Postmodern society is radically decentered and thoroughly disseminated. As a result of this dispersion, the machine of socio-cultural reproduction is no longer controlled by centralized agencies. Center and hierarchy give way to
periphery and horizontality, creating a lateral expanse that extends endlessly in undefined directions. In the absence of centralized and hierarchical control, localized interventions in the structures of cultural reproduction and social production become not only entertainable but
sometimes even entertaining. ~ Simcult is a culture of instrumentality and nothing but instrumentality. Precisely the lack of any end-in-itself makes it all the more urgent to fabricate ends carefully. ~ Postmodernism marks the end of liberalism. (1) The individual is no longer the primary locus of meaning or agent of action. (2) The opposition between the public and private collapses. ~ Postmodernism idealizes the singularity and heterogeneity required by post-industrial capitalism. Postmodern capitalism involves processes of decentralzation that presuppose diverse modes of production and pluralized forms of consumption. The media play a central role in the creation and maintenance of the culture of heterogeneity. From hypertexts and email to video and virtual reality, economic processes are regulated by creating multiple codes for local interests. ~ Postmodernism does not, however, simply negate modernism...Universality engenders singularity even as heterogeneity presupposes homogeneity. ~ Does postmodernism inevitably destroy the pathos of modernism? Can the dreams of modernism be refigured in a culture of the simulacrum? Can the energy of modernism be regenerated in the midst of postmodern irony and cynicism? Can art become life and life become art in more revolutionary ways than modernism ever dreamed? ~ The postmodern university will more closely resemble the deentered, disseminated and non-hierarchical 'structure' of the net that the centered, segmented and hierarchical structure of the assembly line. In sum, the postmodern university is not a uni-versity but a multi-versity. ~ Postmodernity discloses the illusion of cultural autonomy. ~ One of the most significant marks of the advent of modernity and its extension in postmodernity is a reversal of the relative value attributed to the one and the many. In contemporary culture, oneness and unity are regarded as non-being, while manyness and plurality are believed to characterize being. ~ The fragmentary is no longer simply a literary style. The literary fragment was the invention of the Romantics for whom it presupposed an entire metaphysics. One of the paradoxes of modern literary and philosophical history is that the metaphysics of the fragment is not itself fragmentary. The trope that embodies the metaphysics of the fragment is the synechdoche. ~ For postmoderns the fragmentary has become a psycho-social cultural condition. It is no longer a question of whether or not to write fragments, for the fragmentary has become our destiny. Even texts that attempt to avoid or repress the fragmentary end by fragmenting themselves. ~ Whether intended or unintended, the postmodern fragment calls into question the metaphysics of the modern fragment. And yet, can postmodern fragmentary styles elude the structures of metaphysics? To elude is not to escape. Even though there is no exit fom metaphysics, the metaphysical is not necessarily all encompassing, totalizing or exhaustive. To write fragments that are not modern would be to remain forever elusive. ~ Decentering involves a pluralization that is neither covertly integrated nor overtly schizophrenic. ~ The question to be posed has to do with the pedagogical rationale for Writing, a rationale more accurately termed 'post(e)-pedagogical,' in order to indicate that it is both a move beyond conventional pedagogy and a pedagogy for an era of electronic media. ~ Derrida's texts...call for a program or practice that can only be described as a popularization of knowledge. ~ In simcult, the essential is nothing and nothing is essential. ~ The surface of worlds is the no-where where meaning vanishes. Suppose the problem is not meaninglessness but meaning. ~ Suppose the dilemma is not to find meaning in the midst of meaninglessness but to free ourselves from the burden of meaning... ~ It is important not to confuse information and meaning. Though not precisely opposites, they are inversely proportional: as information increases, meaning decreases. ~ Communication is a matter not of speaking but of making people speak. Information involves not knowledge but making people know...No more actions save those which result from an interaction... ~ Communicative practice transforms the information and knowledge of simcult into a new understanding that is transformative. ~ By playing with information, especially abstract subjects, the material assumes more meaning. ~ What emerges in the wake of oppositions like truth and illusion and reality and appearance is something that neither is truth nor illusion, reality nor appearance, but something else, something other. This other is as yet unnamed. ~ For everything which once aspired to transcendence, to discovery, to the infinite, has subtly altered its aim so that it can go into orbit: learning, technology, knowledge, having lost any transcendent aspect to their projects, have begun planning orbital trajectories for themselves. Information is orbital, for example -- a form of knowledge which will never again go beyond itself, never again achieve transcendence or self-reflection in its aspiration toward the infinite; yet which, for all that, never sets its feet on the ground, for it has no true purchase on, nor referent in, reality.
from (collectively) Baudrillard;
Taylor/Saarinen; Ulmer. See Mediagraphy.
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| I |
I felt and followed a curve in the wall. There was a small window in the distance ahead and although it had been covered with wooden planks, a bit
of light streamed in from the outside. It seemed that I had wandered through a small corridor. As I turned, I noticed something toward the center of the room and decided to explore a bit. As I made my way closer to the object -- my curious destination -- I accidentally kicked something over. It echoed as it rolled across the floor. I nervously glanced around, expecting the man or woman -- or both -- to re-emerge, but no one was there. I could see it now: it was a spinning wheel. I drew closer to examine it and in so doing, learned that what I had kicked over was a golden spindle of thread, which had now all but unravelled. I tried to rewind it, looking behind me for where it had been before, as I wanted to restore its original condition. But it had rolled
beyond my grasp. I could not reach it; I could not return.
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| II |
The technological revolution has prompted a fundamental shift in our understanding of pedagogy and its related practices. Traditionally, teaching did not require that the instructor also be learner, but only expert. Those
who taught could do so in communicative (non-)interaction with the learner in a manner of talking-at. This is no longer adequate. Techno-pedagogy demands that lifeworld experience be enmeshed in hyperlearning. Neither theory nor practice, singularly, is a viable method of instruction -- regardless of the discipline and its methodological heritage. Teachers must now interact with learners by talking-through.
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| III |
Differance is at once both divisive and multiplicative: it separates yet simultaneously bridges that which is not the same. The line is the dyad; it separates, harmonizes, crosses. And that which crosses does so with inevitability, destiny.
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| IV |
Techno-pedagogy is a key deciding factor in
whether an educational media product is successful or not. What exactly is meant by this term? Literally, 'pedagogy' refers to the art-science of teaching and 'techno' refers to the art-skill in handcrafting, derived from the Latin 'texere' (to weave or fabricate). Here, 'techno' is a qualifier; it intersects or crosses the meaning of 'pedagogy' with its own. Techno-pedagogy refers to weaving the techniques of the craft of teaching into the learning environment itself. It requires conscious recognition of the mediated learning environment in order to maximize the ease and clarity in the transmission of information. It may also be used to describe the medium-specific learning strategies inherent in each technological form: where the medium facilitates or contributes to the learning process in such a way that another medium would not be able to -- an environmental uniqueness. Techno-pedagogy, then, necessarily implies that there is not only one valid or legitimate method of instruction per discipline nor per medium (nor per learner!). Creativity is an essential aspect of the successful learning environment. Additionally, generating multiple strategies for learning (per concept, per medium and/or per learner) within one mediated learning environment (or product) brings to fruition the idea of a postmodern pedagogy, defined in terms of praxis. It is a metaphorical interweaving of fact and fiction, text and texture, imagination and myth, word and image, language and symbol. The educational media developer must always strive to reach as many factors involved in the contextual interplay as possible, simultaneously frustrated and awe-struck in an awareness that such knowledge will never be complete.
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| V |
Mysterious law within -- unknown, unseen yet
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Overturning that which is established.
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Infinite movement and seemingly
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Random changes, the force of which our
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Awareness of the (O)ther
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Is experienced.
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