Math Education and Technologies of Attention

This paper looks at the "Tower of Hanoi" puzzle, using it as a basis for exploring how technologies can structure our experience and attention in ways that are pedagogically significant. The "Tower of Hanoi" game, as it turns out, was developed at the heart of what art theorist Jonathan Crary has identified as a generalized "crisis of attention:" In the 1880's, in a Paris of panoramas, phonographs and pointillism.

The Tower of Hanoi represents paper as an early but powerful "technology of attention." The pedagogical significance of this puzzle is explored using phenomenology, and the puzzle is understood in this context in terms of what phenomenologists Gaston Bachelard and Bernhard Waldenfels refer to as the "phenomenotechnical:" A phenomenon that is "not simply found, but invented, that is, thoroughly constructed." Even though some of the methodological and historical context invoked in the paper may be somewhat complicated, its ultimate findings are not difficult to summarize: The structuring of attention provided by the Tower of Hanoi is at least as much emotional and affective as it is cognitive and intellectual. And the emotionally charged experience that this puzzle generally provides is essential to understanding its value for mathematics education.

I wrote this paper with Krista Francis-Poscente as a part of the learningspaces.org project, and we presented together at the International Human Sciences Research Conference in Rovereto, Italy.