Hack week

Do I have a creativity crysis?

Last week I’ve finished with two options:

• Learning WebAssembly with some practice at work’s project
• Adding WebXR view, again to the work’s project

And I decided that I’ll choose on Monady which direction to take.

On Monday it didn’t work out: I was subconciously avoiding any of these directions (also having a bad experience on Sunday added to that, I believe). Then I thought that Unity learning process was making me very energetic and so I’d pick it up where I left it (two years ago, AFAIR) and just roll on till the end of the week, and will see what will happen. Then, I stumbled into a Clarkesworld’s discord discussion arouaboutnd ChatGPT and education and took some slides ChatGPT and Higher Education to read. Then, I decided to write down notes in a mind map, and tried to use Figma for that. I noticed that 2D space could be a limiting factor for mind maps and doing that in VR could be a better thing. So maybe take Babylon.js and WebXR and make my own mind mapping tool. Even came oldschool and took some design notes with pen and paper. I did open Unity learning site but didn’t restart it yet.

Shit.

Notes from the slides ChatGPT and Higher Education

Epistemological Luddism

Interesting idea by Langdon Winner, originated back from 1977, when he wrote his book Autonomous Technology Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought. Autonomous technologies and “loss of human autonomy to threatening forces brought by science and technology”. And an Interview with Langdon Winner: Autonomous Technology: Then and Still Now in November, 2020.

Some quotes from the interview

As a teacher of budding scientific and technical professionals, I’m again and again struck by how little sense of personal autonomy is part of today’s education, our modern Paideia. Students hope to master the fundamentals of, say, one of the branches of engineering, get a good job, come up with some lucrative innovation and live happily ever after. Very often they simply lack any sense that they might reflect upon, talk about, and seek to realize an independent, personal understanding of life’s possibilities. Thus, the autonomy of technology often comes to the fore when ascertaining people’s sense of basic priorities. But the intellectual and moral autonomy of today’s students, employees and citizens? Not so much.

and

In fact, over the years I have asked my students to do the epistemological luddism experiment in various university classes. I ask them to identify a technology upon which they depend in their everyday comings and goings and to disconnect from it for just one week. They should notice what happens, and write down their experiences so we can discuss their findings.

and final one:

My sense is that an incessant series of epistemological luddism experiences will likely characterize coming decades of climate emergency. As Earth’s biosphere and modernity’s major technological systems enter periods of high stress and breakdown, which varieties of understanding, which philosophies, will offer guidance and solace? Are we – you and I and world societies overall – any better equipped to learn from such episodes today than in earlier times? So far the signs are not especially promising. Although there is much excited prattle about the wonders of disruption – “Move fast and break things,” as they say in Silicon Valley – the prevailing worldview is still deeply rooted in beliefs about a stable, slowly unfolding, ultimately benevolent continuity. In my view, that’s an existential condition to which humanity is no longer entitled.

Some authors, mentioned in the interview, worth checking (I believe):

• Lewis Mumford,
• Jacques Ellul,
• Herbert Marcuse,
• Martin Heidegger,
• Rachel Carson,
• Vance Packard,
• Betty Friedan

Tools for Conviviality

Book by Ivan Illich, published at 1973.

Convivial tools are those which give each person who uses them the greatest opportunity to enrich the environment with the fruits of his or her vision.

78 Questions to Ask about Any Technology

78 Questions are from the book “Turning Away from Technology” by Stephanie Mills.

Also this video set Betrayal of Technology from Jacques Ellul.

Thoughts and links

• Do you trust this computer, the film doyoutrustthiscomputer.org
• Langdon Winner, blog at langdonwinner.com