Ipseity

Understandings of learning and education are clearly culturally contingent. German-language research in these areas follows different historical and thematic dynamics than its English-language counterpart. Research in German appears more heterogeneous, and more explicitly philosophically- and historically- grounded. (See, for example, this attempt to map out this heterogeneity and historicity.)

In the 1980’s there occurred in German educational research something called the “turn to the everyday” (die Alltagswende). I recently prepared and taught a course that introduces (from an admittedly North American perspective) some of the ideas associated with this turn. This course compares theories of quotidian knowledge as conceptualized in Anglo-American cognitivism (namely, the everyday as pale imitation of scientific theory, as “folk-theory”) with approaches emphasizing the irreducible complexity of everday action and knowing (e.g. Ethnomethodology). In the end, the course concludes by emphasizing that the quotidian appears to be far more thoroughly “colonized” by information and public relation technologies than it is explained by cognitive theory. Indeed, in this light, cognitivism appears to be much more of a symptom of this colonization of “common sense” understandings by technological conceptions and practices than an adequate account of these understandings.

Note: Most of the course materials are in German, but three video-clips that may be of special interest are in English:

• Noam Chomsky and Universal Grammar (7 Mb .wmv; Short segment from Manufacturing Consent)
• Artificial Intelligence and Common Sense (36 Mb .wmv; Short segment from “The Thinking Machine” episode of The Machine that Changed the World)
• The Manipulation of the Everyday : Public Relations (7Mb .wmv; Short segment from the “Happiness Machines” episode of The Century of the Self)

I’ve been helping Theo Hug (right) to put together a panel for the International Communication Association conference coming up in a couple of months in Dresden. The panel proposal is titled “Mediatic turn - Claims, Concepts and Cases.” I’ve also been working on a paper for the panel. The paper that argues for the importance of genre as a category in understanding software design and systems use in educational contexts. I’m preparing it forin a few months. A draft of the paper is available. Here’s the abstract:

The mediatic turn in computer systems design and analysis that is currently in its nascence is arguably long overdue. Broadly cognitivist and cybernetic frameworks associated with human factors and usability research have already been undermined in the 1990’s through what has been called an “ethnographic turn.” However, now that the personal computer and Internet have been commonplace for a decade or more, it is increasingly important to utilize mediatic terms –such as culture, genre, audience, or convention– to come to a more complete understanding of their limitations and potential. By exploring a case in which the mediatic understanding of one technology –asynchronous textual communication– has informed the use and development of systems and of related standards, this paper will provide evidence of the efficacy of such understandings in design and implementation. It will also reflect on the broader implications of the mediatic turn, such as its implied subsumption of pure technical rationality to historical, cultural and other factors.