wallpaper dinding

There is a problem in thinking about learning: we can only see the outward signs of cognition: linguistic utterances, body movements, etc. Our understanding of what a person might be thinking, of what might be going on in the learning process is derived from the way in which people play particular language games. Focus on 'agency' in learning seems to condemn us to metaphysical conjecture: no judgements can really be defended; they are effectively intellectual posturing.

The alternative to focusing on agency is to focus on structures which are, in the final analysis, communications. It is reasonable to suggest that communicative structures may provide some glimpse to the world of the agent: certainly some of the constraints that operate on the agent in their behaviour are available for inspection. But also, we might be able to test theories of agency which relate agency to structure by examining evidence from communications. With this supra-individual perspective, we can ask fundamental questions about the constitution of the self: are minds within the head? are selves within a body? and so on.

Supra-individuality is also metaphysical conjecture of course. But at least it provides us something that we can explore in a systematic and analytical way; studying agency per se on the other hand either leads to the ontological difficulties of the psychologist's lab, or to the ineffectual hand of phenomenological interpretivism.

So what tools do we have? One of the techniques we have for doing this is Shannon's communication theory. Shannon's insight into the transmission of messages between machines is deceptively simple: the issue is the uncertainty of a receiver in being able to predict the messages being sent to it (remember this is machines, not people!). The greater the uncertainty, the greater the amount of information gained if the receiver were to be able to predict the message. But messages are transmitted within constraints of grammar, meaning, syntax, etc. These mean that symbols are not equally probable; some symbols are more probable than others depending on the context. The thing that determines the distribution of probabilities of symbols Shannon calls 'redundancy': some things are repeated more often than others (like the letter 'e' in English); equally, some messages are repeated to ensure correct transmission if the medium is "noisy". Redundancies can be added to ensure effective transmission over a noisy medium: either by repeating messages, or by simplifying the syntax or grammar: both these techniques effectively add 'extra bits of extraneous information' to the message to ensure its transmission. Entropy is framed by redundancy.

Shannon was resistant to the idea of applying his ideas to human communication. The missing ingredient for Shannon would be 'meaning'. It's all very well to talk about information and entropy, but the relationship between meaning and entropy is of a different order. One way of characterising this 'different order' is to conceive of human communication as a process of selecting anticipations of communication processes. If we pursue this line of inquiry, then agency starts to become more tractable.

My utterances on this blog are not performed in the vacuum of my head (!) They are performed in anticipation of the likely responses I might have to it. Actually, I reckon very few people will bother to read this far in my post; but one or two (the people I want to communicate with) might. I can imagine what they might say. Actually, I am talking to myself in wondering what they might say; but as I do this, I am exploring a set of anticipations which will inform the utterances I choose to make. My hope is that the utterances I eventually select will stimulate conversation with those who I wish to communicate with. So I have anticipations of communication and I have models of other people.

There are ways of conceiving of anticipations of communication. Daniel Dubois has done very interesting work on anticipatory systems in computer science (see http://wohlstandfueralle.com/documents/DUBOISHYPERINCURSION.pdf). But what is interesting in this work is the way that we come to eventually select utterances: the criteria for agency. The exploration of anticipations is also an entropic systetm; it is constrained by redundancies. But the redundancies which constrain the anticipations of communications between humans must necessarily be shared. My communication with you will be a process of selecting an utterance to which I calculate you will respond to in a particular way; I can only predict this if I have some insight into the constraints that operate between in our communicating.

I find this an exciting result. Because the redundancies in our communications are measurable. When we look at emails, documents on the internet, twitter posts, blogs, etc we can determine levels of redundancy. In comparing levels of redundancy in discourses, there does appear to be a way of getting back to some conception of the processes of agency which created the conditions for the making of utterances. In the multi-dimensional world of human communications, it is the redundancies which are shared between people where meaningful discourse arises. Shannon's theory on its own cannot determine this (indeed, in multi-dimensions, it would suggest that communications ought to fall apart as Klaus Krippendorff argues). But multi-dimensional human communications do not fall apart - in fact, they often work rather well. Thinking about anticipations and mutual redundancies is a way of understanding our extraordinary success!

The Cambridge Realist Workshop (see http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/events/seminars/realist/workshop_programme.htm) has been very important to me over the years. When I realised as a fledgling educational technologist about 10 years ago, that most attempts to evaluate educational technology were ridiculous, and that 'ontology' was the thing that mattered, I signed up to the group - simply because they were the only people who appeared to be thinking similar thoughts (they had a conference on 'technology and ontology' that year - although I didn't go). Most of what they talked about in the workshop was economics and, undaunted by the  fact that I knew nothing of economics, I started reading the papers that (then) were sent to me at Bolton by post (the first one was by Amartya Sen - which was a good start!). Only within the last few years have I mustered the energy to do the 3 hour drive to Cambridge to attend - but I learnt an enormous amount anyway. It was a kind of MOOC I guess - but this one really worked because it was driven by passionate commitment on the part of all who engaged with it to get to grips with fundamentally difficult problems.

I was there on Monday for Tony Lawson's talk which was a brilliant analysis of Thorstein Veblen's coinage of the term 'neo-classical economics' - a term generally used abusively but without definition by economists, but which fundamentally according to Veblen (and to Lawson) referred to that group of economists who were progressive in their thinking, but whose methods contradicted their ontology. But after the talk, the topic of 'explanation' arose. "We all want to explain away the things we don't like," I argued. It's not the what an explanation that is interesting, but how it does its explaining.

Thinking about it, and following another discussion that occurred among friends a bit earlier in the evening, I have been thinking about the relationship between an explanation and an excuse. Much of Lawson's argument against formalism in modern economics is that it brings inappropriate tools (mathematical models) to a reality which it doesn't understand, has no ambition to critique, and yet seeks to explain it through the use of these tools. Its explanatory power is dreadful and we all live with the consequences. There is basically an intellectual laziness to engage with reality born out of reliance on tools and maintaining the professional identity of individual economists. To what extent is this laziness the result of using tools to make excuses for the status quo? To what extent is the excuse-making habitual?

An excuse is a kind of explanation: religion is an excuse for war; austerity is an excuse for maintaining inequality; national security is an excuse for surveillance. The distinction between an excuse and an explanation can be difficult to pinpoint in the statement itself: the distinction lies in the orientation of the observer. I asked my 13 year-old daughter what fear is the other week: "it's an excuse!" she said (she kicked off my thinking on this whole topic!) To call something an excuse is be oriented to do something about it: to reject the explanation and move out of the cycle where the explanation (or excuse) does its explaining. To call something an excuse summons up passion, anger and a determination to challenge: it is to wake up.

When might an explanation not be an excuse? This is difficult because it depends on one's orientation: one person's explanation is another person's excuse. What matters is the underpinning value system. Where does that come from? Most likely from life experiences - childhood attachments, etc. That's where the how of an explanation really matters more than the what. 

This is where I think we have to be careful in recognising the nature of the challenges that identifying an excuse can present. It's not enough to say "you're just making excuses!" - because we will have our own excuses for making the challenge. But the question "what are you wanting to excuse?" is more powerful. Any excuse carries within it imminent traces of the mind that wishes to hold on to it. "Why are you wanting to excuse the status quo? What is in you that wishes to believe this explanation? What is in me that wishes to challenge you?" - this is a more constructive way of moving forwards. It is where we can see the layers of excuse-making in each other. We might hope that by exposing this, there might be a deeper meeting point that is therapeutic rather than confrontational.

My post about student employability gave me some worries after I'd published it. Maybe, I thought, to suggest that people are 'addicted' to excuses is too strong: after all, we all need excuses as ways of explaining the things that we don't do: I feel a need to excuse my addiction to excuses! There are many things I should have done two or three weeks ago that I haven't done that I need to make excuses for (and why am I blogging rather than getting them done??). Having said this, I recognise the pattern in myself: the excuse deals with the pain of guilt (guilt is not only a "Catholic" thing!)

There is something static and almost grounded about this cycle of feeling inadequacy and making excuses for it. Is there a comforting feel to going round the cycle. Which makes me wonder what happens if I genuinely break out of it.

Of course, what I have to do to break out of the cycle is to actually do the thing that I was making excuses for not doing. How do I put myself on that trajectory? Perhaps one of the main things that happens is that I see a way out of the cycle; I start to feel a sense of recognition about the cycle I am in, and at the same time know what to do about it (is the feeling of recognition also the feeling of knowing what to do?)

Deciding to enter an educational institution with some purpose of achievement is the kind of act that is designed to move people out of the cycles they are stuck in. Education promises (but doesn't always deliver) the required impetus to 'move on'. But if education reinforces feelings of inadequacy in students, it can make things worse. If my intellectual commitment and determination lies principally in education, it is because I believe this ought not to happen. Indeed, I think its dubious morality implicates those involved in a social ill for which nobody taking money from students (which those students will be repaying for the next 20 years) ought to be able to shy away from. My (overlarge) salary is part paid for by the European tax-payer and part by students (approximately 3 students yearly fees are needed to pay the remainder of my annual salary, which those students will be repaying for up to the next 20 years). Vice Chancellors typically require the "souls" of two students per month to pay their salaries. This makes me feel sick.

The rule is 'no excuses'. Vice Chancellors excuse their pay in the context of the 'global market' of higher education: bollocks, isn't it?? Most lecturers will defend theirs in terms of the cost of living. But our intellectual job, the purpose of our lives in education, is to think hard and well, not to become wealthy. Thinking carries its own rewards which do not require the subjugation of the future generation. Great thinking more often than not arises from positions of material hardship.

The problem is that we will continue to make excuses. We will even make excuses for not fighting the gross injustices and imbalances of pay within our own institutions. We will make excuses for not challenging people who are 'in charge' but clearly incompetent. But worst of all, we will make excuses for the status quo which increasingly will enslave students to alienating experiences for which many of them will still be paying for after we are dead.

I think that Information is the most important phenomenon that urgently requires a coherent scientific understanding. Currently we only have fragments of 'information theory' and the fragments don't fit together: information as communication between machines (Shannon's theory) which has been so important in technology; information in meaningful human communication processes (i.e. not machines); information in biology - particularly information in DNA (but enzymes? or proteins?); information as experience (the experience of becoming informed); information in learning; information as qualia; information 'flows'; information overload... and so on.

Information is, before we make any kind of distinction about it, fundamentally an aspect of experience. My eyes pass over the spreadsheet in the way that they might pass over a painting or my ear might latch onto a piece of music. At some point, things draw my attention. But at what point? What has happened for one particular number (a patch of black on the white screen) to draw my attention?

This is why I think, as an experience, information is 'musical'. It is hard to study the movements of my eye over a painting, but the sensation of my ear during music can be inspected at some depth. There are moments which 'strike' me - moments at which I have a sensation of revelation or discovery. There are also moments when the tedium of it all causes it to wash over my attention without me taking notice. I think if we can understand this in musical experience, our understanding of information as experience will be increased.

What I am interested in, which underpins information as experience, are human expectations. These shift when we witness an 'information flow', and they change when we listen to music. They also change during learning processes: indeed, our expectations are always shifting. I think that our emotional responses are closely aligned to shifts in expectation. We anticipate with eagerness when we are certain about something that is about to happen: the result of a calculation, or the resolution of a cadence. We feel satisfaction when the resolution occurs or the equation is solved. We become anxious and disorientated when we don't know what to expect.

I think expectations are formed within constraints. An expectation is the 'thinkable' part within a context which is largely unthinkable. What we conventionally think of as 'information' is bounded by what we cannot think. There is much more to any 'information' but it is not thinkable. This is certainly the case with music: the absences are bigger than the presences.

What is 'unthinkable' is effectively redundant. Yet whilst it is redundant, it is also causal as a constraint on what we can think. Redundancies may be analysable. Music is full of redundancies: repetitions of motifs, accompanimental patterns, etc. With information (say on the internet) there is also huge amounts of redundancy. There is a job  to do in analysing this redundancy and understanding how it is causal as a constraint on what is thinkable.

The 'topic' of any piece of information is the thinkable part that is sustained in a sea of redundancy that maintains it. The topic of any piece of information is a kind of expectation. The topic of a piece of music is a deep level structure within which successive events can be situated (like, for example, a deep Schenkerian structure).

In learning, expectations of both teachers and learners change. In their conversations there are huge amounts of redundancy (this is why Pask's conversational model is mistaken, because it only looks at the thinking part of utterances). The redundancies constrain the expectations of each. By having knowledge, the teacher is able to generate more redundancies which can further constrain the learner's expectations. With this constraint, the learner can be led to feel safe in first making utterances that they feel secure in anticipating the outcome of. This is basically 'play'.

Which then raises the question about the role of redundancy in play. Most games operate with simple rules which are applicable in a variety of ways. Is this also redundancy? Cyberneticians talk of 'reducing variety' with things like rules. But I'm beginning to think that this is better understood as 'increasing redundancy' - effectively it amounts to the same thing: variety is reduced if the constraints are amplified. Then the difference between play fighting and real fighting becomes one where in play fighting the redundancies are always maximised, whereas in actual fighting there is absolutely no redundancy in a real punch!!

I was in a meeting about student employability today. My institution is one that gives opportunities to students who would not otherwise have the opportunity of getting a degree, and who have often had difficult experiences with education in the past. I believe this is the most important group of students in education - it's where we can really make a difference. But it's very difficult.

The moment of transition when the course stops, the students gain their qualification and they have to turn and face the 'world outside' to get a job can present particular challenges. Student confidence, the ability to be flexible about expectations of employment, the resilience to 'keep going' if initial applications are unsuccessful, the restlessness that is necessary to keep students anxious to carry on learning new skills, the continual monitoring of what's available, the sense of how to position oneself... these are all things which tend not to get taught on degree programmes which, naturally enough, tend to focus on "how to get a degree". Sometimes, student confidence can be hit if their experiences of trying to get a degree have reinforced expectations of failure repeated from previous experiences of education: the cycle of 'referrals', 'repeats', 'change of module pathway', etc can be demoralising. From that position it is very hard to turn to face the world with the necessary vigour which will fight the competition.

All this has led me to think about 'student confidence'. We had a rather authentic meeting today where both staff and students were encouraged to share their hopes and fears about their employability situation (the elephant in the room with employability in HE today is that staff often have worse prospects of employment than students!). It seemed to be a good thing for students to see the vulnerabilities in their teachers. The message is "it's not just you!". It was almost like "Employability Anonymous".

Which has got me thinking...

Gregory Bateson wrote what I think is his best paper about Alchoholics Anonymous (see "Steps to an Ecology of Mind"). What he identified was a self-defeating cycle whereby the individual was caught in a trap: feeling terrible that they were an alcholic while they were sober that they would drink to alleviate the depression. Is this feeling of helplessness so different from (or not part of) low self-esteem? Then, Bateson describes what he thinks AA does: it helps individuals to see the trap they are in. On becoming aware of the dynamic, they are able to step outside it.

The pattern when talking to troubled employment-seekers about the positive action they might take to find work tends to be "could you could do something to make your work more visible so others can see what you can do?", being met with reasons why the individual can't do that. Or the employment-seeker might grudgingly agree that there is something they can do, agree to do it, and then not do it. Is the intransigent employment-seeker like the alchoholic and the bottle? Is their modus operandi one of:

1. feeling bad about not wanting to look for work
2. addressing the badness of their feelings by reinforcing excuses for not doing anything

I'm very grateful to @paddytherabbit (David Sherlock) for showing me the easiest way to get started with Oculus Rift development. For David's post, see http://paddytherabbit.com/3d-worlds-web-using-oculus-rift-attempt-1/. From my perspective, this is almost as exciting as the Rift itself. It means that development can be placed in the hands of hacky programmers like me who are too lazy to use Unity (or pay for their license) or the SDK, but can get something rich and immersive up and running in 5 minutes with a bit of HTML.
David's video is here:

The Rift's main benefit is that it is a very simple bit of kit: basically it's a screen with a motion-sensing controller tied-in. All Oculus bridge has to do is to render to the screen in the 'barrel distortion' pattern that is required, and to relay signals from the USB port about the movement of the head.

But the ease with which the web can be integrated into this set-up means that developments in VR will, I think, be even quicker than I imagined. There are already a lot of games built with Unity and other platforms that are appearing. The problem with these tools is that they are geared for doing something far more complex and sophisticated than most people will want when exploring what might be possible.

With Oculus Bridge (and the associated threejs (http://threejs.org/) library which does the WebGL rendering) I can hack together all sorts of things in my virtual world and see what it's like. More to the point, I could get my daughter to have a go! Let's try something with sound in 3D sound positioning... let's try getting some unusual textures... let's try importing a 360 degree photo taken with a Ricoh Theta (see https://theta360.com/en/), or let's see about integration with Leap Motion (https://www.leapmotion.com/) or integrate graphical effects in a virtual world with the range of consumer EEG brain monitors. But it's all quick and easy.

This is also important for WebGL - that is a technology that's been in development for some time, and sometimes the rationale for it hasn't been entirely clear (particularly because the performance isn't quite as good as a native 3D rendering). But as a platform for creating quick virtual worlds, are we really going to worry about the details of rendering performance if all we want to do is to play around with things? Added to that, the performance of Web-based 3d will also only get better: the computers that matter now are our web browsers.

Someone said to me that with the Oculus Rift, it was like technology going back to CD-Rom authoring. It may be, but I'm beginning to sense that the development from CD-Rom to social tools is going to be extremely rapid. Indeed, by the time the Rift is released commercially next year, it might all be in place. And then I think things will look very different.