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What sort of an industry is education? Behind that question is a question about industry in the first place. We tend to have a particular view of industry which manufactures or sells goods and services. In doing so, it creates employment and generates profits. The car industry makes cars; the banking industry sells financial services; the building industry builds houses; the supermarket industry sells food (but  increasingly provides banking and other services). A trite continuation of this is that "the education industry sells educational services". But what does that mean? Is an 'educational service' like a financial service? Or is it like manufacturing?

In the sense that advice is sought and benefited from in education, the education industry can be said to be like a financial service. However, in the sense that degrees are printed and coveted by potential customers, the education industry is like manufacturing. In these two aspects, the education industry has an important historical precursor: the selling of indulgences by the Catholic church.

That's perhaps not a good precursor, but really, little else fits in thinking about the kind of industry that education is. And in a business sense, it is highly profitable - until someone smells a rat and does something about it (enter Martin Luther!). However, the rat is there, and education as an industry (which is clearly where it is heading) has a big problem.

But I want to return to nature of industry in the first place. Because, as I discussed in my last post (http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/social-mobility-education-and.html) Industry does far more that manufactures or sells goods and services. In employing people, the workplace becomes the locus for human relationships and learning. And whilst the nature of the workplace itself has changed drastically in the post-industrial world, we all have someone to say 'good morning' to, or to gossip about the latest misdoings of management. Such exchanges are meaningful to individuals, and in good companies, camaraderie amongst the workers is an essential part of business success, and workers see their identities in the context of their professional and domestic relationships. In bad companies, there will always be pockets (or cliques) or camaraderie, although other workers may become alienated from their work or their role in the organisation.

Educational institutions, as workplaces, are no different. There is someone to say 'good morning' to, and there is plenty to gossip about. But learning is the thing in the educational workplace. Indeed, whilst in the software industry, programmers might say 'good morning' before diving into some code (actually, being programmers, they might not say 'good morning'!), workers in education say 'good morning' to each other before saying 'good morning' or afternoon to their students, and conversations bleed over from the work to gossip to administration and so on. Educational institutions make communications.

In a good educational institution there are individuals who are skilled in the art of making communications with students and staff which light up those students and staff and lead to ever more interesting communications. Such communication is borne out of the conviviality of the environment of the educational institution. Eyes can be looked into, gestures noted, questions asked, emails sent, blogs written and referred to and Skype conversations launched.

Communication is incidental in industries like banking and manufacturing. Whilst good organisations will nurture and exploit it, they will always ensure that it doesn't get in the way of the 'main job'. In education, it is the main job. Yet, in education it is often not recognised as being the main job by those who are not academics (often managers): they do not see the making of communications is an art where academics are masters of this art. They might be more inclined to see it as 'unproductive' and academics as 'lazy'. They may instead, see the education industry either as manufacturing degrees, or providing educational services, or (worse) selling indulgences. A bums-on-seats-retain-at-all-costs mentality is the natural consequence of this. Yet this is a poor way to achieve objectives around both recruitment and retention.

It is here that an Education Industry might be an enlightening operation. An Education Industry that sees its role in the "production of communications" will only focus on those communications that are meaningful (because only meaningful communications can be sustained). Conviviality, flexibility, openness and an embrace of diversity are essential elements to achieving this. But what is needed most of all is a sense of purpose within the industry that this is what it is about.

Education has traditionally seen itself as being about knowledge (just in the same way that religion can see itself as being about faith). Knowledge is tied up with communication; it seeps through the togetherness of people - whether they are in the workplace or the classroom. But with the industrial workplace increasingly not able to supply the pre-requisite conviviality in society, it must be left to education to fill the void, and consequently to nurture knowledge and fulfil the deep yearning for meaning that is felt by every human being.

Agreeing with Alison Wolf that "vocational education is a great idea for other peoples' children" won't make me popular since she's become Michael Gove's puppet. But I think on this, she's right. Vocational qualifications are dreamed up by the middle classes as a dewey-eyed guilt-driven solution to what even they can see as a tsunami of lost teenagers (God... there's a thought!) caught out in an employment market determinedly gluing people to their social position if their maths and english (capital E?) isn't any good.

So Gove sets about trying to get their maths and english (I don't care about capitals!) better, with a drive for more traditional education (just like he had!). But it's unlikely to work, and will probably serve to exacerbate their misery. How many times do you need to be told you're no good at something? Try just once more...

I suspect the root of the problem doesn't lie in the education system. I would be tempted to say it lies in the home, but this is not quite the whole picture. Kids who grow up with books and a family that loves reading, will learn to read. Kids whose parents worry about them learning their tables will learn to do maths (actually, kids whose parents don't worry about them learning their tables on ideological grounds, will probably do even better!). But having said all this, I don't believe homes are that different from how they were 50 years ago. Yes, there's more divorce and possibly more emotional chaos in the home - but the nuclear family of 50 years ago was pretty radioactive in different, but equally oppressive, ways. Yes, technology has invaded the home, but it has also given the kids something to talk about when they go to school. But what has changed is the environment of work, and I think the work environment more than any other factor is creating the social mobility problems that we now face.

Mass industrial employment was not predicated on an ability to read and add-up. Physical power and endurance (if you had it) was enough. Teamwork helped, but often social skills and intelligence developed  in the Steel mill or the mine, not the classroom. Physical work provided the step up, acknowledging the basic biological attributes of an individual, but then providing a context from where they might grow. And of course not everyone could hack-it (I would never have survived down a coal mine!) Whatever emotional trauma lay in the childhoods of individuals, some of them could do something that was rewarded and valued.

It is the end of industrialisation that is the end of social mobility. Service jobs self-select the articulate and bright. Service companies are run by the articulate and bright whose parents had books in the home and worried about their kids learning their tables. The end of industrialisation brings a radical split in society between the communicative classes and those whose childhoods are damaged in the home. This, I think, is why the miners' strike is such a critical historical moment. The workers knew what  they were losing. It wasn't the loss of an industry; it was the loss of equity.

The question is, how much of a time-bomb is the lack of social mobility? How worried are we? Do we believe there will be riots? How determined are we to do something about it that actually works, rather than pretending to do something about it 'because we ought to'? But if we were really determined, what should we do?

One thought is to reintroduce industrialisation: (*in a deep 'cinema' voice*) "The return of the industrial revolution - it's back! but this time, it has a social mission!" I can't see that somehow - even with the Hollywood treatment. If a robot can do the work, why not let it? However, "cottage" manufacturing may be possible. But what industrialisation presented socially - in the steel mills and the coal mines - was conviviality. People were together, being themselves and being useful, and being seen to be useful. From there, people could start to grow from basic human relationships and mutual recognition.

The end of industrialisation has brought social atomisation; or maybe it was the other way round. Either way, social atomisation has brought a lack of social mobility because socially-atomised industries (the service industries) require from their workers the inner emotional resources which can only be nurtured in a loving home. Industrial society did not predicate itself on the existence of loving homes. I think the most important lesson taught by industrialisation was that it had nothing to do with what was made. If it was simply about that and nothing else, industrial society should have collapsed as Marx predicted. Instead, it had to do with the fact that the factory was a context for learning and making sense of the world. It hung together not just because it suited capitalists, but because it suited workers too.

In their current form, the vast majority of service sector industries cannot provide an environment for conviviality. There is only one service sector industry which has the possibility of being able to do this. It is EDUCATION. But the nascent education industry faces a drastic choice as to whether to follow the other service industries and become socially atomised (with increasing formalisation of assessment, content, etc) or whether to become a new industry for conviviality.

Every now and then I get into a social situation where I feel uncomfortable. It may be that someone says something to me that upsets me, or I'm particularly nervous about saying something, or have my hopes dashed in an exchange with a colleague or a student. In such moments, I can feel exposed and vulnerable: letting show feelings which I'd prefer to be hidden. Over the years I've learnt to be more comfortable with this, and accept vulnerability and feeling uncomfortable as part of a process. I've learnt to value it because the rawness of emotion that arises from such moments can often spur new directions. Vulnerability, to me at least, is important.

Students are often vulnerable in this way. Many try to cover it up - avoiding the uncomfortable issues, trying to do the socially acceptable thing, making it 'look good' and putting on a good show even if underneath it doesn't feel good at all. It's not uncommon in academia to find teachers who play similar games. Over the years they learn bravado and confidence, but with bravado and confidence goes the need to defend their own position (and consequently, an inability to grow). Ironically, I've found that it is often the most vulnerable students who are capable of undermining the greatest confidence in professors and teachers. Academics sometimes don't take well to such challenges, often patronising their students with long words that mean nothing (and the students know it). Tragically, such bravado and defensive behaviour is often the most successfully transmitted knowledge to students.

These are age-old problems. No doubt Socrates patronised Plato when Plato said something that didn't fit Socrates's sense of identity. From those ancient dialogues, we get no sense of the 'positioning' between teacher and student. In modern universities, academics compete with one another as to who is 'top dog'. Once again, bravado and the brass-necked confidence kicks in. Too often it is survival of the most confident and quick-witted, rather than survival of the most sensitive and thoughtful. This dynamic has characterised academic life for centuries.

Learning to embrace vulnerability is to recognise it as meaningful and useful. Indeed, the visceral emotional reaction to an uncomfortable situation is as meaningful as the excited, passionate enthusiasm for some new idea or individual. But whereas excitement and passion lead to new avenues and opportunities, awkwardness and vulnerability lead to retrenchment and insularity. Yet if we learnt to look at awkwardness as a sign for something, and asked ourselves "what does it mean?" then I believe it can be seen as something as positive (if not more so) than excitement and enthusiasm. After all, excitement and enthusiasm rarely leads to a critique of what it is that made us excited, but instead entails an overlooking of the emotion as we look to new opportunities.

I think there are important lessons for academic behaviour and the way we value students here. If vulnerability is seen as a strength rather than a weakness, then it is students who have the greatest advantage, not professors. They have the fresh eyes, ears and brains. Knowledge lies waiting to be revealed in the challenge between fresh perspectives on the world and the established positions of academics. If academics dismiss their students as "no good", or they assert their own confidence over the students' (or colleagues) vulnerability they dismiss not only their students' privileged insight, but also their own opportunities for growth. The job of transmitting culture is precisely the job of opening hearts.

I'm going back to early academic enthusiasms - to some of the things that Ian Kemp pointed me towards when I studied music at Manchester. This was at a time when we were studying Tippett's (then quite recent) "Mask of Time". Why call it a mask? What was that all about? In looking for an answer to this my focus turned to the 17th century masque that Ben Johnson, Dryden and others were involved with (Shakespeare was on the fringes of this - although I suspect he was more interested in opening up the popular theatre market, rather than taking commissions from the nobility: interesting stuff here - http://cco.cambridge.org/extract?id=ccol052187839X_CCOL052187839XA005) When I started work at the University of Bolton, I initiated a project using computer games for storytelling writing some fairly simple software that allowed movies to be made of game interation, text added, and music created as players moved through a virtual world (http://data.bolton.ac.uk/staff/mwj1/parnassus/). Now this feels like ancient personal history, but it was from here that I started thinking about cybernetics and issues of technology, control and coordination in experience and educational organisation.

What was interesting about 'Steps to Parnassus' was the rapid feeback between action, storymaking, music making, and then further action and reflection. Many of the movies that the kids produced were fascinating. In many ways I still think this is the most interesting thing I have done in e-learning. But after becoming involved in e-learning 'proper' and doing JISC projects, and focusing on (incredibly boring) things like e-portfolio, and (much more interesting) things like Personal Learning Environments, I moved away from this game-like environment for reflection (although aspects of it still were present in doing things like collaborative mind-mapping and agent-based modelling in the SPLICE project).

Now I'm reassessing things. Not just because it seems that the e-learning thing is over (especially in terms of the generous project funding that gave me freedom to do this stuff), and that I have to find new interesting things to do, but also there is a need to take stock generally.

Where are we? Quite simply: "Too much information - no capability for decision and control"

and some emerging questions from this... What do we mean by 'information'? What sort of decisions should we be taking? What does effective control look like in an environment of run-away information? (but this would be to use a cybernetic perspective on control, which (as so many fail to understand) has nothing to do with fascism).

"What do we mean by information?" is what I have been driving at recently. Where is the distinction between information and meaning? If information and meaning are co-present, does that mean consciousness is implicit in information (as some physicists are beginning to argue)? What is the ontology of information? and so on... lots of fascinating (and I think new) academic debate there!

"What sort of decisions should we be taking?" is related to how those decisions are taken and who takes them. It is dependent on the first question about information and meaning. It depends on how we coordinate knowledge - and what we think knowledge is. I think Hayek is important here, as is the Critical Realist economics. The deep issue is the relationship between axiology and information. Within this, issues of individualism and conviviality need to be addressed - particularly when we consider the locus of knowledge. We need to recognise the atomisation of individuals as something which frames our current experience, and may hamper our attempts to dig ourselves out of the hole we've got ourselves into. Maus's work on giving and 'potlatch' (particularly in the economic interpretation given by Bataille) may also be important here.

"What does effective control look like in an environment of run-away information?" that is a practical question which relates to technology, and an understanding of how technology relates information to experience. In particular, it focuses on how the relationship between technology and experience might be harnessed for the coordination of meaning and values. In other words, this is dependent on an understanding of the other two questions. And here (as I was suggesting yesterday) is where drama, masques and other such participatory devices become important.

I'm blogging a lot at the moment because a lot is happening. There's an opportunity to put things together. But the opportunity is always in the moment. If I don't embrace the moment and get it down, it will be lost. And that, in essence, is what I'm driving at with this issue of real-time feedback and coordination. Maybe I'm "playing with reality" through my blog?

If you could imagine a computer adventure game that was actually 'real' where virtual things on a screen become physical things: things would continually change shape according to the actions of people. Nobody would know where they were. Everything would change. The physical constraints of the environment would be so transitory that everybody's interpretation of "what's going on?" or "where are we?" would be different. No decision could be made as to what to do, and any agreement between individuals would rest on the expediency of mitigating the possibility of disagreement rather than defining shared values and principals. This is what I believe IT does to us, and whilst thinking of a computer game being 'real' is to turn informational constraints into physical constraints, I think information constrains us just like matter.

This is a useful thought experiment to further explore the theme of symmetry and abstraction that I started yesterday: http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/symmetry-experience-and-abstraction.html. Now I want to consider where information technology fits into the symmetry/abstraction/experience framework. [of course, a framework is already an abstraction, so I guess I'm not off to a good start!]. Thinking about how the reality of a computer game might affect us (actually, maybe a bit like TRON) and the disorientation that ensues highlights the point about the constraints on experience.

The main point I want to explore is that information technology provides experience and constraint simultaneously. Abstraction alone is information, and the information constrains, leads to experience, new experiences are abstracted, and so on - as I discussed yesterday. Technology represents both informational constraint and physical constraint. Any technology results from a process of abstraction in the first place. Someone has an idea for a new tool to build, whether physically or in software. That tool's physical presence changes the environment of experience. The lights on the screen also frame experience, and they are usually presented within an extended informational framework of 'rules for use' which is presented either within the  office where the technology is implemented, or presented within the technology itself ('how to use...'). But technology is a realisation of an abstraction.

What's important about information technology is the ease with which the informational constraints of experience can be manipulated. Our social networks abound with continually emerging informational constraints. As they change, so we change. Of course, this is similar to thinking about the information within a conversation. But within information technology, there are particular kinds of constraint that frame experience which is also constrained by physical constraints of the medium (only text, disembodied). Added to that, there are new constraints which may be applied which have nothing to do with the conversation, like changes to the interface (think of recent changes to Facebook). These themselves affect the constraints of the conversation.

We have never in our history been able to change the constraints of experience with such fluidity as we can with the  manipulation of informational constraints through IT. It is as if we were in a computer game - indeed many of our computer systems feel like giant social games increasingly played out in real time (Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc). A despotic baron might once have destroyed a local village, or the local church might have been burnt down, but these are not easy things to organise - even for a despotic baron. The manipulation of experiential constraint of information is achieved with the flick of a switch.

But making effective collective decisions, and deciding upon the principals for those decisions (rather than expediency) is important to avoid catastrophe. Expediency and lack of coordination in decision-making can both steer things over the cliff-edge. But in a shape-shifting world, how do you avoid that?

But technology increasingly is a "play within a play". Whilst it manipulates reality through manipulating information constraints, the action of the manipulation and the manipulation itself is also subject to technology which becomes the material for experience. This is where the 'play within a play' is interesting. For in the "play within a play", there is still experience over time. In the "play within a play", observers are participants observing observations. Players within the shape-shifting information playground may explore their own information-constraining actions. In this "play within a play" what can be revealed is the inherent meaning that lies behind the action of each individual as they engage in continual constraint. In essence what is revealed is a coherent structuring of expectations.

A coherent structuring of expectations is more than 'agreement'. It is more than expediency. It involves a deep shared acknowledgement of what is likely to happen and what to do about it. It affords a deep metacritique on the shape shifting processes of technological constraint, and a self-awareness of each individual's role in that. This experiential identification of shared meaning is a temporal process which has form. It has symmetry much in the way that a piece of music has symmetry. What is sought in the process of bringing people together to explore their experiences is an aesthetic coordination of meaningfulness. It is transformative of the individuals as well as transformative of the action situation.

What is most interesting me in this is that for the ancient Greeks, drama fulfilled a deep sociological function and that there seems to be a parallel with this process of coordinating meaning together. The Greeks invited members of a society into a shared process of observation. Within that process of observation, it allowed for the formulation of meaning. Interestingly, the Greeks similarly had concepts of a shape-shifting universe.

Our information environment is shape-shifting, and in order to manage the environment of huge amounts of information, a way of playing with the reality of the shape-shifting world must be found which invites those within the environment to be observers of the environment's own dynamics. Perhaps only then can a dynamics of meaningful coordination emerge.

I've had some fascinating discussions with Oleg over the last two days, discussing our book on "Educational Cybernetics" and negotiations with publishers (which are sometimes frustrating), but also dealing with new developments in cybernetics and their possible implications. The most significant of these is the emerging deep critique of 'information' coming from physics and biology. This is currently affecting my thoughts as I write a paper with Leydesdorff on the VSM and Luhmann's social systems theory (I think there's a matter vs. information thing going on there), and my thinking around papers I intend to give at the American Society for Cybernetics on abstraction and time, and a similarly themed paper on abstraction, mechanisms and critical realist economic theory in Marseille next month.

Oleg's view is that Bateson had these same insights into the nature of information a long time ago. My initial reaction is that I wouldn't be at all surprised. But it's useful to do a deep reading of Bateson's arguments to unpick what he means. First of all, the issue of abstraction and experience he's documents very clearly with this diagram:

There is an oscillation between abstraction and experience. From experience emerges a description of the experience, and from the description a form is produced within which new experiences are framed, and then described, and so on. An interesting comparison can be made to a similar oscillating diagram a few pages later which shows the relationship between 'calibration and feedback'.

This I think is significant for the processes of economic control, because in order to calibrate, some knowledge of the ontological mechanisms of the processes must feed into knowledge about what interventions to make. But what's in a mechanism? Mechanism is everywhere, and everywhere it is underpinned by a concept of successionism (which is the topic of my economics paper). Bateson says A->B->A->B,, and within A we describe x->y->z in language. In describing x->y->z, a typology of x', y' and z' emerge at B, with new descriptions of mechanisms x'->y'->z', and so on. But is this it?

What I think is important is the abstraction of successionism: what's implicit in the "->". I remember having a discussion with a mathematician years ago about what "=" meant. For it is one thing to say it means "tautology", but acutally, tautology is itself a process. There is a mental process by which we recognise that a tautology is taking place. And there is succession in the mental process. And there is tautology in the succession. Here I think we get to Von Foerster's Eigenform. In this way, maths is epistemology, not calculation (as Kauffman said on the CYBCOM list today). In its epistemology, there is tied-up, ontology.

But how does symmetry fit with all this? The issue is, I believe, form. In Bateson's paper "A re-examination of Bateson's Rule"  (where Bateson's rule is the biological theory proposed by Gregory's father William, who first coined the term 'genetics'), Bateson makes the now-famous definition of 'information' as "a difference which makes a difference  in some later event". Bateson is interested in the radial and bilateral symmetry of organisms (for example Beetles). He suggests that the process of loss of symmetry - from radial symmetry, to bilateral symmetry to assymetry, is the result of additional information in the environment, since, he argues, it is information which attenuates the self-organising development of the organism.

Bateson develops this idea to expand on his concept of negative causation and constrain. Instead of talking of information necessary to determine asymmetry, he instead talks of information necessary to prohibit bilateral symmetry. In this way, the information environment of the developing organism is an environment of constraint, squeezing the possibilities for development of the organism.

How does this help me understand the nature of abstraction and its relationship to symmetry. Abstraction is information and consequently it is constraint. Experience occurs within constraints. What is generated is new information which constrains future development. The abstraction of time, like the abstraction of abstractions generates information within which experience occurs. But what of the form or symmetry of experience?

On the one hand, we can't grasp it without abstracting; however, technology may allow us to manipulate informational constraints within which our experience is formed. This may be useful in social systems because the relationship between calibration and feedback in society is so nebulous. The free participatory manipulation of informational constraints may reveal shared expectations and means of collective constraints (through collaborative thinking about data for example) which may in turn help in the processes of shared decision-making.

I have to think more about this, but it is the shared decision-making within a complex and ever-changing environment of informational constraints that is the central social and organisational problem we are facing today.

When thinking about marketing their education products Universities sometimes make the comparison to buying a car. After all, the cost of an undergraduate degree is now £28000 and for that, you could buy a BMW X1, an Audi Q5 or a Ford Mondeo (I'm not Jeremy Clarkson, but I guess that wouldn't be the popular choice)