(Presented at the Learning Spaces Workshop @ LIDC, Simon Fraser University; February 11, 2005)

This presentation comes from a paper I recently co-authored with Andrew Feenberg, to whom I should also give credit for the title. In order to set up the kind of work that Learning Spaces is undertaking I'd like to begin by outlining what I term an "evangelical" discourse of online education, rooted in a deterministic philosophy of technology. I'll then provide a critique of the deterministic basis of this discourse, and introduce the notion of "technical codes" - a concept developed by Andrew to understand how technological development and design are embedded in value frameworks, goal horizons, historical imperatives, and social interests. I'll conclude by looking briefly at educational applications of the computer.

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(Presented at the Learning Spaces Workshop @ LIDC, Simon Fraser University; February 11, 2005)

Answers to questions concerning the actual experience on learning online are often implied or pre-answered in many distance education and educational technology studies. Usually an implicit appeal is made to a broadly cybernetic, information-theoretical framework, appealing to the roles of sender, receiver and channel, and often appealing to some notion of "feedback." This paper outlines the research approach used in the Learning Spaces project: one that is focused on the experience of engagement with online technologies. By approaching online education from a phenomenological perspective, the focus of this study could be understood as an inverted model of most examinations of online education.

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(Presented at the Learning Spaces Workshop @ LIDC, Simon Fraser University; February 11, 2005)

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(Presented at the 7th Annual International Phenomenology and Media Conference, May 12 - 14, 2005, in Cannon Beach, Oregon.)

Phenomenologically-oriented research into the educational use of information technologies has tended to underscore their limitations in augmenting or replicating pedagogical practice. However, the task of describing the precise ways in which this technology enframes and limits these practices is not an easy one, and has given rise to controversy. This paper will present a number of ways in which the limitations --and by implication, also the potential-- of these technologies can perhaps be more precisely delineated. The first of these makes use of Emmanuel Levinas' notion of pre-intentional or a-thematic awareness, suggesting that some of the pedagogical limitations of new technologies can be understood in terms of the attenuation of these types of awareness. The second of these means of delineation is based on Alfred Borgman's discussion of "focal practices." Starting from the premise that pedagogical practices display many "focal" characteristics, it puts into practice Borgman's claim that a focal practice, as a "final and dominant end which alone truly matters" can assign "all other things and activities their rank and place." The paper concludes by identifying a number of ways in which computers and Internet technologies can be understood as contributing positively to pedagogical practices, and as staking out places in which "focal" phenomena can be nurtured.

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(Presented at the 7th Annual International Phenomenology and Media Conference, May 12 - 14, 2005, in Cannon Beach, Oregon.)

Phenomenology offers the possibility of understanding the experience of everyday relationships with information technology in ways often overlooked in studies of its use and cultural significance. One aspect of this relationship is represented perhaps rather provocatively in the phenomenon of breakdown --as the interruption of flow, the disruption of expectations, or even the cessation of operation altogether. Following Heidegger, Winograd and Flores, Dreyfus and others understand "breakdown" as a opening up a mode of being towards a technical artifact that brings the user into a direct relationship with the object in question, allowing for the recognition of aspects of the technology, user, and process of use that can be systematically overlooked in other approaches. To develop an appreciation of the multifaceted nature of this experience and conception, this presentation will undertake a review of different understandings of "breakdown," and will seek to draw a parallel between the way of being revealed in it and ways of being as understood through Actor-Network Theory. An examination of illustrative and concrete experiences of engagement and breakdown with computer-mediation in educational contexts will conclude the paper --demonstrating the multiplicity of experienced meanings and interpretive possibilities offered by this method.

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(Presented at Theorizing Surveillance: The Panopticon and Beyond. Queen's University, Kingston ON, May 2005.)

The near-ubiquity of surveillance and dataveillance technologies in public and quasi-public spaces (public squares, transit stations, supermarkets, ATM machines) has recently given rise to questions about the totalizing, panoptic discipline and control frequently ascribed to these technologies (e.g. Yar, 2003). This paper takes this questioning further through a phenomenological and ethnomethodological investigation of the quotidian and lived-experiential dimensions of surveillance and dataveillance. This investigation underscores the notion that we often have only a vague or liminal awareness of the fact that the smallest details of our activity as consumers, commuters and citizens are subject to systems of scrutiny and control. We have only a "pre-intentional" or "a-thematic awareness" (Levinas, 1989) of the fact that we leave behind a virtual "trail" or "halo" of iconic and indexical traces of our presence and actions. Undertaking a phenomenological investigation of this awareness, this study also considers how such surveillance has subtle and perhaps insidious effects on our conduct, contributing to the "normal" contours, possibilities and accomplishments of public activity.

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(Presented at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association of Distance Education)

As we rapidly approach the 50th year of the much-celebrated "cognitive revolution", it is worth reflecting on its widespread impact on individual disciplines and areas of multidisciplinary endeavour. Of specific concern in this paper is the example of the influence of cognitivism's equation of mind and computer in education. Within education, this paper focuses on a particular area of concern to which both mind and computer are simultaneously central: educational technology. It examines the profound and lasting effect of cognitive science on our understandings of the educational potential of information technologies, and further argues that recent and multiple "signs of discontent," "crises" and even "failures" in cognitive science and psychology should result in changes in these understandings. It concludes by observing how related changes are occurring in other areas of research earlier and similarly "revolutionized" by cognitivism.

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The Walkman and the Primary World of the Senses (1989) is a good example of the application of this project's research method. In this article, Schönhammer uses bracketing or reduction, categories of body, space, time and relation and other phenomenological methods to examine the life-world opened up by the technology of the Walkman. He makes much use of Strauss' Primary World of the Senses, (now out of print but the relevant passage is available), to come to an understanding of the shared space of social possibilities and expectations represented by the shared ambient environment: "Walkman users experience the splitting of lived space and time: They are on a path somewhere between goal directed action and the involvement in the movement of the music." Similar issues of "fragmented space" have been raised in discussions of video conferencing, and similar conclusions have more recently been developed by Michael Bull of the U. of Sussex in his book Sounding out the City: Personal Stereos.

I have been working with Tone Saevi to put together a workshop on Introduction to Hermeneutic Phenomenological Inquiry and Writing. Here's a short description of what we'll be up to later on in March in Bergen:

The seminar explores recent development within hermeneutic phenomenological methodology by introducing the students to classical phenomenological texts as well as to student texts and preliminary writing exercises. The main aim is to give the opportunity to discover and develop meaning by experiencing and interpreting the 'world' and the human relation to the world complex and heterogeneously; in a pathic/gnostic, enactive/receptive way. This, in order to get closer to an understanding of what is the meaning and significance of lived experience and lived meaning.

The workshop website contains all of the (PowerPoint) presentations and a complete schedule for the event.

I had the pleasure of participating in a one-day colloquium called "(Re)Inventing the Internet" in Vancouver in February. This presentation was sponsored by the ACT (Applied Communication Technology) Lab at SFU's school of communication. MP3s of the presentations have recently been posted, and this means that there are a number of great "academic" podcasts to be had now on the colloquium website. There are a number of links that are related to my presentation that I'd like to provide:

• The MP3 of the presentation (13.5 Mb; 23 min)
• The Powerpoint of the Presentation
• The original paper presented (MSWord Doc)

This paper is one that I developed with Andrew Feenberg and Learningspaces.org researcher Grace Chung over a year ago. It uses phenomenology as a way of investigating the ongoing colonization of the lifeworld by technological systems. One more item to link to in this connection is an interesting paper that applies some of the notions of surveillance to e-learning platforms (to the detriment of the WebCTs of this world). This is Screen or Monitor? Surveillance and disciplinary power in online learning environments by Bayne and Land. At least indirectly, this paper points out the merits of using "open" Web 2.0 technologies in education.

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.