The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him. -Jan Patocka (A Czech Philosopher) "Jan Patocka was a substantial man, and his advice is in keeping with his character."

Dear educators and philosophers, I think you would appreciate the quote of Carl Mitcham on several issues of "technology, internet and human communication." Carl Mitcham is the Professor of Liberal Arts and International Studies, Colorado School of Mines. Ph.D. (Fordham). One of the leading American philosophers of technology with emphasis on ethics. Here is the quote:

"From mainframe through personal computer to Internet the electronic computer has transformed information and human communication in unanticipated ways that are giving birth to what has been variously termed cyberspace, virtual reality, or hyper-reality. To live in this new milieu, which transforms not just calculations and communications but the sense of body, self, and culture, it is not clear that ethics in any traditional sense (as that which emerges from place specific ethos) is possible. Technology proper is in the process of being supplanted by a post-technology, a hyper-technology, or what (following Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla) I prefer to call a meta-technology. We must think meta-technology as something we are part of."

[Professor Carl Mitcham is the former philosophy professor and director, Science-Technology-Society Program, Pennsylvania State University; founding director, Philosophy and Technology Studies Center, Polytechnic University, New York; president, Society for Philosophy and Technology. Mitcham is the editor of Philosophy of Technology Reader; Philosophy and Technology II; Ethics and Technology. Author of Technology and Religion; Thinking Through Technology; Social and Philosophical Construction of Technology; Engineering Ethics.]

We cannot see ourselves aright until we see ourselves as nature's very own cyborgs: cognitive hybrids who repeatedly occupy regions of design space radically different from those of our biological forbears. The hard task, of course, is now to transform all this from (mere) impressionistic sketch into a balanced scientific account of the extended mind. (NATURAL BORN CYBORGS? By Andy Clark)

Network culture calls us to to a new mind, one in which we must not merely affirm seemingly passive choices but find a ground upon which to do. The book, "Othermindedness: The Emergence of Network Culture" will have wide appeal for general readers interested in new media and the internet as well as for specialists in literature, feminist and cultural studies, rhetoric, and interactivity.

I would like to quote an important piece from the book, as --"Network culture is an othermindedness, a murky sense of a newly evolving consciousness and cognition alike, lingering like a fog on the lowlands after the sweep of light has cleared the higher prospects. The same or a like fog increasingly seems to cling in the folds of the brain. We ache with it, almost as if we could feel the evolution of consciousness in the same way a sleeping adolescent feels the bone ache of growing pains as if in a dream." --Michael Joyce, Othermindedness: The Emergence of Network Culture (2000)

We are all intimately interested in the reshaping of human body by modern technology.--Vaughan in Crash by J.G. Ballard (1973)[Tele-embodiment, courtesy Dr. Eric Paulos]

The whole question comes down to this: Can the human mind master what the human mind has made? (Paul Valery)

Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. --Walter Benjamin, 1936.[Courtesy, The Robot in the Garden, ed. Ken Goldberg]

Excerpt from "Metaphor and Transcendence" by Karsten Harries

Ever since Aristotle, metaphor has been placed in the context of a mimetic theory of language and of art. Metaphors are in some sense about reality. The poet uses metaphor to help reveal what is. He, too, serves the truth, even if his service is essentially lacking in that "Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else."1 Thus it is an improper naming. This impropriety invites a movement of interpretation that can come to rest only when metaphorical has been replaced with a more proper speech. This is not to say, however, that such replacement is possible nor that interpretation can ever come to rest. What metaphor names may transcend human understanding so that our language cannot capture it. In that case, proper speech would be denied to man. But regardless of whether we seek proper speech with man, for example, with the philosopher, or locate it beyond man with God, or think it only an idea that cannot find adequate realization, as long as we understand metaphor as an improper naming, we place its telos beyond poetry.

1. Aristotle Poetics 21. 1457b. 6-7.

(-Karsten Harries, chairman of the department of philosophy at Yale University, is the author of several works on aesthetics, including The Meaning of Modern Art: A Philosophical Interpretation.-)

Keywords about EdResource:

(Professor Mora Campbell for THE BROWN BAG RESEARCH SEMINARS:1999-2000 Series presented a paper on 'Cyborg Temporality')

Where technological resembles cultural information, differences between reality and cyberspace are less stark. The lack of repleteness and continuity gives technological information a special sort of underdetermination. The lack of continuity gives technological information a peculiar kind of brittleness. Information in cyberspace fails to have the suppleness and life that the semantic plenum of reality supplies to natural and cultural information and to the presence of real things and persons.-Albert Borgmann (Information, Nearness and Farness, in The Robot in the Garden:Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet, ed. Ken Goldberg.)

My Favorite Web Sites:

What makes the Internet more than just the latest in a long chain of technological innovations that have fallen short of inflated expectations in the realm of advanced learning? (The essay is a preview from a forthcoming anthology on digital education by Arun Kumar Tripathi.)

EdResource: Education and Technology Listserv

EdResource Groups , try to follow the philosophy of ancient greek philosopher, "Socrates" I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think, is the Alpha & Omega of the Internet learning and education.

The EdResource is an Educational and Technology Listserv dedicating to exploring resources and condensing and presenting the wealth of educational information available on the Internet in order to benefit web learners, educators, teachers and school administrators. EdResource is also an active forum for discussing issues related to Internet learning and education from K-12 through university levels and beyond.

Site Updated on 2nd October 2003

EdResource Groups

by

Arun Kumar Tripathi, the Philosopher and Global educator

The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him. -Jan Patocka (A Czech Philosopher) "Jan Patocka was a substantial man, and his advice is in keeping with his character."

We are all intimately interested in the reshaping of human body by modern technology.--Vaughan in Crash by J.G. Ballard (1973)[Tele-embodiment, courtesy Dr. Eric Paulos]

The whole question comes down to this: Can the human mind master what the human mind has made? (Paul Valery)

Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction. --Walter Benjamin, 1936.[Courtesy, The Robot in the Garden, ed. Ken Goldberg]

Excerpt from "Metaphor and Transcendence" by Karsten Harries

1. Aristotle Poetics 21. 1457b. 6-7.

(-Karsten Harries, chairman of the department of philosophy at Yale University, is the author of several works on aesthetics, including The Meaning of Modern Art: A Philosophical Interpretation.-)

(Professor Mora Campbell for THE BROWN BAG RESEARCH SEMINARS:1999-2000 Series presented a paper on 'Cyborg Temporality')

What makes the Internet more than just the latest in a long chain of technological innovations that have fallen short of inflated expectations in the realm of advanced learning? (The essay is a preview from a forthcoming anthology on digital education by Arun Kumar Tripathi.)

EdResource Groups , try to follow the philosophy of ancient greek philosopher, "Socrates" *I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think*, is the Alpha & Omega of the Internet learning and education.

EdResource Groups , try to follow the philosophy of ancient greek philosopher, "Socrates" I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think, is the Alpha & Omega of the Internet learning and education.