A quick review of my lifestream will show that this has been somewhat of a disjointed week, due mostly to my inability to settle on a topic for the Posthuman Pedagogy assignment. I began the week confident in my decision that I wanted to focus on the idea of distributed consciousness (lifestream: 22:11.2011 #1, #2, [...]
Augmented Reality Learning Environments – A posthuman pedagogy Although philosophical idealists will argue that there is no such thing as a common reality, in everyday practice we have chosen to believe in one. Through our senses and communications, we live in a shared reality that we refer to as the real world, but by degrees, [...]
I’ve spent a fascinating week considering what it means to be posthuman. This began with my post at the end of last week on the differences between the cyborg and the posthuman (lifestream: 13.11.2011 #1), in which I discuss the notion of a distributed consciousness; and this has since informed some thoughts on the emergence [...]
We’ve seen that it is an over simplification to consider the cyborg as a fantastical techno-creature from our most outlandish fiction. For me personally the cyborg represents an enhancement to basic human function through the use of some prosthesis. And while many of today’s medical prosthesis are remarkable in their sophistication, they can rarely be [...]
I began week eight by asking the question, are we already posthuman (lifestream: 07.11.2011, #1)? In many ways, we depend on tools like a mobile phone as a type of cognitive prosthesis, an extra layer of memory which grants us an increased ability or processing power than our (basic?) organic minds could otherwise achieve. I [...]
Although the concept of posthumanism has many interpretations, it is primarily considered as an evolutionary change from the human condition to something similar but enhanced in some way. Generally this means enhancement through the application of some digital or mechanical prosthesis but it can also refer to genetic manipulation, chemical enhancement and various other methods [...]
This week my focus has been mostly directed towards the digital ethnographic study of the Diaspora community. I freely admit that I have really enjoyed the study, but even more so, diving into this exciting new social network. I see Diaspora as a potentially game changing development and hold high hopes for its success. Other [...]
Introduction Diaspora is a distributed social network running on a collection of open source personal webservers across the Internet. Diaspora is a community of passionate users who control their own data, control who sees it and who can harvest it. Diaspora is a project that I have been observing from a distance since the announcement [...]