8802+Learning+Journal


 * Week 1 - Back to the beginning **

AUGUST 1, 2012

In our first week of 8802, we started with nothing. Nix, nil, zero. Absolutely zip. This was time before time. time before - anything...

Then the Big Bang started the proverbial ball rolling and in one loud moment (the first ever moment???) we had ourselves a universe. We explored the concept of time over this week - from the bang to today. David Christian gesticulated excitedly when discussing Thresholds of Increasing Complexity. He also talked about Goldilocks events - those moments when conditions are not too hot, not too cold - just right, for major shifts. I will never look at Goldilocks and her three bears with such inconsequence again. I found Cameron's graphic treatments particularly useful. In fact I find most graphic treatments useful, especially when dealing with concepts of a scale not usually considered. It allows us to import some sort of perspective on the events we are considering that moment, on a broader scale. As we are to discover in weeks to come, human beings really are but a nanosecond on the timeline. We could be forgiven for having difficulty in coming to terms with the scale of universal history. I can't even remember what I had for breakfast last Monday.

AUGUST 19, 2012
 * Week 2 - From macro to micro **

__**//After an introductory week exploring the entire history of the universe (ok, so it only took 18 minutes, but it was still pretty exhausting), our second week focused on a bit more detail. And I became fascinated by bacteria. Who knew they were instrumental in the creation of pretty much all that we now see (including ourselves)? I'm going to copy and paste my first assignment answer, because I am bound to forget it in the //** __space of a week, much less an eon, era or period...

Geochronology all starts with the eon - or the supereon to be exact. This is the overarching descriptor of time, broken down into smaller and smaller subsets: eons can be divided into eras, which can be divided into periods, which can be divided into epochs. In the history of the universe, we have identified four eons and ten eras, thus far. We presently live in the Holocene epoch of the Quaternary period.

There.

Overall, this was a humbling week in many respects as I considered for the first time, the myriad of evolutionary activities taking place as I amble through life. The urge to survive and reproduce is relentless. The force of nature can be analysed scientifically on many levels, but it still remains in essence, a miracle. HEY HAS ANYONE ELSE NOTICED IF YOU ACCIDENTALLY UNDERLINE, ITALICIZE OR BOLD TEXT IN THIS PROGRAMME, YOU CANNOT UNDO IT!!!! ALSO IT MUCKS AROUND WITH FONT SIZES LIKE A BEAST! IF YOU'RE WONDERING WHY MY JOURNAL IS TYPOGRAPHICALLY DISASTROUS, IT'S BECAUSE I STARTED PLAYING AND CANNOT UNDO IT! OK. ENOUGH SAID.

AUGUST 22, 2012
 * Week 3 - Are we keeping up? **

It seems human beings for all their cleverness and inventiveness, may be lack a little in the gene pool after all. The invention of the iPhone apparently is NOT enough to save our species from many of the 21st century's greatest threats (though an army of Gen Y and Z's will beg to differ). About 200,000 years ago, we basically stagnated on the evolutionary front, and like Shane Warne, have been living off past glories ever since.

It's all very amusing until you realise, we've not kept up with the changing world around us. Even more disconcertingly, we have caused many of the changes that now threaten us, without considering the need to adapt in order to survive the changes we have inflicted! Now that's not exactly intelligent, is it? Still stuck in hunter gatherer mode, human beings have a bit of a scramble on their hands if we are to overcome hurdles like rapid climate change, population explosion, expanding global poverty and famine, biological and other large-scale warfare, food crises, energy crises, water shortages, expanding desertification, large scale biodiversity loss, disease pandemics and so on...


 * Week 4 - Considering culture **

AUGUST 26, 2012

There were so many facets of human cultural development to consider. I ended up choosing Art, thinking it would be a nice counterpoint to Burial of the Dead because the first was a human pleasure and the second, a survival necessity, but ended up realising there were overlaps between the two and they were so different after all. Fascinating to consider the origin and purpose behind each cultural pursuit - it puts a new spin on each for me, and does change the framework from which I view them in a modern context.

This week was also crunch time on project topics and a little fleshing out of scope. I probably indulged a little in my first unit when I chose a utopic ideal for my project - while I found the research and report highly interesting, I wonder how many modern day folk would see Eudaimonia as a pressing issue of our time. Ahhh, the idealist in me. This semester therefore, I've decided to get into the nitty gritty and prod the issue of climate change. One of the biggest issues for me with this topic, lies in my role as a Climate Reality Project Presenter - we have just about exhausted our opportunities to present climate science to uneducated audiences because people have reached a real saturation point on the subject. The public is 'over it'. Which, if you know even a little bit of the science, is a pretty horrifying thought: It's like someone lying on a train track and being told by a gathering crowd to get off because a train is coming - and you don't want to listen because you're 'over it'. So - I took a few steps back and decided to analyse what might be happening to people collectively, with regard to their unwillingness to 'leap off the track'. It boiled down to the way we perceive the problem - and the power of a few who are insisting that trains don't exist. If I can draw parallels between this issue - of climate change - and other significant issues through human history, where we've denied the existence of a problem, only to realise and accept later, that we were wrong - it might help advance our willingness to take the climate crisis more seriously now. It is a matter of utmost urgency - I am hoping my exploration might in some small way, move us forward in addressing it.


 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 17px;">Week 5 - ****<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 17px;">Home on the range **

SEPTEMBER 9, 2012

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">Agriculture. More specifically, the ways in which it revolutionised human lifestyles. Well, I went off on a spectacular tangent in the first half of the week as I recalled visiting a place in the US 20 years ago, called Mesa Verde. There, around 600AD, a community of Anasazi Native Americans built the most magnificent cave community - one of several in the region - and lived for around 600 years before suddenly up and leaving - presumably due to prolonged drought. This story and the remarkable remains had long captured my imagination, so I began researching the site again, for clues about their agricultural practices... Therein lies one of the dangers of the internet and the power of the 'Google' button, to distract you from the ACTUAL task at hand. Needless to say, I recovered in time to relevantly answer the set questions...

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">My project has been developing further, as I consider what benefit my findings might be to the environmental movement. How will exploring historic fallacies - their origins and the turning points in human realisation - expedite our contemporary hurdle in convincing the majority that climate change is a real and present danger? Given that we today have enough science and scientific support to acknowledge this reality yet denialists continue to have a disproportionate share of voice, I began to shift from the idea of exploring geniune misunderstanding, to that of deliberate obfuscation of the facts. I have therefore been exploring the idea of basing it not on erroneous scientific presumptions, rather, conscious campaigns of misinformation. The problem is finding documentation to support such cover-ups in ancient human history. In contemporary history there are, of course, countless examples. I continue to refine and review my plan, while I read.


 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 17px;">Week 6 - ****<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 17px;">Industrial Disease **

SEPTEMBER 9, 2012

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">I posted the idea in the thread for this week, but really, it is funny how 'industry' has become a dirty word - particularly for those focussed on the environmentally aware side of the coin. It took me some time to develop an objective view of the idea of further industrialisation, as all I could initially ask myself was "How much more can planet Earth bear?" <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">But of course I was not taking into account that my framing of industry was locked in the past - and present. The future cannot be more of the same. Such action is unsustainable. If we don't stop it, nature - or another force greater than us (and there are many of these) will. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">I even entered into a discussion this week on the subjugation inherent in the concept of being an 'employee'. It was put to me that early human beings - even early agriculturalists - had the concept of working for themselves, a sense of being in charge of their own destinies and that it wasn't until the Industrial Revolution, that people became enslaved to companies, human 'cogs' in the wheels of another's machine. I actually became quite angry, rejecting the notion that I had been playing the role of fodder for most of my adult life. But on reflection, there is truth in the notion. It really comes down to the individual's attitude towards employment: Are you content to give of yourself in exchange for the promise of 'being looked after'? Or do you see yourself as an independent contractor, agreeing to provide services in exchange for a fair market price and equitable working conditions? Food for thought.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">Project update: I have engaged in many conversations regarding major changes in thinking and the tipping points where such shifts occurred. I am actually feeling a bit swamped by the possibilities now. Will spend the time available this week just going back to basics and deciding to focus on three key examples. Would like them to be as varied as possible - just need to ensure I can access adequate research materials on all three. That's the problem with such wonderful open ended opportunity: Where do you start?!?!?


 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 17px;">Week 7 - The current great transition - and what is 'human' anyway? **

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">We enter a very fluid, ever-evolving contemporary phase in the study of the integrate human, with an exploration of what it means to be human in the 21st century. And I find myself, possibly in similar shoes to the Luddites of the 19th century, railing against the perceived 'inhumanity' of a societal pressure to move forward and embrace 'transhumanity'. The question is, what defines us as human in the first place? This was something we explored in 8801 and again early in 8802 - the origins of humanity and that which separates us as a species from our nearest genetic relatives. <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">Joel Garreau released his book //Radical Evolution:// //The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies and What It Means to Be Human’// in 2005 with a sense of great urgency: concerned for the future of humanity and the rate at which it is changing, he expressed a fear that, in the wrong hands or given a certain set of events, humanity could enter a Hell Phase, where machines dominated and ultimately destroyed us. This, as opposed to the highly optimistic Heaven scenario, where technology elevates humanity to the highest platforms of potential and expression. In a third scenario, Garreau describes the Prevail Scenario (and I can't help but think he refers to 'sanity' when he calls for this option). As I concluded in my assignment, I too hope that Prevail prevails: Technology has the potential to deliver on any of these scenarios. It seems the question today is no longer //how// technology can change what it means to be human, rather, how we will ensure technology is our tool, not our master. It lies in our ability to apply human barriers, values and ethics to the use of such technologies so that ultimately, we remain in charge of our own evolution.


 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 17px;">Week 8 - ICT power **

SEPTEMBER 29, 2012

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">It is indicative of the dramatic rate of change within the Information and Communication Technology realm, that this week's assignment is required in summary, bullet point form. The volume of information and detail with which it could be assigned, is frankly overwhelming. And that is precisely the point. As Ray Kurzweil points out, technological evolution is not linear - it is exponential. This is a critical point, when seeking to come to terms with a field of evolution so rapid, that in the time it takes to describe the latest innovation, it has probably already been superceded. For me, the big questions are the ethical ones. Do I want my brain uploaded into a machine? Aren't my thoughts, ideas, imagination, memories, all private property? What separates me as an individual, if I turn my very being into a Facebook page, there for the analysis, exposed to commentary and judgement? And what of the concept of replacing parts of me, with machines? It is a question for which some religions already have an answer - refusing blood transfusions or any medical intervention which might place foreign bodies inside their own. But my own father had heart surgery last year and a bovine valve was placed inside his chest, to save his life. Does this make him less human? The question of what it is to be human drives our answers. And yet it is a question about which few humans can agree.

OCTOBER 2, 2012
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 17px;">Week 9 - What if? **

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px;">This week's exercises in scenario building have brought home a number of important developments in my thinking about the future. Namely, the lack of certainty we really have - and perhaps, the illusion we sometimes live in, that tells us we have absolute control over our future. So many facets of life on earth are interwoven, so many influences operate beneath our level of consciousness, that I sometimes wonder who is driving the ship? Some would say it is God. Some would say WE are the Gods - it is our actions, thoughts and beliefs which guide our destiny and drive us towards futures we either consciously or unconsciously create. We are only weeks away from an election decision in the US - will Obama get a second term or will Romney get a go? Are they really just different faces who would be installed to deliver approximately the same policies? Is the destiny of the western world in someone else's hands already? Given the waning influence of the US on world politics, does it really matter anyway? The options on any given action create a flowchart of possibilities. It becomes dazzling and mind-numbing when we are pushed to consider them all.


 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 17px;">Week 10 - closer to home **

October 10, 2012 In our final week of assignments, we are asked to look at likely and preferred outcomes for the relatively short term future of our home country. For me, that's Australia. And it was an incredibly confronting and challenging exercise to posit a future, when I really only look hours, days, weeks - and maybe my next career - ahead. What kind of Australia do I want? The question is really, What am I willing to do to contribute to that outcome? My answers became a template for the decisions I will make moving into the next two decades. I found there were likelihoods which mirrored my desires - but in other areas, I was frightened to consider the likely direction of public policy or social development, when I had been living in an idealistic bubble where 'everything would work out in the end'! How naive as I write - but that is perhaps, a coping mechanism many of us fall into, when the scope and responsibility for the future seems too imposing, too much of a challenge. You deal with things in a compartmentalised form. I will discuss some of these phenomena in my project, when it comes to current and future attitudes towards climate change. Ahhh - my project! It is so exciting and completely overwhelming at once: I feel like I've taken on an enormously important subject - one so close to my heart and my own future direction, yet it would take years to write all there is to say on the subject. I have to confine my thinking to a structured summary in reality - otherwise it'll be a thesis. The other challenge in these last few weeks is the multi-tasking one, leaping between Collaboration and Integration reports. I started to get really stressed out about writing them, but actually, when I sat down and really thought them through and read over the critiques of the first reports, I began to see why these are so important. And I took them really seriously. What began as a bit of a box-ticking activity, turned into a really thought-provoking and rewarding revue. I spent more time on these than I planned, but I found it so helpful, that I think it'll actually support the work I have ahead. Of course, that final sleep deprived week might not make me feel so cheery!!! I just keep reminding myself this is for a very important purpose: My future - and how I can contribute to creating the future I want. Which, in a neat little tie-up, relates very specifically to the future of my country and my planet.