Tag Archives: Knowledge

Potatoes, Rhizomes and Bricks.

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I found yesterday’s lecture to be extremely interesting as a lecture just about knowledge; it’s great to feel like i’m being challenged to think in so many different ways and consider things I had never considered before, or even thought of, I’m loving that this course simply refuses to allow us to make generic work or churn out carbon copies.

Here are he main points of the lecture that I found to be particularly interesting…

1. Institutional expressions of power and authority that let some things ‘matter’ and other things not.

Adrian spoke about this in terms of both ‘value’ and ‘affordances’ and used journalism as an example, suggesting that journalists decide what is good journalism. This means that we as media makers have the same power, we decide the mediums affordances (what we can do with what we have/what our media allows us to do) and decide how we can use these affordances to create. We craft our own ‘grammar’.

Adrian then went on to speak about the de Certeau reading, and stuff got pretty philosophical…

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2. What does knowledge ‘look like’ in this subject?

This was a key question we explored throughout the lecture in relation to our own media practice –  knowing ‘how to’ is trivial in relation to other ways of doing or knowing – Anyone can learn how to ‘drive’ Final Cut, it’s what you do with it that you should spend time thinking about it.

Immersion- being guided by some ideas not ‘content’ (what is it to work in the network? What is the network? What counts as knowledge NOW and how do I make and recognise it?

3. Rhizomes and Tree’s

Adrian made what seemed like an abstract connection between knowledge and tree’s but after his explanation, I see the relationship between knowledge and the light and height that tree’s suggest. The ‘tree of knowledge of good and evil’ in bible suggests:

God tells the man that he may eat the fruit of any of the trees in the garden except that of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Genesis 2 ends with a note that the man and woman “were naked and felt no shame”. A talking snake subsequently tempts the woman to eat the fruit with the promise of knowledge. The woman and the man both eat, become aware of their nakedness and make coverings for themselves. God, aware that the first humans now have knowledge, banishes them from the garden lest they eat from the Tree of Life and become like the gods.

It is not clear what kind of knowledge is involved, but the three major candidates are: (1) knowledge of everything, through the mental capacities which lead to human culture; (2) moral capacity; and (3) sexual knowledge, since the man and woman recognise their nakedness on eating the fruit.

Metaphors of tree’s – light, height, seeds of an idea, hierarchy, branching off – what does this mean about knowledge?

Rhizome - a continuously growing horizontal underground stem that puts out lateral shoots and adventitious roots at intervals.

If a rhizome is separated into pieces, each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant. Think of it like a potato, it doesn’t have a centre. Underground, in the dark, tumours. There is no seed, it ‘makes do’ – its not flat, its about passage and associations, and relations between the parts. There are peaks and intensities.

What did I learn, or more fittingly, how will I apply this to my practice?

Be ephemeral, noisy and tactical in my approach to creativity, throw ‘reason’ and ‘rules’ away and start to take risks that break the ‘rules’ because the rules are made to be broken and breaking them means doing something different, its not about a privileged centre but about thinking about whole bits and how they relate to each other. 

DUSTKIDS

Also, another interesting question to marinate over…

What would the world be like without Google? Has Google made everything to easy?

Talking to the Grandparents.

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“My hair is grey, so I speak with authority” – Henry

(Cosi, Louis Nowra)

EBBA ANDERSSON -

Last week in IM we really ‘unpacked’ the Weinberger readings, each person researching a specific area they wanted to find out more about or looking further into an idea which particularly intrigued them. After writing my slut post at the end of last week, I felt like I wanted to know more about the different way in which different people regard books and relate to them as tangible commodities. I feel like books are such a personal thing and each individual has their own unique relationship with the page that it’s hard to whittle down ‘groups’ of readers or book ‘treaters’.

I had two lingering questions:

1. Is the connection many people have with books purely aesthetically grounded? Is their tangibility what makes people feel ‘safe’?

2. How happy would people be to see the internet become the book?

I thought the difference between the way in which I view books would differ greatly from the way that my grandparents do, so it was off to their place for some tea, scones and jam and good old fashion wisdom aquision.

 파스텔메인 :: 네이버 이미지검색

I decided to ask them 3 questions and I will summarise their answers…

1. If you want to find out something, where do you primarily choose to look?

Both my grandparents said that books were undoubtedly the first place they would seek out answers to almost any piece of information. This came in the form of their own collection of books and the reference section of libraries.

They did both, however acknowledge Google as a source to find out a single piece of information but foregrounded books as the best source for knowledge. They both also said the internet is a good place to look to get the scope of a debate or public opinion on an issue or something which is emerging

2. Why do you prefer to use books over the internet?

  • Authenticity was a big factor, they both said that they felt more confident in the knowledge that a book goes through definite, monitored filtering processes. This begins with the fact that to write a book, one must be noted as a credible author on the subject and must acquire facts which are considered as important to a field. They must then get a publisher, garner reputation and respect etc etc.
  • They felt more confident in the ability to navigate their own ‘database’/bookshelves of knowledge
  • They said they felt that books give them a well rounded knowledge – reading an entire book on the Russian Revolution will no doubt inspire a far better understanding than reading tiny fragments from countless online sources. They especially foregrounded books as being vital to providing a foundation base/context for understanding other events.
  • Index’s were a big feature they liked in books, because it made them easy to pinpoint the kind of information we gen y’s would call a ‘google search’.
  • They like the chronology of books, they have a timeline, a beginning, middle and end.
  • My grandma likes their accessibility, she thinks being able to pick them up and put them down makes knowledge something which is always at hand. These days, our laptops provide this for us, or our smart phones, but this was a nice insight.
3. What do you see in the future for the book?
  • Both know that their use of books is rare in this day and age, and acknowledge the internet is fast eliminating a lot of demand for books.
  • The book will become like vinyl – have a revival every few decades yet keep a consistent cult following
  • Online readerships will continue to be developed
I think the main thing I got out of this discussion was my granddad’s point about the difference between an answer and an understanding. I think this really ties in to Adrian’s point – “…though I think knowledge is not what you can find out about – for me that’s information. Knowledge is knowing what to do with it, and you don’t get that from just finding the information.
My Granddad said that searching something on Google gave you an answer, but that reading a book about something gives you a deeper understanding.
Interesting chat, I think it’s good to take to time to talk about things that effect us in this course with people other than those who are also in course, because even though I could have predicted that my Grandparents would use books and not their dial up connection to find out about the life of Barak Obama or that they listen to news radio all day rather than keeping up to date with online news sources – it was still interesting to hear their perspectives on my perspectives.
Man….this is reminding me of ye old Landow.

 

 

Tutorial #2 – It’s all in the connections bro.

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Why does it matter that there is evidence of your participation?
  • You can provide reasoning as the mark you award yourself at the end of the semester
  • You can chart your own progress & ensure your meeting the goals you set yourself.
It’s funny, none of us could really say what evidence was, or why it was important in a university context…after what seems like an eternity of wrong answers we finally reached our conclusion:
“an argument always needs evidence, your claims need to be backed up. Blogging provides an evolution of evidence – a show that we are consistently engaging with our own learning”
As  groups, we then formulated some questions about the Weinberger readings, some of our questions were:
  • What is an example of the difference between information and knowledge that can be seen into today’s society?
  • What is the difference between wisdom and knowledge – is there a hard line between the two?
  • Is wisdom evolved from knowledge and experience?
  • Should you try and to avoid information overload by filtering out the or should we embrace it?
Other questions were great and we had a really good discussion which helped to clarify the readings and provide some solid definitions and examples to run on:
Here are some of the notes I took about concepts which were new to me:
  • Algorithm – a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, esp. by a computer by using raw data and basing recommendations on choices – EG) Amazon book recommendations.
  • Social – discreet recommendations by friends
  • Algorithmic – ‘concrete’ data based on choices others/you have made.
  • Filters can be opinion based or knowledge based. We used the go to example of Facebook and the way we use our friends choices as guides. Some things posted by friends are based on opinion – EG) Justin Beiber is awesome… OR knowledge – EG) It’s 29 degrees in the city.
  • Hard/Soft Media
  • Wisdom/Porn/Jedi/Epistemology
  • Now we publish first, think later
  • Filter forward – dark room (internet), turn on a torch and you can only see what the beam shows (filter). Traditionally, gatekeeping determined these decisions. Filtering backwards meant one definition was assigned to a particular piece of information.
  • We do not have access to the same information because there is so much we will come across different things and interpret them differently.
Oh, and just to finish – wisdom in porn perhaps?
I think that wisdom goes beyond the superficial, and as much as we all had a good laugh about Adrians comparison between the ambiguity of porn and wisdom was actually more insightful that we gave him credit for. Our initial aversion to things like porn is dictated by information and knowledge, but perhaps to maintain an understanding (not appreciation or ‘Shame-eque’ obsession) we must look beyond what our social filters are telling us and contextualise it in the wider frame of reality, which is now – the web and NOTHING stands alone, everything is connected to something else.

Question Time.

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HOMEWORK: FORMULATE 2 QUESTIONS THE READINGS RAISED FOR YOU? WHAT IDEAS HAS IT POSED TO YOU/HAVE YOU RESEARCHED? ANSWER IT.

Even after our tutorial, I was still intrigued by the definitions of Information and Knowledge…

  • Information is stand alone, it is a message being conveyed.
  • By connecting bundles of information via the network we transform information into a whole, into knowledge.
  • If we have only fragments that’s when we feel overloaded by single seemingly unrelated pieces of information which don’t fit anywhere and swim around aimlessly.
  • Information is data in context.
  • Information is any type of pattern that influences the formation or transformation of other patterns – so, information informs things like filtering to make connections.
  • the Information Age has been all about filtering noise, reducing the flow to what is clean, clear and manageable. Knowledge is more creative, messier, harder won, and far more discontinuous.So, perhaps information can be characterised by these contrasting images.423021_403139376379094_166854740007560_88127562_1588032844_n_large

‘…at first sight it might be thought that knowledge might be defined as belief which is in agreement with the facts. The trouble is that no one knows what a belief is, no one knows what a fact is, and no one knows what sort of agreement between them would make a belief true…’ - Bertrand Russell

So, I guess my main question is, how much has knowledge been changed since the Information Age began?

  • Knowledge has long been considered to reflect a truth about life, nature, people, systems in the world that surrounds us. It’s been about pieces joining together and forming something beautiful or perfect, and humans have long considered it a noble pursuit.
  • Today our desire to acquire knowledge is far more complex, as the definition has lost it’s ‘borders’.
  • Some people become anxious of acquiring the wrong knowledge due to the sheer volume there is to choose from. Algorithmic filtering is no longer enough to gain a deep understanding of something, nor is it applicable to the network.
  • Now, knowledge results from a far more complex process that is social, goal-driven, contextual, and culturally-bound. We get to knowledge — especially “actionable” knowledge — by having desires and curiosity. Through exploring different pathways and ignoring forward filtering. We take risks and stumble upon things completely unrelated and are often wrong.
  • Often, when it’s hard to find something on the internet, it’s KNOWING HOW to look – knowledge is not determined BY information, but how we FIND and USE it
Useful Sources:
  • This Blog helped in simple definitions
  • David Weinberger’s page also assisted in how we relate to knowledge and information.