Serendipity 2.0: Missing Third Places of Learning

“The future cannot be predicted, but futures

can be invented”- Dennis Gabor

Serendipity 2.0Missing Third Places of Learning

Teemu ArinaCEO, Dicole Ltd.

2007-06-14EDEN Conference

Discover, Collaborate, Learn

Today each of us lives several hundred years in a decade

Photo: Lakerae

Marshall McLuhan(1911-1980)

Time

Changes in society

Ability of education to adapt

Problem

“3rd place hosts the regular, voluntary, informal, and happily anticipated gatherings of individuals beyond the realms of home and work”

― Ray Oldenburg

Third Places of Learning

First Third Second

Artist: Lotta Viitaniemi, Story: Kim Forsman & Teemu Arina Ⓒ Dicole Ltd.

Serendipic Learning

Serendip - old name of Sri Lanka

“Serendipity is the art of making an unsought finding” - Pek van Andel

The Three Princes of Serendip: “They were always making discoveries, by accident and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of”- Horace Walpole, 1754

Photo: Cocca

Finnish Sauna ;)

Löyly - Spirit or life

Photo: Jezz

Zemblanity of Education“So what is the opposite of Serendip, a southern land of spice and warmth, lush greenery and hummingbirds, seawashed, sunbasted? Think of another world in the far north, barren, icebound, cold, a world of flint and stone. Call it Zembla. Ergo: zemblanity, the opposite of serendipity, the faculty of making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries by design.”

William Boyd



The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns

Photo: Lalallallala


“Information overload is an opportunity for pattern recognition” – Marshall McLuhan

Image: jbum

Pattern Recognition


Technology as an extension of the body

Photo: Don J. McCrady


Human Evolution

Homo Habilis2.5m - 1.8m years agoBrain: 500 - 800 cc

Tools

Homo Sapiens250k years agoBrain: 1000-1850 cc

Art, writing, speech

Homo Erectus1.8m - 70k years agoBrain: 950 - 1100 cc

Advanced tools

“Man the Wise” - Carl Linneaus

We shape our tools and afterwards our tools shape us

Photo: JJay


Symbolic linking (Symballein: draw together)

Icon (resemblance) A = B

Index (causal relations) A → B

Symbol (abstract concepts) A ~ B, ✝

Sign﹛

Photo: Hauntedpalace

Charles Sanders Pierce(1894)

The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order

to grasp it in a new way



We Extend our Bodies

Belief systems

Advanced technology

Controlled energy

Environmental adaptivity

Trade networks, exploration

Clothes

Sense-enhancements

Advanced social organization

Advanced language

Innovative abstract thinking?

Spirit of the Age (Zeitgeist)

Homo ludens (man the player) -Johan Huizinga

Homo creativus (creative human) -Sam Inkinen

Homo aestheticus-informaticus (knowledge-intensive human) -Aki Järvinen

Homo cyber sapiens (technologically improved man) -Luc Steels

Homo electricus (man implanted with microchips) -Michael & Michael


Social Web = Noosphere?

• Planetary thinking network• Interlinked system of consciousness and information• Global net of self-awareness, instantaneous feedback,

and planetary communication

Teilhard de Chardin(1881 - 1955)

PhysicalSocial

Mental Virtual

Distributed cognition

Inspired by: Kai Hakkarainen

Homo Contextus

Contextus = connected or weaved together

Context = Circumstances in which an event occurs

Homo habilis → Homo sapiens: Brain size increases physically

Homo sapiens → Homo contextus: Brain size increases virtually

Connected human escaping the physical limitations of connectivity with modern network technologies

Photo: Uli Schneider

Homo Contextus

Electricity and light: mechanical age extended our bodies. Eletronic age will extend our nervous system

Connectivity focus: focusing on diversity of connections to people who use tools to extend their mind and bodies

High media production skills: for object centered sociality

Prosthesis of thinking: extending cognitive capabilities


Parasitic Learning

Learner using someone as a teacher through virtual means without the knowledge or consensus of the host

Photo: Spike55151

Deschooling Society

A good educational system should have three purposes:

1. Provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at any time in their lives

2. Empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them

3. Furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known

Photo: .AMagill

Ivan Illich(1971)

Case: Network Oasis

Collaborative working, learning and development environment

Space designed to inspire spontaneous and guided encounters of different individuals

Glow: interface between physical and virtual

Virtual mobility, Hybrid space, SerendipityRef: Ilkka Kakko

Case: Dicole Knowledge Work Environment

Areas FeedsWikisBlogs


Four questions:

1. What does it extend?2. What does it make obsolete?3. What is retrieved?4. What does it reverse into, if it’s over-extended?



Contact:

CEO Teemu Arina Dicole Ltd. +358 - 50 – 555 7636 [email protected] Blog: tarina.blogging.fi www.dicole.com