working Group is similar and provides data nationally. For example, would you like to know how many uranium mines are near your home? Or ??

By: Anne-Marie Armstrong

Anne-Marie Armstrong — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:51:19 +0000

This is a good program that needs to be expanded. Also, It is a good means to allow different groups to mingle and share. our society needs such groupings where one-to-one can work even when there are economic and geographic differences.

By: Peter Whitehouse

Peter Whitehouse — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:11:48 +0000

Hi, Our Intergenerational School (www.tisonline.org) is thinking of submitting a proposal with an ecological modeling and a digital cities social networking folks. As a school we think multiage thinking and valuing about ecology, particularly water, can be powerful pedagogically and wish to enhance this by using computer models and digital social networks. Do you have any advice for the proposal? I think global weirding/climate change are issues we really need to find hope for the future. How IT help here?. We would plan to run it like a consultation workshop.

Thanks Peter

By: Shelley McLaughlin

Shelley McLaughlin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:31:03 +0000

I appreciate the overall message here – that we must position students to better understand the relevance of learning (especially in Higher Ed) through the use and application of social technologies. For example, service-learning and PBL.
The skills and behaviors necessary – to live in the present – are innate. I think Holly is urging us to turn off the technology and get in touch with those skills.
As Holly wrote, “it’s not the tool but how it’s deployed.” Deployment requires us to plan in a way that is untethered by course objectives and institutional directives. Deployment requires a sense of humor, humility and inquiry. We can only “claim” tools that we have played with and tried in the field. This is what I see as the biggest roadblock to technology integration and application.

For each of the pieces shared in this symposium, I’m inspired to keep “playing” and, most important, to keep learning with my students.

By: Alan Levine

Alan Levine — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:06:45 +0000

Bruce- I did not see the “fundamental thesis” here focusing on minutia of daily status messaging. Holly is suggesting we need more than the vision of the future and skills to create it– she is on that third part of how to inspire them– by making it relevant, real, something students can touch (and change).

By: Bruce Sommerville

Bruce Sommerville — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 05:54:19 +0000

I disagree with the fundamental thesis of this essay. The use of technology merely to support minute-by-minute social change is merely to perpetuate the ‘higgledy-piggledy’ laissez-faire planlessness that has brought our world to the brink of multiple disasters. Perhaps the apocalyptic vision of students is their response to the dark real-world problems that confront the planet, and that have come upon us unexpectedly out of the future. As long as there is a lack of long-term vision and planning for the future, the future will continue to present every generation with unanticipated dilemmas. I say present students with a coherent and bright vision of a new civilisation of the future, give them the skills to create it, and inspire them to achieve it.

By: Putting people first » Ideas for thought from the Symposium for the Future

Putting people first » Ideas for thought from the Symposium for the Future — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 10:33:03 +0000

[...] Tactics and haptics and a future that’s now by Holly Willis, director of academic programs at the University of Southern California’s Institute for Multimedia Literacy “We need to take seriously the significance of a vision of the future, not so much with regard to fantastic scenarios – the stuff of science fiction, which as we know, does play an important role in envisioning the future – but instead in terms of tangible, real-world realities. Why? Because when we talk about “the future” these days, we’re no longer thinking about a long, gently winding road disappearing into a distant horizon, but instead a window (or screen?) pushed up close against our noses. The temporal horizon has shrunk, and the future, as Bruce Sterling said recently at Reboot, is really about a transition happening right now.” Leave a Reply [...]

By: Bryan Alexander

Bryan Alexander — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:00:07 +0000

Interesting to compare that one group of students’ apocalyptic predilections to the utopian drive dana boyd summons in her talk.