Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1395] Distilling the language of cyberspace
robert.luke@utoronto.ca
Date: Fri 16 Mar 2001 - 19:57:28 MET
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2001 13:57:28 -0500 From: robert.luke@utoronto.ca Subject: [IFETS-DISCUSSION:1395] Distilling the language of cyberspace
I too have been remiss in entering the discussion, but will pick up the
gauntlet, as it were, as I am quite interested in this area of research.
Laurie's statement that "The nature of the internet with its dispersed
networks, massive redundancy and its MO of sending information on small
packets, means that it was always going to be an accretion of disparate
particles rather than a structured flow" is interesting insofar as it
aptly mimics the structuralist semiotic theories he uses to query the
morass of entanglement that is the WWW. My question would be to what
extent is it desirable to have a unified structure, when
post-structuralist thought has taught us (Judith Butler included) that
any claim to such structure belies a "suspect nostaligia" for a unified
and universal(izing) desire to structure thought and philosophy in
general. The characterization of the WWW as an "alphabet soup" fits
neatly within Eco's conception of semiotic theory, but fails to account
for the voice of the Other that may not share this alphabet in the first
place. The same applies to online education. The problems with policy
development in this area include the need to teach uniform standards
(measured against extant curricula) with culturally and locally relevant
material. My response here is that Laurie's claims of "dis-integration"
as being part of the problem is in fact the reverse: it is the solution.
The concern is to what purpose or end does the desired-for "integration"
serve?
The answer to this question is indeed "the nature of the medium."
Certainly it is true that our conception of narrative is based (as
implied in the pre-discussion paper with the reference to Butler) on
Aristotle's dramatic theory. But this reduction negates the possibility
of writing marginalia to this narrative. This narrative is not a static
element that acts upon us; we are active players within it. We write in
the margins, creating a perpetual palimpsest as we continually
(re)define relevance to our daily lives. This is especially true of the
WWW. This is indeed "accidental, serendipitous and brief," but need not
be confined to such interpolation. Thus narrative is encoded in our
language, and vice versa. Debord's notion of the "society of the
spectacle" is predicated on an alarmist and decidedly modernist reaction
to a pace of technological change. It is a posture of resistance,
building as it does on de Saussure et al and the strucuralist imaginary.
These foundations are important to understanding how we conceive of the
world around us, but we should be wary of any absolutist attempt to
refract our reality into the realm of the purely symbolic. Certainly
scholars such as Baudrillard have done well to show us how our
conceptions of reality are altered and formed by media representation.
But to call attention to the information architecture of online media as
"disintegrating representative elements and dislocating icons from any
contiguous meaning" seems to me to be beside the point. What other
structure could be imposed on the vast and inchoate matrix of the Web?
Indeed, why is such a structure desirable? The real issue, as I see it,
is to adapt our conceptions of learning to the new realities, rather
than impose a false sense of narrative upon it.
It may be so that "The aim is to avoid any form of symbology, treat
on-line elements as stepping stones - more virtual tools than signs -
and concentrate on contextual relationships to create a new mode of
story. While semiotics de-constructs, we are aiming to re-construct."
But under what guise or rubric will this reconstruction take place?
Semiotics does not properly deconstruct in and of itself, but certainly
it can be said that this "science" gives us certain tools with which to
look at linguistic and imagology representations of meaning. However,
these are culturally specific, and can (like any tool) be wielded for
any purpose, political or otherwise. The reference to McLuhan is an
excellent case in point. Ironic as it is that McLuhan has been hailed as
the patron saint of the Internet, since he was avowedly against the
headlong rush towards more media representation. Compounding this is the
fact that McLuhan was a staunch (converted) catholic, and his media
prognostications were heavily influenced by his belief in a coming
apocalyptic moment of total and instantaneous information retrieval. He
believed that the kind of electronic transcendence "man" will experience
with information is the promised "Pentacostal condition" wherein all
knowledge will be instantaneously available. "The electronic age
angelizes man; it turns him into software" he proclaimed in
Understanding Media. We need not look far to see how McLuhan's writings
are based on his apocalyptic beliefs, couched as they were within
paradigms of his particular semiotic milieu.
All that being said, I most emphatically agree that "Cyber-pedagogy must
embrace the context of its delivery." This is absolutely essential, but
this context extends to the cultural context of users, and should
include issues of access and accessibility in addition to basic semiotic
literacy. In order to more seamlessly integrate online technologies
within learning structures, it is essential to implement technological
transparency with respect to the media used to access educational
networks. While the technology can never truly be rendered
transparent--as if it is not there--the notion of technological
transparency refers to that media which becomes an accepted part of
communication. For example, people pick up a telephone to make a call
without considering whether there will be a dial tone; they are in fact
surprised if there isn't one. The telephone is this case is transparent,
as the person has already thought past the actual dialing of the number
(in most instances) and is already thinking about what they wish to say
to who they wish to speak with.
Bolter and Grusin (2000) call the process of rendering a technology
transparent "remediation, an 'interfaceless' interface, in which there
will be no recognizable electronic tools--no buttons, windows, scroll
bars, or even icons as such. Instead the user will move through the
space interacting with the objects 'naturally,' as she does in the
physical world. Virtual reality, three-dimensional graphics, and
graphical interface design are all seeking to make digital technology
'transparent.' In this sense, a transparent interface would be one that
erases itself, so that the user is no longer aware of confronting a
medium, but instead stands in an immediate relationship to the contents
of that medium" (pp.23-4; see also Levinson 1997, pp.104-14). The
concept of remediation is a goal towards which the development of online
media is striving, to more seamlessly integrate all people into the
technological fold to use all media as a simple fact of communication.
And while the notion of pure transparency may be unattainable, it does
apply to the idea of digital literacy and using media to access online
learning networks. Digital literacy is the transparency of the computer,
as well as the skills needed to manipulate the operating system, dialup/
Internet connection, and web interface with its attendant iconography.
All must be seamlessly integrated into the users' sense of experience in
order for this medium to be fully exploited for educational purposes.
More to the point, a foundational concept of digital literacy includes
developing multiple, critical literacies. Accordingly, "we need to
develop new literacies to meet the challenge of the new technologies,
and literacies of diverse sorts--including an even more fundamental
importance for print literacy--are of crucial importance in
restructuring education for a high-tech and multicultural society"
(Kellner 196-7). In order to be effective and accessible, education must
take issues of access and critical media literacy into account when
designing programs that utilize any advanced media. These programs must
also acknowledge other barriers to pursuing education, including
"cultural, social, familial, personal, or financial barriers" (Fusch 2000).
It is well known that changes in media radically alter the ways in which
we learn to conceive of ourselves in our environment. With the current
advent of new ICT use in education, we are in the midst of a radical
paradigm shift commensurate with the emergence of "Gutenberg's Galaxy"
and the introduction of the printing press (Simerly 1999, Privateer
1999). Accordingly, these new media are instigating new pedagogies, what
Privateer (1999) calls "'digital pedagogies,' new ways of educating more
consistent with the nature of contemporary technologies than with prior
management models" (p.61). Privateer shows how education has largely
been constrained by an Enlightenment notion of information processing:
the rote assemblage of factual data that is then re-presented as
knowledge. By detailing how new technologies can challenge and produce
change within traditional notions of learning, Privateer encourages us
to rethink what skills will be necessary for people entering the 21st
century. Skills such as information and knowledge management, connected
intelligence building, and group management skills are brought to the
fore under contemporary rubrics of institutional change and learning.
These skills are characterized by an ability to act within the fluidity
of what Castells (1996) calls "the space of flows" of the information age.
The currently evolving knowledge based culture is "characterized by
digital (that is, networked processes) rather than analogic (that is,
linear processes)" modalities (Walshok 1999, p.77). This shift, from a
product to a process oriented education, is reflected in the needs and
uses of ICT in education. Life long learning and collaborative learning
principles are especially "facilitated by the networked computer"
(Harrison and Vekar 2000, p.2), and are reflective of the ways in which
current culture lives and works. Thus, education that takes advantage of
technology reflects the larger cultural narrative, while at the same
time offering avenues of learning that are in keeping with current
cultural paradigms, and participate within these paradigms as they shift
within the contested terrains of postmodern geography. Technology
benefits education directly because of this. It offers media effects
that are both familiar and necessary, as well as the media ground upon
which our culture is presently evolving.
To this end, online learning has not "failed" at all, as Laurie
contends. Rather, we are still, and always will be, in media res--within
the process of transition towards new learning paradigms that must
necessarily contradict the nature of learning as we now know it. The
lack of structured flow is in fact a strong point, as we now have the
ability to attenuate our educational environments to multiple modalities
of learning; we are no longer restricted to rote structures of learning
that betray a suspect ideology. There is no "one way," nor should there
be. Monocentric thinking is a hallmark of modernist thought, and is in
fact contrapuntal to the new networked reality of the (post)modern world.
References
Bolter, Jay David and Richard Grusin. (2000 (1999)) Remediation:
Understanding New Media. Cambridge, Mass and London, England: MIT Press.
Castells, M. (1996). The Rise of the Network Society, The Information
Age: Economy, Society and Culture. (Vol. 1). London: Blackwell.
Fusch , Gene E. Breaking Down Perceived Barriers to Lifelong Learning.
Educational Technology & Society 3(1) 2000.
http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_1_2000/fusch.html
Harrison, J., Vekar, J (2000). New Learning Technologies: applications,
challenges, and success stories from the front lines. Canada:
TeleLearning NCE and Office of Learning Technologies. www.telelearn.ca
Kellner, Douglas. (2000) "Multiple Literacies and Critical Pedagogies:
New Paradigms." Peter Pericles Trifonas, ed. Revolutionary Pedagogies:
Cultural Politics, Instituting Education, and the Discourse of Theory.
New York and London: Routledge. 196-221.
Levinson, Paul. (1997) The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of
the Information Revolution. London and New York: Routledge.
McLuhan, Marshall. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.
New york: Signet Books.
Privateer,P. (1999). "Academic Technology and the Future of Higher
Education: Strategic Paths Taken and Not Taken." The Journal of Higher
Education. 70(1): 60-79.
Simerly, R. (1999)."Practical Guidelines and Suggestions for Designing
and Implementing Technology-Enhanced Education". The Journal of
Continuing Higher Education. Spring: 39-47.
Walshok, M. (1999). " Dialogue and Collaboration as Keys to Building
Innovative Educational Initiatives in a Knowledge-Based Economy." New
Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. 81(spring). 77-86.
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