Sharon's E-learning and Digital Cultures Blog

I started this week commenting on the hydra-connections in our reading on Tumblr. I love the warm fuzzy you get when the ideas you have, the images you see, are shared by others – that feeling of confirmation – that your “aha!” moment was spot on. A community of understanding, like-mindedness, shared thoughts perhaps?

The JISC newsletter brought great inspiration on Tuesday – good ideas, opportunities, items that connected with earlier and current discussions or thoughts in my head. It was great to share them with the group.

I posted my posthuman pedagogy task on Tuesday, mindful of the fact that there was only a week, and I needed to get something “up there” early on. Biesta’s article, though requiring a double-read, helped a lot with my topic – as did looking at the tasks we had been given before and “borrowing” (ahem!) the structure.

By Tuesday also, evidence of my change in essay ideas come to the fore, with links to e.g. Earth as Art. The last three weeks had taken my original idea for an essay and turned it on its head. I’m still pondering, with an “almost there!” feeling that the final idea has nearly arrived. I had earlier been thinking about environmental activism online – it had been part of my original idea for my ethnography which, likewise, had to undergo a topic change. The last three weeks, our work on the cyborg, the soul/spirit of the machine reflections, have got themselves all tangled up like spaghetti wires. Strongest comes that sense of posthuman responsibility – which again appeared in our reading this week.

And so, the latter part of this week was spent lost in thought.  Like the image below, I can see the edges, the surface, but haven’t seen the whole. It is an incomplete vision, but like my lifestream, coming into view

Separate from the course, we ran face-to-face exams this week for candidates who we only knew online before this. The candidates travelled from around the UK, bringing their own stories, plans for the weekend, traveller’s tales and it was that wonderful mixing of the person you have come to know online, with the chance to get to know each other all over again… and have real instead of virtual biscuits for a change! Invigilating exams and coordinating rooms, exam scripts, examiners and candidates is immediate and time consuming, but does have the benefit of leaving some parts of your mind whirring away and processing essay thoughts “behind the scenes”.

Like the invisible woman, I was here, but not here!

Plans for the coming week: while there are no specific course readings, I really need time to catch up with the reading I have downloaded around the topics we have been covering, to gel the final essay plan and to spend time looking at other people’s pedagogy tasks – and being inspired and awe-struck as usual, I have no doubt!

Your challenge this week is to explore the concept of horses and biotechnology. Reflect on the meeting ground between horses and biotech – what does this mean to you? What ideas or concerns does this raise?

This is a very open task, so you can approach it from any direction you like. Likewise, your reflection can be in the form of images, words, slides, movie clips, a poster… whatever works best for you. At the end of the week, we will be sharing all the reflections and discussing this topic together.

What a week!

There is quite a bit of music this week, as I was working on developing interactive stats examples for one of the courses I work on (the statisticians did the stats – no idea what it meant, but it looks good ). I find it easier to work on something like that with music input too. The adaptations for the lifestream saw me sifting out tunes to leave the remaining songs reflective of my thinking this week on animals/plants/humans/machines – most of which are in my previous post (Technopagans and Cybershamans).

I also had my first XtraNormal experience, leading to my first YouTube movie – wowee!! I took an original poem, The Mystery, which I renamed “Amergin’s Poem”, which connected themes and resonated with this week, and I added a few lines to direct it a little more. It was important to me as it brought my Irish cultural heritage into this lifestream, something which, considering our reading on “hidden” race online (e.g. Nakamura 2008), I felt was very important (see also the inclusion of Clannad).

Not much on delicious – just a couple of links of the many I visited re: shamanism online – fascinating! Plus a link to the website where I found the image I shared on the Wallwisher – it took me this long to figure out what I was going to put there! I love that Haraway-associated image – that medicine-woman image, and, even if the term is outdated (a little like me!), cybershaman.

I have booked time with the scanner this coming week, so my scribbles can be updated and I am a little lost about this coming week’s activity. But as with the rest of the course, you just dive in and learn from the experience – woohoo!!

In the course handbook, Block 3 outlined the idea of the cyborg and how “human subjectivity is altered through our relationship to, or ‘fusion’ with, technology”. This post is a bit of a wander through thoughts, please feel free to feed in and help me clarify my musings

What struck me from the readings over the past two weeks is that we have not yet resolved the “human-animal” relationship, nevermind the “human-plant” relationship or the “man-machine” conundrum. Even adding technology into the mix, we are effectively just “[recycling] the old ideas of human spirit and body upon which early academic humanism was founded” (Muri, 2003).

It seems we return through time to reflections on what it means “to be human” with reference to everything else in our lives. What interests me is the focus on “being human” – we understand that with reference to other species, other “ways of being” in comparison to ourselves, and the same may hold true for machines. It is interesting that Donna Haraway moved on to study companion animals, as in my classes on companion animal behaviour, it is the comparison of a specific behaviour pattern with the student’s own personal experiences that leads to better understanding, while at the same time avoiding the trap of assuming exact behaviour “matches” between species. Haraway shows the same process of reflection in her writing, and each of the other texts we read adds or expands on a point she raised (a remarkable piece, even if it took me two weeks to try and grasp it!).

Coyle’s (2006) article was superb – it focused on this divide, this “giant chasm” – the “imagined human-animal divide”. It made me smile to see Sian’s image choice for these weeks – the devil – the human-animal hybrid “antithesis to human morality”. How often also do we see human/animal hybrids as gods or guides in various world religions or spiritual beliefs. Shamanistic practice (as with the Buddhist in Coyle’s article) sees the “interconnectedness” of all life – I see us as “becoming” (or perhaps just me – others may already be there!) – Thacker (2002) quoted in Coyle “a transgressional state of between-ness”. If I haven’t crossed the chasm yet, I’m pottering across the bridge.

The concept of the cyborg seems to be, like the hydra, a creature of many heads:

• merging of man/machine (coupled with the ethical and species purity/spiritual(?) concerns of the animal/plant/human hybrid (e.g. Haraway, Coyle)
• human “robot” – the automating of bodily processes (Muri 2003) – and would this include computer/machine prostheses grafted onto human/animal body?
• disembodiment (“transcendance”) through computer networking (Muri 2003)
• the human mind extracted and inserted into a machine form (and what of the soul?)
• the creation of new life in machine form

(For the last two, Sterling’s Schismatrix as mentioned in Muri – Mechanists and Shapers). Or a weaving of all these – as Derrida (in Badminton 2003), echoed in RL in Gajjala and Mamidipuni (2002). Each aspect brings with it a range of fears and challenges to us as we reflect on what we would be prepared to accept (considering the thoughts of the New Zealander’s in Coyle’s article on biotechnologies).

Being posthuman carries responsibilities. In Coyle and Haraway – the importance of humans as “guardians” of the animal/plant world, in Nakamura (2008) the impact on Asian workers – the supporters/ground workers behind the “empowering possibilities of the Internet”. As Muir states (p80), the “disregard for the desires of the lower-order working bodies by the privileged, literate intellectual” (refl on the work of McLuhan).

I’ve been dipping in and out of Davis (2004) Techgnosis throughout this course, and he speaks of the connection between the concept of the cyborg and the drive for interstellar travel – man “escaping” the planet. This is seen in Muri with the idea of an over-populated world where we can “escape” the crowding and pollution by being “digitised” – transcendance to pure thought (cyborg ether form – “I want to walk in the snow and leave no footprints” Gies, 2008). But what of those who are “left behind”? What do the “transcendant spirits” leave for them?

It’s the “apocalyptic” viewpoint, looking at ways of escaping the mess (of the planet, of ourselves; cyberbody adaptations as fashion – giving both Hayles and I the heebie-geebies) versus the optimistic utopian view that we will find a way to co-exist – plant/animal/human/machine weaved, merged, supported and whole (holistic?).

Wherefrom the post title? Reading Davis, I found that, should I wish to be pigeon-holed, I might be considered a technopagan – recognition of the “magic of technology” – and the scientific, performaning, creative, literate, artistic, communicating, healing merge of the cybershaman (with apologies to Nakamura for using a dated term). The readings this week led me out into the “web” of sites for shamans and pagans – to groups on SL and thoughts about World of Warcraft – people communicating, finding “spirit”, divine in creativity – posthuman culture that incorporates as much of the past (immediate and distant) and creating to fill the gaps in forgotten knowing. A trippy experience.

The old ideas don’t fade away – they adapt, develop, absorb new times and technologies – posthuman evolution doesn’t stop here.

First, thank you Hugh for introducing me to XtraNormal – this was the first time I used it and it was superb. Second, this is my first video to post to YouTube, so I’m pretty thrilled. Third, this is a reflection on cyber-existence based on a mash-up of a poem I know well and my own thoughts and words, a blending of human, animal and machine, together with a new experiment on my digital presence, and it worked much better for me than I had anticipated. And finally, as is often the way, while this was supposed to be a deep and meaningful reflection, the sight of the wee bear being so pensive, nevermind the pause at the sound of the crow, has had me falling off my chair laughing. The wonderful thing about XtraNormal is that, while I know I put in the camera angles and the looks to camera, the animation and the words, wee Amergin Bear truly has a life of his own

Thank heavens for the bliss of good old Tumblr! Spent ages trying to get Wordpress to take a Google presentation, no joy – stick it in Tumblr and in it goes, easy as pie.

This week, I’ve spent time sharing and discussing links with my brother – my guest for the week (and hopefully next week too ). He shared a really interesting link on developing robots that think “ethically” – slightly worrying mind you – a little too “big brother” with the medication support – made me think of I, Robot – “you shall take your medication” – eek! He’s been looking at some of the ethnographies too, and I look forward to sharing his thoughts.

I tweeted a really neat internet infographic – simultaneously superb and every so slightly disturbing (how many emails?!)

Two visual artefacts this week to sum up my thoughts on the reading – one a presentation of images that I pulled together as a result of reading Haraway, Hayles and Shields, and which had been bubbling away in my mind all week. The second is an image of me as a hydra – with each head representing one part of the online mosaic that is me (and the zoologist couldn’t help but tweak the Latin name ). Helpfully enough, the picture had seven heads and I repeatedly use the same image in multiple locations – result!

What was most important about this was both the need for every online representation of me to be part of the larger whole – multiple “heads” for in truth I do act differently in each virtual location, yet all are “me” – and also for there to be the mythical quality that rears its head (appropriately) in so much of our reading. I had a chance to include the horse as one of the heads, the icon I use for my main work FB and Twitter account, and something that is not included in this lifestream, but where most of my tweeting (well, retweeting!), takes place. It was tempting to create a whole different creature for my SL “selves”, as one avatar appearance is not enough.

How can it be the end of Week 7 already? I find I’m missing the chat when I’m not in here or can’t have my Tweetdeck going – what am I going to be like when it finishes – arrgh!

Last week, I really enjoyed the discussions and the preparation for the ethnographic work, this week, I have sat in awe of the presentations people have produced. That’s what I can’t fully capture in my weekly blog – the inspiration, the creative possibilities, the wonderful tools that people use or tweet/blog about (thanks Sian for that Digital Is link!) and that I really want time to play with – very much the long-term result of taking this course that I wish I could flash forward to evidence. At least this week I was able to use Michael’s Prezi/Tumblr tip to achieve something that I can thank him for now – I’ll just have to take this opportunity to leave my thanks for everyone else’s inspiration here.

My posts this week see me jumping hither and yon to other ethnographies, and making a complete twit of myself in the process by either reply-tweeting to the wrong person, or using the wrong name in an ethno comment. Ah well – the joys of not having an edit button has for sure provided evidence of the dangers of not re-reading my posts in my usual over-cautious manner – speed-posting is not for me

It is amazing how our ethnographies mingle, knit together in our EDC community, nevermind the wider communities (sub-groups) we are members of. Now I know who the Terry Pratchett fans are on the course (Noreen and her family), that Dennis and James have similar loves to my own (community fruit maps and bees), and the power of Lego to unit people (thanks Mark!). Linda’s got me hooked on Downton Abbey and Marie’s encouraged me to get a phone that can take pictures – I now know I’m not alone with taking pictures on the sly either.

In planning for next week, I’ve asked my brother to join me as my class visitor. I sent him a movie that James tweeted as an enticement – and now I’ve got Hugh’s Call of Duty ethnography to, I hope, seal the deal!

What a fabulous week

I had a really exciting 10 days. My first ethnography had to be shelved, as the group leader didn’t respond in time to let me know if they were happy for me to carry out the ethnography. I then turned to my list of other options and was in the process of deciding where I wanted to go with this when “ping!” as if by magic (and yes, thinking of the Mr Benn quote there James!), Terry Pratchett came to the rescue with an invitation to a group activity that caught my attention. It was an immediate reaction – something that affected me emotionally (yes, I really like Terry Pratchett’s work!) and drew me into the group much more quickly than would normally happen for me, as I’m pretty reserved in open online groups.

No, honestly, I am!

Here is my ethnography, and also my first experience of Prezi myself, and it’d be great to hear all your feedback. I’m looking forward to exploring with you all this week too!

http://prezi.com/qdyejvxqnije/as-if-by-magic/

And to finish it all off – Terry Pratchett posted up a thank you on FB on the 3rd November, and I added my return thanks with a link to my Prezi – I’ll keep you posted on any replies!

Ethnography Final

This is a little late this week, as BT decided we didn’t need broadband for the weekend.

That said, it has been a wonderful weekend, as we’ve left British Summer Time behind and are back to what I fondly refer to as “proper time”. So excited am I by the hour change, that I’ve even put a link in Tumblr

Week 6 was a brilliant week – a chance for me to get more involved in the “real-time” of the course, with my TweetDeck twittering away at me. I felt so much more connected.

I also had time to play with the feeds I wanted to use more – on Monday, this meant listening to some of the music mentioned in papers or on other blogs (thanks Hugh ). While waiting to hear from my contact regarding my ethnography, I also did a search on the gardening theme, and pulled up some interesting options on Spotify (including a lot of audio files on gardening practice – superb!).

Unfortunately, no reply from my first contact had me rethinking my ethnography on Thursday and shelving the work I had done so far. Terry Pratchett came to the rescue, and as this week progresses, I’ll share that here with everyone.

Finally – what a joy to have an “inner child” vibe this week – with Mr Benn in James’ blog, and an in-depth Lego (and Eddie Izzard) discussion courtesy of Mark, Jen and I.