Centralised aims through decentralised means

The "Centralised aims through decentralised means" thinking that captures me tonight, comes from George Siemen's Connectivism Blog post: Knowing before Doing?

Siemens' post was a catalyst for a recurrence of that Jaron Lanier induced “hive mind anxiety” and “meta meta meta site unease” that I had only just managed to narcotise and tie down with Bill, Tony and Bott’s help.

"New technology is still applied in traditional means – with the intent to manage, control, and direct activities or outcomes."

“Most individuals, however, have started to create a scattered identity and presence. I have pieces of my thoughts scattered across numerous articles, website, podcasts, and presentations. I don’t really want to join a CoP. I want the connection values of communities to be available to me in my own online space and presence. I imagine there will be disagreement here, but I think edubloggers have formed a community of practice. We dialogue (sometimes directly, but mostly with an awareness of others). We share resources, presentations. We offer opinions, reactions, and (for new bloggers) informal mentorship. The nice aspect of this community is the end-user control. I don’t have to go to anyone who owns my identity and my content. We still achieve centralized aims (dialogue about learning and technology), but we do so through decentralized means.”

Siemen's "Centralised aims through decentralised means" is such a powerful insight for edubloggers

But it wasn’t until I was re-reading Koestler (he is too dense to be understood fully on even the third reading) that I realised that all these centralised aims through decentralised means discussions could be blurred into the tension that has always existed between partness and wholeness

For example Koestler (1964 p286) could have been describing Siemen’s edu_bloggers and communities of practice when he wrote in The Act of Creation Koestler p287 

“… every member of a living organism or social body has the dual attributes of “wholeness” and partness.”

It acts as an autonomous, self governing whole on its own subordinate parts on lower levels of the organic or social hierarchy; but it is subservient to the co-ordinating centre on the next higher level. 

In other words edubloggers display both self assertive and participatory tendencies.

So according to Koestler’s analogy 

We are PART when we allow our online blog identity to become subservient to a LMS or a Community of Practice.

As a PART we will experience participatory emotions involving an expansion of consciousness.

Even though we retain a level of autonomy our impulses will be the impulses of muscular action – hit, run, mate, devour, kind of  emotions – and these will be experienced through hunger pain rage and fear.

Perhaps that’s why forums can experience turbulence and strife. Graham’s post on “Setting personal standards of self reflection” touches on this issue.

There’s been an interesting discussion over at the TALO group about another discussion in an EdNA forum that, to paraphrase Alex Hayes, has turned rancid.

We are WHOLE when we create a blog identity. 

As a WHOLE we will experience self asserting emotions involving a narrowing of consciousness. 

Our emotional behaviour will be internalised and visceral – and experienced through sensations of longing, worship, raptness, and aesthetic pleasure.

Dunno about this but as many bloggers are discovering,

Koestler’s aesthetic pleasure and the whole part-whole tension in blogging are perfectly captured when watching your Blog develop into a graph at WEB SITES AS GRAPHS 

Check out all the blog graphs on Websites as graphs on Flikr
 

Comments

[Insouciantfemme]

Wholeness is quite overrated - I think. To be whole is to assume a modernistic embodiment of identity. It makes us a kind of fleshy container for holistic knowledge and affectivities. We're so full that we're breaking at the seams.

Whole-ness tries too hard to be 'whole' but does not realise its fragmented ontology. We all suffer from split-personalities darling. It's just quite inappropriate to call ourselves whole when we're Bodies without Organs. Or was it Organs without Bodies now? Those bloody academics just can't make-up their minds. See? Another testimony of fragmented life-processess in our species. We suck at making-up our minds.

So we're fragmented, cracked, fractured, defective, and generally screwed-up. No Doctor would ever call themselves whole. It's just a massive contradiction when we're constantly holding a role of string on one hand and a needle on the other, trying desperately to patch-up the ruptured moments of our lives. What a carnivalesque comedy - this life of ours. Incessantly making amends but always deluding ourselves as whole beings. Haha. It's hilarious. Clever writer that one is.

When we create a blog-identity we try to make ourselves un-whole; to try to escape the dourness of routine in life, or to make a fantasy of ridiculousness in virtual life. Here we can be a monkey, a worm, a surgeon, a prick, a walking-talking genital, or, if you prefer my life, a pen. To be un-whole is to be constantly undone. My dear old muse - Judith Butler - said that we must be undone by each other because we can never always stay intact. We're undone - unwhole - by depression, by love, by lust, by compassion. How many of us have tried helping the blind across the road only to be vociferously labelled as a Disabilitist? (Don't bother checking the dictionary. I made that one up.) Ah... undone again.

So... that's that really, isn't it? We're screwed. But perhaps that's what makes life worth living. No one wants to be a God - the epitome of wholeness - unless they're terribly bored.

I.F.

PS: Missed your posts for sometime Arti. Been terribly busy. You know, being a pen and all, takes up a lot of ink from oneself. Dreadful business I tell you. Dreadful.

[Artichoke]

Insouci,
I do so love the way your mind works. When I read your comment I realise how much I have missed your insight these past months.

You manage to take all the thoughts I so doggedly line up and categorise, skittle them with one sentence, and then scuttle their hierarchies in the next. Fabulous stuff.

Great to read “I have found company in the most unexpected way” Unexpectedness is distracting and disconcerting, but it does provide moments of loveliness in life.

I am currently absorbed with Grandpa whose dementia is unforgiving, progressive and relentless. The funny thing is that I can also write that “I have found company in the most unexpected way” through my conversations with him.

Yesterday was quirky – after a whole morning talking together he admitted he had no idea who I was. When I told him "Arti", he asked me so solicitously “What made you feel like you could be Arti? And then “What Arti are you? These are bloody good questions to think about in the context of identity. They are the questions that "undo you".

[Bill Kerr]

I can identify with IF's comments at both a practical and theoretical level.

Part of my reason for blogging was to attempt to integrate myself more but that can be an illusory target, you never quite get there, do you?

Theoretically, the philosopher, Dan Dennett, has explained there is no central centre of consciousness within ourselves. Now thinking of rereading his essay about Multiple Personality Disorder, "Speaking for Our Selves" (with Nicholas Humphrey)

IMO the philosophical principle is, "struggle is absolute, unity is conditional" and the corrosive process of new technology on all institutions and on individuals does seem to be accelerating.