Professional concerns regarding the digital environment in general and DFI in particular

Professional concerns regarding the digital environment in general and DFI in particular
The course presenters have done a fantastic job.  Clearly they are very very good at what they do.  They have modeled exemplary practice in their own teaching and they seems like awesome individuals.
1. The framing of imagination by technology.  By this I mean Tech becomes a Trojan Horse for the overthrow of true imagination. REAL imagination exists for the expanding/breaking of current parameters in the service of human evolution.  NOT restricted to operating within the confines of a codified and limited digital unreal platform.

2. Domestication of creativity and the narrowing of thought by technology.  Here my concern is focused on the silencing of decent.  Progressive and disruptive change happens and the margins of the dominant order.  With the neo-tech hegemony there are not margins anymore. "Ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul." Translated, the words mean: One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

3. "Soma" (Huxley:Brave New World) - comfort, addiction and social control through technology.  Is tech the new 'Soma' of pacification?  Gaming, viewing and more.... is the perfect Diazepam for consent.

4. 'Fly on the wall' naivety and the absence of a ‘declared bias’.... as if technology is a politically neutral environment.  It appears to me that this DFI has failed to disclose their political and  philosophical biasses....and therefore suggesting that they don't have any; which is either ignorant of dishonest.

5. Technological Wizardry, power and social control through omnipotence, omniscience and ubiquitous prevalence  “Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.” (Orwell: 1984).

6. Technology as a primary environment for Entrapment, Domination, Domestication and the manufacture of consent.  This doesn't need much explaining.  The tragic and failed 'tyranny's' of the past have not just ceased to exist or repented; no they morph and morphed again.  The illusion of a new heaven and earth and a shinning new Jerusalem coming coming down from on high is that same old magical myth - now, as I have heard during this DFI (by Zoe- from OMG) this paradise is the coming world of AI, Robotics and tech solutions that will solve every problem on earth.  All this is imminent and pure bliss....get on board now.

7. The art of distraction - what elephant? (Poverty, War, systemic injustice)

8. Dishonesty, positivism and corporate spin. If you want to know what is doing on follow the money.....  Who pays the Ferryman?  Tech is about sales, market share, branding/cool, and shareholder returns... so obscenely rich people can slope around in their vanity and never dirty their hands with a day of honest work

8. White Noise in the service of political deafness.  We are teaching kids how not to listen and worst..how not to hear.  Tech noise fills their tidy forming brains so silence becomes noise

9. Image overload in the service of political blindness..same as above (where sight becomes blindness) and where all people will comply and not ask questions that don't have comfortable answers.

10. The technology based 'virtual, phony and constructed' world in contrast to a full-sensory paradoxical, organic living world.

11. Technology as a human mediator and the confinement of love.  Power always seeks to restrict the freedom of love, because Power knows love is all that really matters

12.Technology - the problem of proximity and the death of empathy.  We know to much, we see to much, and hear to much of the cries of the poor....but we do so very little.  The tragedy of the world comes to us through the tube but we feel distant and helpless to respond. The gap between what we know and the good we do is ever increasing and thanks to tech will this gap is becoming a chasm and is contributing to hypocrisy, schizophrenia and paranoia.

13.  Salary - and the suspension of critical questioning.  We are all paid to much to question the dominant orthodoxy... let alone suggest the emperor is butt naked (and a tyrant and a bastard to boot).  Our silence and complicity is bought and paid for.

14. Creativity as product.... and the commodification of imagination.

Conclusion:
Being invited to be a tech catechist for the proselytizing of kids into the One True faith......  Sublime as the tech world presents itself,  I am not a believer.

I didn't sign up for teaching to 'wag the dog.'  Nothing I have been exposed to during this DFI has helped me to seize on the Great, the beautiful and the sacred ideas that have been explored in the history of our species.  Kids don't need more bling and candyfloss to satisfy/nurture their curiosity and appetite for the profound, the universal and the inspirational.  Kids like the rest of us yearn for that of substance.... they are wanting what is really real.  Love is our only hope.

The Lord of the Rings - by J.R.R Tolkien
[At the Council of Elrond]
Elrond:
Strangers from distant lands, friends of old, you have been summoned here to answer the threat of Mordor. Middle Earth stands upon the brink of destruction; none can escape it. You will unite or you will fall. Each race is bound to this fate, this one doom. Bring forth the Ring, Frodo.
[Frodo puts the Ring on a stand for all to see]
Boromir:
So it is true. [Stands and walks towards the Ring] In a dream, I saw the Eastern sky grow dark. But in the West, a pale light lingered. A voice was crying, "The doom is near at hand, Isildur's Bane is found." [Reaches for the Ring] Isildur's Bane...
Elrond:
Boromir!
Gandalf:
[Speaking the words engraved on the Ring] Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul!
[The light darkens and the air rumbles; Boromir backs away from the Ring]
Elrond:
Never before has anyone dared utter words of that tongue here, in Imladris.
Gandalf:
I do not ask for pardon, Master Elrond, for the Black Speech of Mordor may yet be heard in every corner of the West! The Ring is altogether evil.
Boromir:
But it is a gift. A gift to the foes of Mordor. Why not use this Ring? Long has my father, the Steward of Gondor, kept the forces of Mordor at bay. By the blood of our people are your lands kept safe! Give Gondor the weapon of the enemy! Let us use it against him!
Strider:
You cannot wield it. None of us can. The One Ring answers to Sauron alone. It has no other master.
Animal Farm - by George Orwell

Havel’s Greengrocer
 By MARK PURCELL

Vaclav Havel’s death prompts me to share a bit from the book on democracy I am currently finishing.  In the book I use Havel’s “The Power of the Powerless” quite a bit.  I am particularly drawn to his figure of the greengrocer, especially in light of the events of 2011.

Havel writes about a greengrocer who lives under a totalitarian regime in communist Czechoslovakia. He “places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: ‘Workers of the world, unite!’”  He does it not because he agrees with the slogan but “simply because it has been done that way for years, because everyone does it, because that is the way it has to be. If he were to refuse, there could be trouble…he does it because these things must be done if one is to get along in life” (pp. 27-28). The message isn’t directed to his customers, or to Czechoslovakians more generally.  It is directed above, to his party bosses. The message is: “I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace” (p. 28). This is not the greengrocer speaking with his own voice, he is not saying things he means or really wants to say.  He is “living within a lie” (p. 31). The greengrocer lives within the lie, doing what must be done without thinking.  He becomes, to paraphrase Italo Calvino, such a complete part of the lie that he no longer knows it is there.  Havel says this is easier than we think, to settle for living within the lie, to succumb to “a profane trivialization of our inherent humanity,” to merge with the anonymous crowd and flow comfortably along with it “down the river of pseudo-life” (p. 38).
In this situation, when we have fallen into a routine of passive acquiescence, Havel says what is required is a radical break.  He invites us to imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps, and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those of his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity…His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth (p. 39).

Of course the power structure will respond. Agents will come after him.  Consequences will be imposed. The greengrocer has not liberated society, by any means. What he has done is all that could be hoped for: he has initiated a struggle. When he snaps, he breaks through the exalted façade of the system and exposes the real, base foundations of power… by his action the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth (1985, p. 40). The greengrocer provides society with a precipitating event, with the opportunity to recognize its addiction, its passive acceptance of oligarchy. Henri Lefebvre might say that the greengrocer has opened a path to the possible. He has given us a glimpse of a different reality, shown (or perhaps reminded) us it exists, and invited us to struggle for it if we choose to.


Radical kindness
Radical acceptance
Radical generosity
Radical wonder
Radical peacefulness
Radical love