Week 3 #EDCMOOC We were only being human

TechAdmin
http://www.flickr.com/photos/techadmiin05/2298049393/ 

The chorus of The Pet Shop Boy's song "Being Boring goes - "'Cause we were never being boring; We had too much time to find for ourselves; And we were never being boring; We dressed up and fought, then thought: "Make amends"; And we were never holding back or worried that Time would come to an end" I sometimes see our engagement in technology as a ceaseless attempt to make sure we are not being bored, we now have the answer to any question via the WWW, if we phrase it well, there is no sense of wonderment. However, I was contemplating on whether technology could bring about a sense a of wonderment, could it reinforce humanity? So I started to reflect on the intersection of humanity with technology and examples of such, in fact "Think it Big" actually awards prizes for this http://bigthink.com/humanizing-technology/2012-humanizing-technology-prize-nil-the-winners    . Here is my list I have applied a simplified typology

Protest

• 38 degrees
• Occupy Wall Street on Twitter 
• HM Epetitions

Philanthropy 

• Just Giving
• Hole in the Wall 
• Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• OER Africa

Inspirational

• TEDX
• PASSED Proudest Achievements Skills Education and Development 
• STEM Women at Science and Technology Facilities Council

Then I saw this article in the Observer Review this weekend "Digital Capitalism Produces few Winners" which reports on the poor wages Apple employees receive and refers to Sarah O'Connor's FT Article Amazon Unpacked and I quote

"She visited Amazon's vast distribution centre at Rugeley in Staffordshire and her account of what she found there makes sobering reading.She saw hundreds of people in orange vests pushing trolleys around a space the size of nine football pitches, glancing down at the screens of their handheld satnav computers for directions on where to walk next and what to pick up when they get there. They do not dawdle because "the devices in their hands are also measuring their productivity in real time". They walk between seven and 15 miles a day and everything they do is determined by Amazon's software. "You're sort of like a robot, but in human form," one manager told Ms O'Connor. "It's human automation, if you like

...where is the humanity here?

Here are what I think are the best resources from Week 3

Toyota GT86: the ‘real deal’ advert 

BT: heart to heart advert 

World builder

They’re made out of meat

 Steve Fuller’s TEDx Warwick talk 

Week 2; #EDCMOOC Ghost in the machine...or is it the cookie monster

Ghost in the Machine Doctor Popular
http://www.flickr.com/photos/docpopular/3901278186/

I'm a little bit late with this as we are at the end of week 3 for #EDCMOOC so I need to gain some momentum. In week 2 we moved form "Utopian/Dystopian" views of technology to "Looking into The Future", we were presented with a range of resources that presented images of technology, suggesting, leading, informing, profiling and tracking, as the course said these are evocative and disturbing. As with week 1 the choice of films were excellent, ranging from adverts presenting how technology can enhance our living in the future from Corning "Made from Glass" and Microsoft and "Productivity Future Vision" to technology ruling and intervening in everyday life as in Plurality (resources below). It got me thinking about Graphene developed in the University of Manchester - in fact  the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2010 was awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for their work - and the talk about the potential of this in manufacturing technology devices, now and in future because it is exceptionally thin and strong as well as being an excellent conductor. In the world of nano technology we already have research where computers are made out of strands of DNA, at the Weizmann Institute of Science being led by Tom Ran,  as referred to in an article in the Guardian last year on the Future of Computers. Week 2's resources conveyed futuristic views of the power of technology acting on our behalf making suggestions on our behalf, almost implying that technology will eventually have mind of its own. We already can see the power of Cookies recommending related resources in relation to our web activity and the semantic web http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Main_Page, which enables people to share content beyond the boundaries of applications and web sites . However, there would be no data without interaction, it is our behaviour which enables data generation, the profiling and the cross-correlations, once we enter the WWW territory we have no choice in the matter,  it is too late to turn back.

Day Made of Glass

Productivity Future Vision

Film 5: Plurality 

Week 1 #EDCMOO eLearning & Digital Culture - Utopian or Dystopian Experience

Lock Up You Data http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/1805590643/ Paul Downey

So I got through week one of the Coursera #EDCMOOC E-learning and Digital Cultures. Having completed a fully online MED a couple of years ago I was quite familiar with studying online and having that experience meant I had the skills to wade through the tremendous amount of digital traffic this course appears to be generating.Rather than focusing on the course theme of utopian and dystopia aspects of digital education and culture I thought I would reflect on the experiences of undertaking this course within this context. I think the Facebook exchanges reflect some the dystopian experiences of  engaging in online communication within the context of learning. Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter can streamline communication but with so many back channels the challenge, you have to decide what is meaningful, what is distracting - so a little direction and reassurance from the tutors would have been helpful. My experiences as an eLearner taught me to focus on the essentials and browse the rest so that is what I have been doing. I think the amount of people that are on this course makes it difficult to form any relationships especially with the time we have.  It is difficult to move beyond pure observation in the discussions because from my experience collaborative working online, it only works with a small group, with assigned roles, over longer period of time than 5 weeks. This is a pity because I found communicating and working with a diverse community very rewarding on my MED . In addition, I don't seem to have the patience for reading lots of text any more, unless I am using it for an article, report, qualification or my job but that's a personal thing. I think a word restriction on the discussions would be helpful and given the time I have I am going be quite pragmatic about how many articles I can read..

Finishing on a more Utopian note, it is really exciting to have a go at something I have not tried before. I think the resources that the course team has selected are excellent and the course is really well written and presented. Having a Sociology degree (although acquired over 20 years ago) has meant that I have visited some of the theoretical aspects before - so that helps. And it has made me realise with respect to eLearning and learning in general I think I want to focus in the future on developing my practical knowledge rather than my theoretical knowledge, so the Saylor Computure Science course looks really promising. The videos were engaging and thought provoking, illustrative of the issues and challenges associated with technology - here they are for your own pleasure

Bendiot Machine III (6.35); Inbox (8.37); Thursday (7.34)