Part 43 (1/2)

Walking along a road is less risky than riding a horse, bicycling, or driving a car Flying puts the farthest point frolobe within our reach, but the risks involved in flight are also greater Cognitive resources integrated in our endeavors contribute to an efficiency higher than that provided by hydropower, steay With each new step in the direction of their increased participation in our praxis, we take a chance

There is no reason to co projects to successful or failed attempts to build new cities, nitive assumptions of lesser complexity than that achieved in our time A failed connection on today's Internet, or a es of the prag But we should at no nitive breakdowns aresystem or the breakdown of a network application

We learn more about ourselves in the practical experiences of constituting the post-literate languages of science, art, and the hu the entire history of hun systereat variety of experiences, as well as genetically inherited and rationally and ees in the very fabric of the hu involved in these practical experiences are reflected in the increased ability to handle abstraction, refocus from the immediate to the mediated, and enter interhuman commitments that result from the practice of unprecedented nification

During the process, we have reached soe is deeper, but ain, there is a ”gap of silence” between ly vulnerable to drives that recall es of huh the hu politics and econo the nature of hu our sense of future

Let us not forget Big Brother, not to be brushed away just because the year 1984 has coone, but to be understood from a viewpoint Orwell could not have had If the means in question are used tostructures of human interaction, to exercise control, as done in previous societies, is simply not possible It is not for the love of the Internet that this constitutes a non-regulated domain of human experiences Rather it is because by its nature, the Internet cannot be controlled in the sa, and social behavior are controlled The opportunity for transparency afforded by systems that replace the domination of literacy is probably too important to be missed or misused

The dynamics of the civilization of illiteracy results from its implicit condition We can affect solobal behavior For instance, the integration required by parallelism and the massive distribution of tasks cannot take place successfully if the network of interactions is ates, filters, and veils of secrecy, by hierarchic control ine if a person's arms, eyes, ears, or nostrils had to obtain permission to participate in the self-constitution of the whole humatic context are the eyes, arms, brains, and nostrils of the corates everyone's participation It is an intense effort, not always as rewarding as we expect it to be, a self-testing endeavor whose complexity escapes individual realization Feedback loops are the visible part of the broader system, but not its essential part

The authenticity of each and every act of our self-rity of the overall process-our ascertainh e do Relative insularity and a definite alienation froher deher performance-are part of the picture described Complemented by a sense of empowerment-the ability to self-determine-and a variety of new fore factories of industrial society-coBrother ill be watching Each and every individual is part of the effort, entitled to know everything about it, indeed wanting to know and caring Without transparency that we can influence, the effort will not succeed We are our own active badge The record is of interest in order to justify the use of our tiy, but foremost to learn about those instances e are less faithful to ourselves than our newly acquired liberty affords

It is much easier to submit to outside authority, as literacy educates us to do But once self-control and self-evaluation, as feedback mechanisms under our own control become theBrother, bureaucracies, and regulations to the individual

It is probably useful at this point to suggest a framework for action in at least soht about in the civilization of illiteracy The reason for these suggestions is at hand We know that literate education is not appropriate, but this observation reuide for action This has to translate into positive attitudes, and into real attee of present and shape the future in full awareness of forces at work

The University of Doubt

Literacy-based education, as all other literacy experiences, assumes that people are the sa can and oal of industry was to turn out standardized products, education assuh the mold of literacy Diplomas and certificates testify how like theor reading, the labels legasthenic and dyslexic are applied Dyscalculus is the naiven to the inability to cope with nunitive structures covering the literate use of language or numbers, but not the use of sounds, colors, shapes, and volume, is never raised Tremendous effort is made to help individuals who si or thesinitive characteristics of persons inclined to means different fro to the civilization of many literacies, education needs first of all to rediscover the individual, and his or her extensive ganitive characteristics I use the word rediscover having in , which were more on a one-to- one or one-to-few basis Education also needs to reconsider its expectation of a universal common denominator, based on the industrialthe e differences in aptitudes and interests, but also to stiy is the expression of difference and not the result of leveling

During this process of re-evaluation, the goals of education will have to be redefined, ht, and content reassessed A new philosophy, embodied in a dynamic notion of education, has to crystallize as ork towards educational alternatives that integrate the visual, the kinetic, the aural, and the synesthetic In the spirit of the praght to become an environment for interaction and discovery Time taken with reiterations of the past deserves to be committed to inferences for the present, and, to the extent possible, for the future

Soht sound utopian or have the ring of techno-babble Their purpose is to present possibilities, not to conjure up miraculous solutions The path from present to future is the path of huoals corresponding to the requirements and expectations of the civilization of no doive up the reductionist perspective that has eneralized education becanize its students as the individuals they are, not as some abstract or theoretic entity Basic education should be centered around the e, visual, aural, kinetic, and sy these systems need to be explored as students familiarize themselves with each of them, as well as coeared towards using these ele exercises Each student will discover from within how to apply these systems Most i the answer that is not proven so by the pragmatic instance

Fundamental to the educational endeavor is the process of heuristic inquiry, to be expressed through prograuages: literate inquiry, mathematics, chemistry, computation, and so on By virtue of the fact that people frorounds enter the process, they bear the experience of their respective languages Relevance to the problem at hand will justify one approach or another Frequently, the wheel will be re-invented

Other tienuity and inventiveness In their interaction, those involved in the process share in the experience through which they constitute themselves at many levels One is to provide access to the variety of perspectives reflecting the variety of people

Interactive learning

Education has to beco process It should involve access to all kinds of information sources, not only to those stored in literate forical condition-a printed encyclopedia is different fro a e platfore and defines a horizon for human interaction All these differences will becoh oal of education cannot be the dissemination of imitative behavior, but of procedures In thisconnected goals, not coe or subject, even less bureaucratic units A class is an expression of interest, not the product of statistical distribution based on birth and zoning The physical environment of the class is the world, and not the brick and mortar confined rooht sound hollow, or too grandiose, but theavailable

Here is one possible scenario: Students approach centers of interactive education after the initial phase of acculturation

Perhaps the word center recalls one of the characteristics of the civilization of illiteracy By their own nature, though, these centers are distributed repositories of knowledge stored in a variety of forrams pertinent to various human practical experiences, examples, and evaluation procedures With such a condition, such centers lend theinable forents) search for appropriate sources through the guidance of those in need, independent of them, or parallel to them Requests are articulated in voice command: ”I would like to know ” Or the requests can be handwritten, typed, or diagrammed Such interactive education centers are sie, heuristic environrounds, and research media The hybrid human-machine machine that constitutes their nucleus alters as the individual involved in the interaction changes

As we all know, the best way to learn is to teach Students should be able to teach their neural network partners subjects of interest to their own practical experiences In many cases, the neural networks, themselves networked with others, will becoher complexity The fact that students interact not based on their address and school district, not based on horound, but on shared interests and different perspectives gives this type of education a broader social significance: There is nothing we do that does not affect the world in its entirety Repeating these words ad nausea of what this lobal consequential nature can

In the ested, interests are identified and pursued, and results are compared Questions are widely circulated What students appropriate in the process are ways of thinking, procedures for testing hypotheses, and ress in the process Professional educators, aware of cognitive processes and freed froer rehash the past but design interactive environments for students to learn in Teachers involve themselves in this interaction, and continue to evolve as knowledge itself evolves Instead of inculcating the discipline of one do-ter to force thee, students are freed froed by the responsibility to h In the process, differences a students will beco different, in a context of cooperative interactions, is an asset and not a liability Motivation is seeded in the satisfaction of discovery and the ability to easily integrate in a fraer mi the bill

Instead of an education financed by the always controversial redistribution of social resources, interactive learning will be supported by its real beneficiaries That a biogenetics coanization engaged in bureaucratic self-perpetuation is a fair assus and high administrative overhead, education should take place in the environmatic framework As extensions of industries and services, of institutions and individual operations, education would cease to be training for a hypothetical employer Like the practical experience for which it is constituted, education points to the precise reward and fulfillue ideals that prove hollow after the student has paid tens of thousands of dollars to learn them

Vested in the benefits of a company whose potential depends on their future performance, students can be better s stand now, business is in the paradoxical situation of criticizing the inadequacies of an education that hasbusiness

Once students reach a level of confidence that entitles them to attempt to continue on their own or to associate with the company, the alumni of such educational experiences have better control over their destinies and can follow the cognitive path of their choosing There will be analytically oriented and synthetically oriented individuals,hypotheses and testing thenitive inclinations to induction, to eneralizations Others will follow the path of deduction, noticing general patterns and seeing how they apply in concrete cases Others will follow abductions, ie, applying knowledge about a representative sample in order to infer for a broader collection of facts or processes