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Balance

Balance

It’s 23:14 as I start writing this. I’m still working. My Masters is being neglected. I am still communicating with colleagues via Slack. Emails are pinging in about other work which is log-jammed. Where is the ‘enhancement’?

On the other hand, social media brought this gem this week. Thank you Edinburgh.

Lifestream summary: week 2

Lifestream summary: week 2

This week took me to the BETT Show where I was demonstrating Office 365 technologies for teachers.

Each year when I go to BETT I am struck by the disjunct between what I see at the show and what I see when I visit schools. The sheen, the shine and the promise of technologies which is on show in the vast arena of ExCeL is, in my experience, rarely successfully transferred into schools.  I read Bayne on the train on the way to London and was struck by how much the message of ‘TEL’ was reiterated throughout the show – not only by exhibitors, but also by the teachers I spoke with. They talked of technology as being a ‘tool’ which could facilitate ‘more effective’ learning and teaching. This perception is a key reason why technology adoption fails: questions about how technology and practice are complexly intertwined and how technologies necessarily change, affect, and radically alter processes and behaviours are infrequently considered. Bayne’s assertion that we need to focus on networks, ecologies and sociomaterial contexts is pertinent.

In terms of managing my Lifestream this week, there is much material from the show which I still need to edit and curate; that’s an enjoyable problem to have as the process of finding new ways to collate and present information fascinating. I have made some progress with IFTTT and have ‘cooked’ a number of new recipes. I’ve also started to comment on others’ blogs: it’s brilliant to see the range of approaches, technologies, thoughts and ideas which are on display in our blogs.

The films: thoughts so far

The films: thoughts so far

I’ve watched five of the films so far and Memory 2.0,  Roy Batty’s ‘death’  and Address is Approximate have moved me most. Memory 2.0 had echoes of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: it was its negative. Here, technology was used to repeat memories rather than lose them. In terms of the connections between the films, almost all of them touched on control of technology: those who control the tech have the power to control humans and nonhumans. The Daft Punk video showed a sinister figure who appeared to control the fate of the cyborgs; the Hackers (‘Hack the World!’) were framed by another hacker; the lovers could meet again in the alternative mainframe only with the help of an edgy techie. The blurring of boundaries between human and machine, between RL and VR was evident within all five of the films; Address is Approximate touchingly offered a celebration of the power of technology to offer experiences which are not readily available in RL.

Roy Batty

Roy Batty

One thing we touched on in our Sunday afternoon EDC matinee in TogetherTube was the notion of ‘digital emotions’ and how these compared with RL emotions. We hovered around ideas of control: how we have more choice over what we engage with in the digital sphere and, therefore, what we expose ourselves and our emotions to. When watching Memory 2.0, we considered whether we would leave RL and enter the virtual for love.

I’ve always loved this scene from Blade Runner; Batty is poetic as he faces his own – non-mortal – end. He also demonstrates empathy and compassion, more than the humans who have enslaved the replicants.