jjconeill
World Builder: a crowd-sourced tag heart.
This tag-image was designed using tagxedo.com see here for the interactive original, as a digital artefact for the EDCMOOC.
The text was crowd-sourced from a discussion of a short film shown as part of week 3 (World Builder). Participants were invited to reflect upon their interpretations of the film which spans themes of technology, emotion and posthumanism/transhumanism.
The responses were extracted by copying all text, excluding common text (vote up, etc) and creating a tag cloud from the remainder. The key themes that emerge include world, technology, create, human, film, think, man, emotions and simulation. Participants seemed to genuinely respond and engage with the themes that were emerging from EDCMOOC, considering the 'human' condition of those depicted in the film, their predicament, the technological adaptations and the agency they introduce into the characters' lives.
The film also treads a fine line between a transhumanist vision of technology-enhanced living (or after-living) and a somewhat posthumanist vision whereby simulation replaces replication or construction (i.e. the embodied energy and carbon footprint of solutions no long involve large-scale environmental engineering but rather virtual simulation of the same). The inferred absence of a spiritual aspect within the film also implicates the film into a posthumanist space.
As a learning tool, the use of short films set alongside text and other resources, clearly prompted participants to explore in a variety of (technology-enhanced) ways. This included utilising the older format of discussion forum, as here, and other more novel digital resources. The use of a tag-cloud here is deliberately intended to reference the continued importance of reading material within a learning programme. At the same time, it represents a proxy of human interaction and discussion on the course, albeit asynchronous. This use of multi-dimensional resources and media prompted a more complex form of engagement with the course, its potential content and its themes.
Ultimately, many of the discussants of the World Builder film questioned the narrative voice that the film adopts: who are they watching and what is happening? It seemed that, for at least one of the characters, their interaction with the technology was passive and created or simulated, rather than a conscious engagement. These ideas recur time again as posters on the forum considered how the motivations of the individuals and the technology interacted. Behind all of the technology, though, as the tag cloud shows, are mainly words associated with human emotion and life. Few, if any, relate to the technology itself. Somehow this seems appropriate as the participants, immersed in technology, see the humans behind it all.
Of all the learning elements of EDCMOOC, there was something fundamental about this particular discussion in forcing people to engage with a space technology creates and how humans interact with it.
World Builder: a crowd-sourced tag heart.
This tag-image was designed using tagxedo.com see here for the interactive original, as a digital artefact for the EDCMOOC.
The text was crowd-sourced from a discussion of a short film shown as part of week 3 (World Builder). Participants were invited to reflect upon their interpretations of the film which spans themes of technology, emotion and posthumanism/transhumanism.
The responses were extracted by copying all text, excluding common text (vote up, etc) and creating a tag cloud from the remainder. The key themes that emerge include world, technology, create, human, film, think, man, emotions and simulation. Participants seemed to genuinely respond and engage with the themes that were emerging from EDCMOOC, considering the 'human' condition of those depicted in the film, their predicament, the technological adaptations and the agency they introduce into the characters' lives.
The film also treads a fine line between a transhumanist vision of technology-enhanced living (or after-living) and a somewhat posthumanist vision whereby simulation replaces replication or construction (i.e. the embodied energy and carbon footprint of solutions no long involve large-scale environmental engineering but rather virtual simulation of the same). The inferred absence of a spiritual aspect within the film also implicates the film into a posthumanist space.
As a learning tool, the use of short films set alongside text and other resources, clearly prompted participants to explore in a variety of (technology-enhanced) ways. This included utilising the older format of discussion forum, as here, and other more novel digital resources. The use of a tag-cloud here is deliberately intended to reference the continued importance of reading material within a learning programme. At the same time, it represents a proxy of human interaction and discussion on the course, albeit asynchronous. This use of multi-dimensional resources and media prompted a more complex form of engagement with the course, its potential content and its themes.
Ultimately, many of the discussants of the World Builder film questioned the narrative voice that the film adopts: who are they watching and what is happening? It seemed that, for at least one of the characters, their interaction with the technology was passive and created or simulated, rather than a conscious engagement. These ideas recur time again as posters on the forum considered how the motivations of the individuals and the technology interacted. Behind all of the technology, though, as the tag cloud shows, are mainly words associated with human emotion and life. Few, if any, relate to the technology itself. Somehow this seems appropriate as the participants, immersed in technology, see the humans behind it all.
Of all the learning elements of EDCMOOC, there was something fundamental about this particular discussion in forcing people to engage with a space technology creates and how humans interact with it.