Make a rhizome.

But you don’t know what you can make a rhizome with,

you don’t know which subterranean stem is going to make a rhizome,

or enter a becoming, people your desert.

So, experiment.

(Deleuze &Guattari, 1987: 246)

This text participates in the process of gathering (Edwards, 2010:5) spun over twelve weeks of the course in e-learning and digital cultures and across numerous online and offline spaces. Following Haraway (1991),  it centres around relationality, making it a basic unit of the analysis and so it tells a story about, and interferes in, the relations that have or have not been assembled so far (Law, 2009:142). The main actants involved in this process of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation are the human and the lifestream technology (edc antics).

Click here to view the embedded video.

At the beginning there was an emptiness and a feeling of wonder at how to populate the desert. The actants might have had differing visions and so their relation commenced and continued in a volatile fashion, subjected to constant changes as they transgressed and transformed each others’ discursive fields. While they enacted their practices, evolving for instance round authorship, agency, authenticity,  there were unexpected shifts in power and understanding, novel heterogeneous links forged, traditional ontological distinctions eroded, as exemplified by active experimentation with visuality (visual artefact), reconfiguring  the perception of the self and technology toward more hybridised and relational attitudes (descending the trees, posthuman lifestream), relating posthumanism to education (posthumanesque pedagogy, posthuman week). Translation is often not about finding equivalence but about betrayal (Law, 2009) and so, as a result, an actant rhizome began to form. The choice of this term over ‘actor network’ (which might be too easily associated with centralised architectures) is intentional in this gathering process, based on John Law’s argument that there is little difference between it and Deleuze’s agencement (translated into ‘assemblage’ in English). This is further strengthened by the revised after-ANT, in which Law moves to partial  and so more fluid linkages in his analysis of relationality, making the theory fit in more seamlessly within the rhizomatic framework (Law, 2009; Gough, 2004).

Virtual meditation 01

Virtual meditation 10

Since the foundational divisions that existed initially seem to have been levelled out, as playfully shown by the first and the last entries of the virtual meditation series (links above), the process of the gathering can be regarded as pedagogically posthuman. It actively made use of situated knowledge, cyborg ontology and border pedagogy, the three cornerstones from the Cyborg Manifesto (Angus et al, 2000). Even though on the surface the lifestream appears to be chronologically ordered, it resembles ‘an imaginative mapping of possibilities’ (Gough, 2004) rather than an orderly network or a linear tracing. With multiple layers, entries and exits in the form of visual-textual assemblages accessed by means of feeds, tags and hyperlinks, it constitutes a textual strategy that might assist in ‘figuration of rhizomANTically becoming-cyborg’ (Gough, 2004), even more so when it is thought of additionally as a rhizomatic metastory which renders itself as an artefact and so does not only gather but is also gathered.

***

References

Angus, T., Cook, I., Evans, J. et al. (2001) A Manifesto for Cyborg Pedagogy. International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2001, pp. 195-201. (Lifestream event 742)

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. London: Continuum.

Gough, N. (2004) RhizomANTically Becoming-Cyborg: Performing Human Pedagogies. Educational Philosophy and Theory, Vol. 36, No. 3, 2004, pp. 253-265.

Haraway, D. (1991)  A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century. In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, pp.149-181. Online: http://www-leland.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html Accessed 10/12/2012 (Lifestream event 707)

Law, J. (2009) Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics. In Turner, B.S. (Ed.) The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 141-158. (Lifestream event 777)

PDF Version of the post

PDF Script of the video interview

It’s been quite a journey, these past twelve weeks. I’ve been exposed to new ideas, concepts and applications.  I entered into Sian’s ‘uncanny’ space.

When applying for this course and reading the blurb, my first question was, “What is lifestreaming?” I hadn’t encountered it before so I came to it with no preconceived ideas, only with the information offered in the course guide. Likening it to ‘commonplacing‘ was very appealing.  Basically I’d be keeping an online scrapbook, a  record of places I’d visited, text and images I found interesting, giving a taste of my online activity at that moment. A snapshot of my life as an #ededc student.

I was ambivalent when I first began setting up feeds, it was both exciting and daunting. I felt unsure exactly what was required of me and apprehensive that anything I wrote was open to public viewing. Visiting the sites of my colleagues‘ unnerved me.  Theirs looked fantastic, showing creativity and experience, in comparison mine looked dull.  The practical side of organising feeds was problematic and much time was spent tweaking the feeds; or waiting while images were uploaded; or until Twitter became available; or indeed if Internet access became available. However, the content in my lifestream shows progress has been made. I admit to only feeling comfortable with lifestreaming towards the end of the course.

I did ponder on the purpose of the Lifestream. Would keeping a record of my online activities enable me to become a better learner? And if so, in what way?  Edwards (2010) says, “to learn, humans have to gather and experiment.”  An initial glance of my Lifestream shows an eclectic collection. Like a Magpie, I would gather and store anything interesting.  It may have been related to earlier, present, even future course content so it wasn’t always done in a linear way.  The RSS feed set up for the Female Science Professor feed led me to do my ethnography on science bloggers although this wasn‘t part of my thinking at the time. How the collection was used has been a surprising feature of lifestream.

Feedback has been an important part of my learning. Comments from tutors and colleagues have been regular and invaluable in helping my understanding, as have the blogs.  The different interpretations given to our visual artefact task was amazing. The lifestream has been helpful in engaging in, and understanding, the course but I agree with Carol’s view that our lifestreams are only to be made sense of in retrospect.

On reflection, if I had to do this over again how would I do it?  I would make notes about why I selected each piece and my feelings at the time. An injection of  humour to my ‘online presence’. is needed, I don’t recognise much of the ‘real’ me. My entries don’t show how much fun this course has been.    Creating ‘presence’ as a distance learner is difficult.  Ania mentioned that she’d like to see some pics of my location, and Jeremy commented on “how our ‘virtual’ experiences are always permeated by, and enmeshed with, the ‘real’ world around us.” With this in mind I tried to upload pics of my journey to work. The road I take cuts through the desert, with sand dunes as as high as hills.

Other vehicles are few so it feels like it’s just me, sand dunes, date farms and camels. Remote. Solitary.  Isolated. Not unlike my experience of online learning. Access problems just add to my ghostly presence, “the ontological blurring of being and not-being, presence and absence online.” (Bayne)

Whilst writing this I am exhibiting signs of being posthuman.  I’m listening to iTunes and uploading images; there’s a couple of tabs open on my browser so I can quickly check things out; I am constantly flicking between this document, my Lifestream, and pdf files; and I’m downloading a video. My Mac has become an appendage, it is part of me. Technology is a big part of my life.

Edwards states the need for learning to challenge us and this experience is definitely challenging;  #ededc staff and students have taken the ‘road less travelled’.

References

Bayne, S. (forthcoming, March 2010). Academetron, automaton, phantom: uncanny digital pedagogies. London Review of Education.

Edwards, R. (2010). The end of lifelong learning: A post-human condition? Studies in the Education of Adults, vol 42, no 1, 5-17.

The Road Not Taken, Robert Frost

The ramifications for education in this ocean of data are complex and potentially paradigm changing.  Our current educational models frequently reward students for feats of memory and recall rather than actual knowledge or information processing.  In a world of constant, ubiquitous recording and massive online data sets, memory is becoming less of a concern.  The skills most prized by industry (if not yet by the academy), are those of assimilating and digesting data in order to extract salient information and knowledge.  Perhaps tools like the lifestream can help to raise awareness of this issue.

Given the informal nature of blogging, I have employed the simple notation “(lifestream dd/mm/yyyy)” followed by an index number where there are more than one lifestream entries on a given day.   Where possible I have also hyperlinked the reference to an individual post on the corresponding remote site.  My thanks to the staff and students of #ededc for what has been a fascinating and rewarding experience!

I was intrigued by the course introductions and it gave me a change to bring out some of my interests, many of which have involved Internet collaboration on shared digital artworks and models. This kicked off some work on a personal “Life Wall” which was fun. Only a small number of Lifestream events were triggered by this work, but it was a fun exercise. I thought originally it would be a way to get ahead with a digital artifact for the course exercises… but eventually decided to do that on more interesting topics as the readings and discussions progressed.

I, Ai – Personal Identity, Avatar Identity

I have been a user of professional simulation environments and also multi-user immersive social games and virtual worlds for several decades, so I was in my element for some uses of such platforms in the MSc in e-Learning courses. This is reflected in my Digital Artifact entitled “AI – Avatar Identity” and the associated Lifestream events, and also in the contributions made in blogs, in my personal learning space.

I, Us – Community Participation

I enjoy collaborative projects and have had a number of long lived on-line groups I interact with. I chose to do the Digital Cultures course on-line community ethnographic study on the Gerry Anderson Model makers’ Alliance (GA-MMA) at http://atate.org/mscel/ethno/.

I, Robot – Think Like a Robot

The creation of the digital artifact “Think Like a …” and related blog posts led to a number of Lifestream events where I discuss the use of educational argumentation from an artificial intelligence agent viewpoint. And even beyond that to take a robot or alternative species viewpoint. This is a useful device to prevent a dominant human species position always being assumed.

Digital Cultures + Digital Artifacts

My other explorations on digital artifacts on and around the course themes have generated Lifestream events and include:

• bat Life Wall
• Another Planet – Experimental Digital Artifact
• Austin, Ai and the Personal Satellite Assistant – Blog Post
• Posthuman – Connected – Blog Post
• AI, Cyborgs and Robots – Blog Post
• By the Side of a Methane Lake on Titan – Blog Post
• Ai’s Home Page – Na’vi and Beyond (work prior to Digital Cultures Course and expanded during the studies)

WallWisher Walls

I have been an enthusiastic contributor to the Wallwisher walls set up at the start of Digital Cultures and IDEL11 for participant introductions, and used for a number of exercises through the course.

This was a new shared media and social tool to me, and it works very well. I have also used Wallwisher walls in a number of my own digital artifacts. The Lifesteam events do not reflect Wallwisher contributions very well, and only seem to post a single event for the initial post onto a wall.

Lifesteam Access

My Lifesteam is at http://edc11.education.ed.ac.uk/austint/my-lifestream/

Technically the Lifestream events for many types of feed from Delicious, some blogs, Wallwisher, etc., leave a lot to be desired and often only state the blog title as the source with little indication of the real content I am afraid.

A PDF format archival copy is available at http://atate.org/mscel/archive/EDC11-Lifestream-Austin-Tate.pdf though the printed version is not laid out as well as the original WordPress blog.

The majority of my work on the course finished last week, and I am now engaged mostly in reading over again selected papers that are relevant to my essays and final assignments on the EDC11, IDEL11 and ULOE11 courses. Some Lifestream events relate to tidying up and preparing extra screen shots for some of those assignments.

OpenVCE Developments

I have been busy on my main research project in the USA on the OpenVCE platform to provide virtual collaboration spaces for distributed teams engaged in emergency and medical responses. I established the OpenVCE group area on the US government’s non-classified “All Partners Access network” (APAN) which uses the ‘Telligent collaboration platform and provides the Adobe Connect services we need for observer access to virtual worlds meeting spaces. This burst of effort on my research project has also involved some further experimentation with the Unity3D platform, for example adding Tokbox VoIP. And also looking at the Collada conversion of the Second Life/OpenSimulator 3D build for the OpenVCE region. This allows the build to be taken directly into Unity3D for future use. These activities generated quite a number of Lifestream events.

Avatar to Avatar Chat

My earlier EDC11 digital artifact was “Ai – Avatar Identity” and one element of this involved an amusing chat bot to chat bot conversation transcript generated on the OpenSim region used for the artifact. It used MyCyberTwin technology for “Ai” and “Be” chatting together. The resulting transcript is at http://atate.org/ai/ai/res/2011-10-09-chat-log-ai-and-be.txt.

So, it was funny this week to see that MyCybertwin in Australia has announced a contest with cash prizes for the best chat bot to chat bot conversation (using though their own limited set of example entities), and indeed a “Turing Test” challenge too. See https://mycybertwin.com/ui/aivsai.jsp.

On my research project related to supporting the OpenVCE communities I was engaged in setting up a new group portal on the APAN (All Partners Access Network) hosted by the US Government for non-classified work between government agencies, NGOs, organisation and individuals across the world. This replaces the previous HarmonieWeb portal. the APAN network uses the Telligent Collaboration framework to provide the usual blogs, discussion forums, wikis, group chat, etc. And then provides an Adobe Connect service attached to that for the supported communities. We provide “web observer” meeting access to virtual words meeting spaces via Adobe Connect services through these portals. I was involved in a number of training programmes and setup exercises which led to a range of events in the Lifestream as I took on the group owner role on APAN.

I did some further experimentation with the Unity3D platform, and used a Collada mesh translation of the OpenVCE OpenSim region buildings created via a converter service from Tipodean technologies in the USA. We are further experimenting also with the OpenSim-based MOSES grid hosted by the US Government also for work with non-government agencies internationally.

We believe that a combination of the APAN OpenVCE Group for a community web portal and a simplified meeting space in either the OpenSim-based MOSES grid or on a Unity3D setup might offer a long term stable basis for continuing work in the OpenVCE.net community. Currently a Drupal server at Edinburgh is used for the community web portal, and the virtual words service is hosted on the VCE region in Second Life.

The good news is that the majority of my feeds are working well.  One that has worked from the very beginning is my Female Science Professor RSS feed. I see that the articles I posted in Reddit are showing up in my Lifestream, so pleased about that.  My information gathering on humans/posthumans took me back to the film festival and I added another couple of YouTube videos to my favourites.  However, it looks like I may have messed up on one bookmarking attempt with Delicious.  I’m a little hesitant to remove it in case I end up deleting all my entries, especially as I’ll be submitting my Lifestream soon.

I attempted to save a video to Vimeo but don’t think it has worked.  It can take several hours for it to show through on my feed.  I would assume that all feeds should be necessary and workable.  If Vimeo doesn’t work at my next attempt I shall have to delete it from my feeds.

I am still unable to get the full benefit of Twitter.  I have been able to tweet but I’m rarely able to open the links my colleagues tweet as my Internet connection is so slow.From the standard of blogs and comments made by my colleagues I know that these links will be very interesting. It’s so frustrating not being able to follow through and I get heartily sick of seeing these signs.

I have spent some time thinking about my assignment and how I should present it.  With this in mind I had a look at Weebly.  Jeremy emailed the link to the assignments of last year’s cohorts and I see one of them used it.  I need to play around with it before making my decision.

I’ve had a look around this site but cannot see any sign of comments I’ve made on my colleagues’ sites. Hoping that it is something that can be easily resolved.

I got ahead with my contribution to the posthuman pedagogy and produced my input over the weekend, entitled “Think Like a Robot”. So I was able to provide it to the class at the very start of the week for discussion. Some commenting on this and other entries as they came in towards the end of the week formed events in my Lifestream.

Eye on the EDEDC Final Assignment

To create the story I wish to tell for my EDEDC final assignment, I have been pulling together a number of threads explored during the Digital Cultures course and on other MSc courses such as IDEL11 and ULOE11. This has led to extracting some of the elements on different social media and platforms, especially aggregating content into my personal learning and asset collection space at http://atate.org/space/

Uncanny Pedagogical Experiences – Joking Apart

I have kidded on a bit with Siân Bayne in some discussions over the use of what I treated as "cute" terms like the "uncanny" and "ghostly" or "zombie" experiences. I got the idea of the uncertain and mind challenging environments she was described as a learning opportunity. And I do appreciate its a term that has some history (see Uncanny). But the Bayne (2008) reading did start to make more sense to me as a coherent approach to some people’s experiences in virtual worlds. I think I have used teleconference, distance collaboration and other forms of multi-user environments for so long, and have had experience of MUDs and MOOs as they grew from their text beginnings, so that its a more natural experience for me… just like I would not call using the telephone uncanny because I can heard a disembodied voice from a distance. But I can certainly put myself into an avatar shape or type which I know I find unusual or that feels “wrong”.

I found a very nicely constructed site in Second Life this week which allowed for just such an experience, and I blogged about it to draw it to the attention of others on the IDEL11 and EDEDC courses. See "Meta Body – Try an Out of Your Body Experience" – http://edc11.education.ed.ac.uk/austint/2011/11/18/meta-body-try-an-out-of-your-body-experience/

Second Life Pic of the Day

I added a further RSS feed to my Lifestream… the Second Life official feed from the blog which selects a representative “pic of the day”. This is something I already follow on Twitter and find useful. I feel this reflects the continuing improvement of the visuals in Second Life and OpenSim, indicates new facilities as they come along and show cases top builds inworld.

Reference

Bayne, Siân (2008) "Uncanny spaces for higher education: teaching and learning in virtual worlds", ALT-J Research in Learning Technology, Vol. 16, No. 3., pp.197-205.

Uncanny – See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny

My own input to the Posthuman discussions came via my Digital Culture’s blog entry on Posthuman – Connected and a lot of very interesting commentary by classmates and Jeremy (as Tutor) along with notes by me on that. David has also been commenting and adding his thoughts as comments to this blog entry.

I have noticed that I seem to be a long weekend ahead of discussion on the forums on all my MSc in e-learning modules, not just Digital Cultures. I tend to use Friday to prepare the ground for the start of the next week, get the readings organised, file previous material, and I think of start of the weekend as the change over point. That seems to put my Lifestream entries a few days, and sometimes as much as a week, ahead of similar topic events from others. So I felt rather lonely on the WallWisher Walls where I was more than 4 days ahead of any other entry appearing. Then we had an episode where we had two wall accidentally for a while. All sorted now, and entries appearing. Unfortunately, these entries are not reflected in the LifeStream as noted before. I continued to comment on the new virtual community ethnographies as they appeared through the week.

Work on the Moodle/SLoodle experiments was at a lower level this week, though I did a blog post expressing my feelings about the labyrinthine complexity of roles and permissions in Moodle against how I felt it ought to appear. This image from the posting expresses how things seem to me:

Underground Activity

My on-line activity on one aspect of the Digital Cultures course has “gone underground” a little in that I am preparing elements of my final assignment in a web area of my Personal Learning Space and elements of this are not reflected in my lifestream yet.

Research and International Links

Some Lifestream events relate to my research with the OpenVCE.net community and its emergency response groups. There has been a build up of events that relate to a shift of one of the web portals from HarmonieWeb, which provided Adobe Connect services in particular for the OpenVCE.net community, to the All Partners Access Network (APAN). This could be interesting as APAN uses the Telligent Community Platform integrated with Adobe Connect and XMPP/Jabber text chat for synchronous meetings. Details of the transition, which I am managing, are being built at http://openvce.net/apan. More tweets and status messages will appear on this over the next few weeks as I keep the OpenVCE.net community informed of progress.

Another international community I am involved in is KSCO – the Knowledge Systems for Coalition Operations community. We are in the run up to the closing date for submission of papers for KSCO-2012 which I am an organiser for. It will be run in February 2012 this year in Florida. We have just had approval for a proposal we made for a KSCO special issue of the high quality journal IEEE Intelligent Systems, so some Lifestream events relate to communicating this to the KSCO community.

The week has been characterised by some preparatory work for assignments on the three MSc in e-Learning courses I am on. There is a lot to pull together, many interesting areas to explore, and readings to go back over. But I like to start such projects early, do an initial burst of activity to get some material in place, and then take a long time to reflect and refine.

I had a flurry of activity to create a new digital artifact along the style of “AI – Avatar Identity” under the theme “Are You on Another Planet?” at http://atate.org/another-planet/ picking up on the “Other Worlds” and utopian dreams elements in earlier blocks of EDEDC. This involved setting up and the populating a new WallWisher wall and dozens of entries on that – none of which showed in my Lifestream unfortunately due to a glitch in the way that Wallwisher RSS feeds seem to come to Lifestream. It also involved some experimentation with a “grammar” of “connectors” which are meant to give a visual typography based method to show links between themes, token, topics and readings on the course.

I did this originally to be a potential EDEDC final assignment topic. But as I explored, I widened out to try to take a more holistic and “posthuman” aggregating view of the work I had done on EDEDC on personal identity (Life Wall), projected identity (Another World) and community identity (GA-MMA and social networks). I have now proposed and had accepted a theme for my EDEDC final assignment in this area with working title “I, PI, with my little Eye”. My Lifesteam shows a trickle of contributing elements as I build assets and on-line materials for that.

My Lifestream also shows a number of entries reflecting my continuing discussions on the use of Personal Learning Environments, and experience I am gaining with setting up and using a VLE based on Moodle. A frustrating experience as there are so many labyrinthine paths through which roles and permissions seem to be set up.

The initial readings into “posthuman” literature on EDEDC are just starting to come through as events in my Lifestream. I also hope we might see comments from my EDEDC “bring a friend to class” David Richardson. I added a couple of entries on the PostHuman2011 WallWisher wall, but as noted before these do not show in my Lifestream even though I have the RSS feed set up for that wall too. I posted a blog entry giving some background on why I chose to put an image and information about my PSA avatar on the Posthuman 20011 wall. I will use some elements of this in trying to pull EDEDC themes together for the final assignment.

I see also some entries which reflect the interests I have in space exploration. My twitter feeds are often dominated by NASA and ESA related activities. But in a few week’s time, we are off to Mars again. To be more precise, the names of myself, my virtual worlds avatar (who gets the original invitation due to involvement in NASA’s CoLab in Second Life), my wife, and our elderly parents (who watch these missions with interest) are this time on a chip on the deck of the Opportunity Mars Science Lab.