#FutureLearn and Past Technology

Sticking #future in front of something makes it look great in shiny packaging and then kicks it into the long grass. In the real future (not the #future), when people come across the package, sodden and decayed, and wonder what it is, it is unlikely that any of the glitz of its original packaging will have any impact at all. The power of history lies in its reconstructing of narratives which account for present decay. Decay and death is ever-present, although some periods appear more in decline than others. We're in one of those now. One of the things that happens in such periods are efforts to escape. Presenting things as 'of the future' is a symptom of this.

When we do see things which really are new, we know it viscerally. I was fascinated to see a transcript of an online conversation between Ronald Reagan (who was then governor of California), Edward Said and Marcel Broodthaers (waiting for Jane Fonda to appear..) in 1975. Actually it turns out this was a hoax! However, in the made-up transcripts each had their own agenda politically - it could have happened. They all 'got it'. They knew it would be big. Said's first reaction was "this really works" (they couldn't do punctuation, although I guess he would have stuck an exclamation mark at the end of it.. or maybe a smiley!).

MARCEL BROODTHAERS
Hello.
EDWARD SAID
Hello this really works.
RONALD REAGAN
Hello this is Gov. Ronald Reagan of California.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
Yes amazing.
RONALD REAGAN
Neat stuff.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
I thought I would say hello whilst we are waiting.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
This is mb.
RONALD REAGAN
Hello Marcel.
EDWARD SAID
Who are we waiting for. Im Edward.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
Hello.
RONALD REAGAN
Hi Ed. Call me Ron.
EDWARD SAID
Hi Ron you dont mind do you.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
Hello Edward. Well Im told we are waiting for Jane Fonda.
RONALD REAGAN
No my wife calls me Ronnie.
RONALD REAGAN
Jane Fonda. Really. Well Ill be.
RONALD REAGAN
Interesting line up.
That's what it feels like when you see 'the future'.  MOOCS, #FutureLearn, etc are not 'the future'. They are, in fact, pretty miserable - a symptom of decay. The visceral reaction really matters. The same might be said of e-learning in general. The uncomfortable fact is that the reaction of Reagan, Said, etc appeared to educationalists as 'potential' for education.. But somehow we've not realised the potential. Said spotted it... RONALD REAGAN
Wouldnt you rather pick up the phone and call.
RONALD REAGAN
All this damned typing.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
You get faster.
EDWARD SAID
Yes I would but if it were to be cheap and inexpensive.
EDWARD SAID
Free.
RONALD REAGAN
Free. Well who pays for it in the end though.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
The people of course.
RONALD REAGAN
You mean taxes.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
I assume you are in a military communication centre like me. Both of you.
EDWARD SAID
But for a young man or woman in Sri Lanka this might help them voice their ideas to people like a university professor from Michigan or an architect from Bahia.  EDWARD SAID
The rich should pay.
It was obvious to an academic like Said that this was massive. Technology and communications have clearly done amazing things, and no doubt many lives in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, have been transformed. But they could not have foreseen how social structures, power relations, institutions and governments would have reacted to the potential. Reagan might also have been thinking "yes.. but if I was a terrorist or a communist..."   The essence of something powerful like ARPANET, or any development that is really new and "will change the world" is a sensation of emancipation. That's what all of these people must have felt. Indeed, that's what I felt when I encountered micro-computers in the 1980s. It was thrilling - particularly for a teenager.

When we look at MOOCs, we do not see emancipation. We see a manifestation of repressive social structures that have become technologised. We see powerful institutions that are looking for new ways of hooking customers into their products and making money. They will tell us "it's the future". But the point about really exciting things is that nobody needs to be told "it's the future".. they already know. 

The real irony in this was that ARPANET was a research project (albeit in a military unit.. although I'm sure it felt pretty much like a university). That's what research should do - produce cool things that emancipate people. So what are universities doing to produce new things that emancipate, that have the same thrilling effect? Isn't that where our research effort should be concentrated? Why are Universities doing such dull stuff with education? 

The answer to this question is depressing and symptomatic of the deep trouble we are in. Research in Universities has become so closely tied to capitalism, to 'revenue generation' that the value of research is measured in terms of "business potential". When University academics are dependent on meeting these criteria to keep their jobs, then it is little surprise that the rot sets in. When those rules are applied to the business of the University itself, MOOCs are what we get. For some reason, Universities have been unable to match the excitement of the early internet with regard to teaching and learning. A depressing "if it brings the money in, if it creates a marketing buzz, it's good enough" mentality.

I think the reasons for this are complex. Partly, it is because our theories of learning (particularly the dominant constructivist theory) is deficient in explaining the gamut of the human experience of learning. The fact that these deficiencies have not been explored academically is connected with disciplinary pathology and the organisation of Universities themselves. The fact that new exciting educational technologies haven't emerged is to do with an absence of theoretical development. What has taken its place is corporatism, technological "fadism", and the unremitting forces of marketisation. The only way out is better critical thinking and better theory.

The discussion on ARPANET expanded on the impact on education:

MARCEL BROODTHAERS
Students I think could benefit from this greatly.
EDWARD SAID
Yes I can imagine.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
Vast networks of students.
EDWARD SAID
Networks. What does that mean really.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
Youth must be provided with the means to grasp this opportunity.
RONALD REAGAN
Sounds a bit out of control to me.
EDWARD SAID
Sounds suspicious.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
The young will grasp its potential in a way we couldnt imagine.
RONALD REAGAN
I dont doubt that.
MARCEL BROODTHAERS
You agree with me Ronald.
RONALD REAGAN
Well yes.
EDWARD SAID
And what will it lead to Marcel. Other networks with more power will already have control.

I think that's where we are...

What now is the role of government in regulating Universities?

The relationship between government, universities and industry is of fundamental significance in a knowledge economy (see http://www.universal-publishers.com/book.php?method=ISBN&book=1581129378 for an excellent analysis of this using cybernetic theories). The regulation of education by government inevitably has knock-on effects throughout the rest of the economy.

In industrial society, governmental regulation was partly a matter of deciding how many engineers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, etc were needed and what sort of research was required in the national interest. Resources could then be allocated centrally to institutions who were trusted to organise themselves in the delivery of suitably qualified individuals.

In a post-industrial society - particularly one with a massified higher education system - things are not quite so simple. There are of course still calculations done on the number of teachers, nurses (now this requires a degree), doctors, etc are needed. But education is largely treated as a commodity which is saleable in its own right, with its own market, providing its customers have the means to purchase. Government increasingly has taken the attitude that giving students the means to purchase education (through the provision of loans) is all that it requires to do to regulate the education system. The market for education will self-organise and deliver effective education (which may be exportable) given the provision of resource by government to students. To what extent are they right?

Education is a peculiar kind of industry. Institutions operate as autonomous entities but dependent on student numbers and (most importantly) political policy. Institutions, for all their claims of autonomy and independence, are beholden to the will of ministers. For ministers themselves, the fundamental question concerns the basis of their policy-making and the treatment of individual institutions. Whilst officially, government appears merely to be providing the resources to students so that they can purchase education, behind the scenes a completely different (and somewhat chaotic) picture emerges of lobbying by institutions trying to influence policy to favour their particular circumstances. Simple things make a big difference: for example, the allocation of 'student numbers' to institutions determines an institution's maximum potential income. 'Student numbers' are bid for by institutions and allocated by a rather opaque bureaucratic process where no institution can be entirely certain of the outcome. Added to this, with more providers entering the market, and with the highest-performing students excluded from the student-number control, the government appears set on producing increased competition in the sector, particularly at the lower-end, as Andrew McGettigan explains (see http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/commentary/who-let-the-dogs-out)

"With the government maintaining control of overall student numbers through controls on recruitment, we would see more outfits competing for a limited number of students: intensifying competition. It is one thing to use private providers to increase overall capacity (as recommended by Browne), quite another to intensify a zero-sum game: recruitment and marketing will eat up a significant proportion of the new higher fees."

But the zero-sum game isn't quite what it seems. There is a kind of aleatoric element in university funding which is itself a regulating mechanism. The fact that lobbying can affect the outcome of student number allocation or policy initiatives introduces further levels to the regulatory game. There is some kind of process of allocation of numbers; there is also some kind of political game that must be played with the minister. Given this rather frightening scenario, one wonders who would want to be a Vice Chancellor. Of course, individuals with certain Machievelian character traits might thrive in this situation, but they are not necessarily the character traits that one would wish for in a leader of a university! To be fair, Vice Chancellors may well resent the assault on their institutions and the system. But who would dare speak out for fear of upsetting the minister? Many, I should imagine, find themselves in an impossible position - which seldom brings out the best in anyone.

The problem with all this is that it is completely unaccountable. The minister acts as a shadowy kingmaker behind the scenes playing a cynical game with the electorate whilst "leading on" university leaders. Universities find themselves in financial trouble and its their fault, despite the fact that the minister may well have been pulling the strings for some ulterior motive. At the same time, it is not inconceivable that institutional managers themselves may have ulterior motives. These may or may not also have been manipulated by the minister, but however it is inspected, the complete absence of a clear organising principle for higher education can mask mismanagement, injustice or (potentially) criminality.

This is a toxic cocktail of unaccountability, indiscriminate regulation, personal ambition and political manipulation. It may, however, work for a while. When is it likely to break down? As we have seen in other recent instances of institutional trauma (the press, BBC, MP expenses, etc), I think there will be some kind of shock. The problem with any unaccountable system is that people eventually get sloppy and make mistakes which gives the game away. As the shock is absorbed, and people unravel the tangled mess that has become educational regulation, they may well ask the question that so badly needs to be asked: "Why are we doing this?"

Education without Failure

Imagine an education system without failure. Could it work? Or is creating failure a necessary function of education?

We would have to rethink what it is education is doing. Can it still be considered a 'filtering mechanism' or a means of judging who should get what job?

Does an education system without failure necessitate a society without fear? Because people are fearful, so education addresses their fears, but it replaces one fear with another. The fear it replaces is irrational and existential. Educational 'fear' by contrast is rational, systemic and 'fair'.

But we all know it isn't really.

The things that separate us from one another are the judgements we make about each other which derive from our individual anxiety to preserve our identity. The preservation of our identity is, I think, tied to the preservation of a particular set of relations with those we love: our tie to our parents, our children, our friends, etc. Those ties are based on reliable patterns of communication, where strategies for action can be formulated with sufficiently accurate foresight as to the results of those actions. Those people we fear, those who are outside our circle of attachments, are people with whom we cannot predict communications. We fear this disruptive and unpredictable element and its effects not just on us, but on those we stay close to.

The labelling of education serves a purpose in this regard (indeed, the curriculum itself can be seen as instrumental). It marks out those with whom we may have a chance of predicting how they might communicate with us, even if we don't know them that well. It provides a starting point for social engagement. In this way, labelling is an extension of the class system. Failure serves to ensure this labelling system continues to work.

The irony in education is that deeper metacognition can overcome the reliance on labels for making judgements. The deepest metacognition leads to the "loving openness" that is the epitome of wisdom. At this level, the relationship between identity, attachment, and the world at large has been re-programmed. Identity is an unendingly flexible set of relations between the individual and the world. Preservation of identity is never in doubt, and fear is minimised.

If we are to have higher education for everyone, then the basic labelling of education is likely to cease working in terms of its ability to allow people to predict communications. Having a degree in x may mean vastly different things depending on the institution, the individual's social background, etc, and this will be quickly revealed through social interaction. Moreover, an individual may fail in degree x at institution y, but succeed in institution z, and whilst success at z is still success, the efficacy of the success may well be exposed.

If we didn't create failure, would it matter? Perhaps, in having such a range of different institutions, we are already doing away with failure. But this means the labelling doesn't do its job. It's not just a matter of asking "what might take its place?", but of demanding "whatever does take its place, can it be reasonable and fair?"

Here we have deep problems. Because in pushing everyone through education, there is inherent unfairness already. Individuals cannot help their upbringings, and in turn they will have less choice with their educational journeys. But they still have to pay, irrespective of the benefits of their narrow choice. Yet the labelling is already determined by the choice; it was already determined (by and large) by school, the family, etc. And education without failure in some ways makes this more confusing and less effective.

But I don't want to argue for failure: failure is terrible. I believe the onus is on those institutions at the bottom to offer something different from those at the top. Rather than trying to ape the elite, widening participation institutions should deal directly with those issues of fear that undermine the essential fairness of opportunity for all. Metacognition, inquiry, technological flexibility through to sheer 'nous' and creativity can overcome the barriers of the labelling of the elite universities. Learning how to teach this ought, I think, to be their central concern.

Intelligence

Sometimes we meet someone and think "you're a bright young thing! Always quick witted, able to make some incisive comment that makes everyone sit up and think (and often laugh)." and then we might think "How did they get to be like that?" (secretly wishing "I wish I was like that"). The word we use for this is "intelligence". The behaviours we associate with intelligence include the ability to remember large amounts of information and to weave quotations and anecdotes into their conversations. The aspect of 'recall' that lies behind this behaviour gives us some confidence that the labours of education are indeed effective, and that the more one labours to learn, remember, regurgitate, etc the more one might be capable of performing in this way.

But notwithstanding the fact that no doubt some degree of labour in remembering and learning can indeed give a person greater agility in social encounters (which in turn can make them powerful), there is an uninspected backwater to this kind of behaviour. This I think lies in the emotional bedrock upon which both the confident performances of an "intelligent person" and the will to drive through tedious exercises of learning as a means to gaining greater agility are situated. "Intelligence" in performance misleads an audience into misconceiving where it came from. "Practise" is all we can say, and so the education system rewards "practise". But it fails to identify the necessary conditions within which "practise" can take place.

There is plenty of evidence that the psychological conditions within which this kind of practise, and the will to battle through learning journeys are founded in social structures. Those from good homes, with books, with emotional support for their educational endeavours will succeed at least in the business of working through learning. Often they succeed only in remembering and regurgitating without thinking, and produce an aped performance of 'intelligence' which merely shows "cleverness" rather than intelligence: arguments might be won with clever quotations and put-downs, but the big questions are glossed over and nobody is any the better for it. The confidence that education can breed can be dangerous in such cases.

But what of those who have the capacity to be deeply intelligent (which I think is all of us) but who are not lucky enough to grow up in an environment which gives them the sufficient emotional management to be able to handle the hard work of learning? What they take from their home environments is anxiety and stress, they avoid the risks of saying it "how it is", assuming that the 'clever people' know better than them, and trusting the clever people to tell them how to be clever too - by sitting exams, doing what they are told, etc. The greatest crime is that they are told by the clever people in the education system that they are less clever than them, and that they can only become as clever if they do what they are told. Education creates stupidity in so many ways - and it does so in its own interests.

What if education didn't do this? Could we have an education system which didn't need to create failure? There's an interesting thought...

History and Education

My experience of History in school was that it was a strange beast: the art of recalling the rememberances of other people in order to gain appreciation by the education system! My first 'homework' I was ever given was to 'make notes' on a dusty textbook telling me something about ancient british tribes. I diligently set about reading this thing. It was so boring. But I struggled through the boredom and wrote a few words about "celts" and "settlements" without really knowing what it was all about, but naturally worried that if I didn't do it, I'd be in trouble in my first week at school! I remember thinking to myself "but don't worry you don't understand. This is what all the clever people have done before you! Just keep with it.." It wasn't long before I was becoming very inventive in my excuses for not producing my homework!

There are moments in education when we have to pour over things, to bash-away at something, to do some hard work. But if the fruits of that labour never become meaningful beyond winning the plaudits of the system which sponsors them, then I think something is amiss. What are we bashing away at, exactly? Why? and eventually.. "what is the point in us doing this?"

That moment is the appeal to the "elephant in the room" to show itself - the gaping absence that sucked us all into a crazy ritual. Ironically, it is that very moment of revealed authenticity which leads people to write new (and exciting) history books, or books of any kind. Not the dreary textbooks of the sort I was making notes written by opportunistic and dull teachers, but the sort of books which people actually want to read and which change them.

I am really wanting to write about the "history of education", and I mention this terrible experience of history because the 'elephant in the room' is a huge elephant when we come to talk about the history of education. "Education began at 12.42 pm on the 15th January, 342AD in a cloister in the Abbey of St. Albans." That's interesting to begin with! In order to write a history of something, does that thing have to have had a beginning? We can write about the history of the First World War because the war had a beginning. Endings aren't so important.. we can always say "and its legacy still lives with us today. THE END".

Does Education have a beginning? There were the first school houses in the 19th century. There must have been a first 'grammar school', we know there was a first University. But are they a beginning?  Or just a continuation?

The problem is that it makes sense to see how a war began. Partly because we might be anxious not to begin another one - at least in the same way! Why would we want to think how education began? So we can begin it again? So we can 'reinvent' it, maybe? Popper has a point about the dangers of historicism!

With every birth, there is some rebirth of education. The story of education has no beginning, just a continual process of rebirth. Some voices that were born have been powerful and influential. They have grabbed onto the steering wheel of education and taking it somewhere where it didn't seem that it had been before (but in reality, this was probably the result of amnesia).

Each voice that has tried to steer education has had it's own 'story of education' within it. The story acts as a kind of compass. No doubt, the stories of many have within them invented 'beginnings' of education which say "this is where we've come from; this is where we need to go!". I don't want to be like this.

My challenge is that, like many working in my field, I want to be part of an effort to steer education in difficult times. However, I cannot easily tell a 'historical' story of education to explain where we are and where we ought to think about going. I would have to invent a beginning for that, and I don't think education has a beginning. So what is my compass if it is not a story with a beginning?

My challenge is to describe what things in education do. Now. It is to describe their experience and the connection between the experience of education, the way it is organised and the world we live in. This is not a history. It is (I think) more like an allegory.

Education, Manipulation and Extortion

I've just returned from Vienna, where (after my talk in Eisenstadt last week) I gave a paper on 'Animating Pathological Communications' as part of the GLODERS project (see http://www.gloders.eu/project) an EU STREP project organised by CRESS (Centre for Research in Social Simulation) at the University of Surrey. I'm not involved in the project, although it's good to see conferences being organised like this, and it's great to see the EU funding an ICT project with such rich and important social implications. It's also a sign of the emerging methodological significance of agent based modelling.

Amongst the presentations were a number of insightful contributions from those working with police forces in parts of the world where the mafia and other groups conducting extortion are active. Most interesting for me was discovering the extent of mafia involvement in everyday life in parts of Sicily. The obvious question to ask was "In these cases, what is the difference between mafia and government?"

To make that distinction, a deeper systemic definition of mafia is required. Here both cybernetic and agent-based model thinking is very important. In my talk, I drew attention to Bateson's double-bind theory as a starting point, explaining the power of the metaphor, but also the difficulty in trying to get to a workable representation of double-bind situations which might be modellable. The mafia in Sicily clearly have people in a double-bind: usually by picking targets and gently inculcating dependency on illegal activity, and then exploiting the consequent vulnerabilities of those individuals (the mafia becomes the only available "solution" to the individual's problems). But, seen like that, we all inhabit double-binds: whether in families (which as R.D. Laing showed, are full of them!), government, etc. Indeed, as I suggested a while ago, education is full of double-binds (see http://dailyimprovisation.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/on-knots-and-universities.html) and these dynamics may be partly responsible for the very existence of our educational institutions. And EU projects? Well, if anyone's ever tried to work through the documentation and jargon of the commission...

But the mafia is horrible, and education and government are generally not. However, these things can be horrible. A lot depends on what people can do when they become so. Governments can be voted out. We can choose not to do an EU project. But education? Of course, students can leave an institution. But there are risks in doing so. For students in parts of the world where there is less freedom and opportunity, these risks multiply. I know of a case where a student studied at a domestic university's overseas operation in an unfree part of the world and a country where they themselves were an immigrant. They found that their (quite good) degree result didn't open the doors which they had hoped because the validity of the overseas operation was questioned by employers. They then found that they would have to leave the country where they studied because they hadn't found a job and would have to return to the country of their birth (which was even less free). If they wished to stay in the country, what was their only option? Answer: to sign-up for another course from the overseas university operation (at considerable cost) which their experience suggested would not deliver a sufficiently credible qualification that would help them any further. But it was the only way of staying in the country.

Is this extortion? To answer that question, it is useful to look at the social dynamics of systems like the mafia. They always appear as 'parasitical' upon a pre-existing legal framework. 'Illegality' - a construct of the state - is the mechanism by which people are lured into the racket. In the case of this student, I think there is something similarly parasitical about the relationship between government regulation of immigration and residence rights, and the operations of the University. The only difference is that unlike the mafia, putting the student in this position is not the explicit intention of the University: although the university benefits from the situation.

With very complex issues arising from international operations of UK universities at home as well as abroad, I think these questions of whether there is extortion going on are very important. The terrible financial situation facing many universities creates the conditions whereby practices which may be 'racket-like' are tempting to institutional managers, even if we convince ourselves that such practices are in the best interests of our students. In order to properly use our moral compasses, we need deeper knowledge about the kinds of pathological and manipulative situations that are exemplified by organisations like the mafia, in order to understand the very real possibility of moral hazards for educational institutions.

Freud, Wiener and Education

I visited Freud's apartment (now a museum) in the Bergasse, Vienna today. It's somewhat empty because all his books and many of his artifacts are now in Hampstead, but it was a moving visit because it emphasised the terrible effect of Nazi occupation on this beautiful city. A lifetime's work was hurriedly shipped-out via Paris to London.

But what of the work itself? Psychoanalysis is about 50 years older than cybernetics. Just as cybernetics has bifurcated, different leaders coming to take it in different directions, so too with psychoanalysis. Today to say you are a psychoanalyst is immediately to invite the question "who do you follow?" It's a tribal thing. Cybernetics is the same. 1st order (cybernetics for engineers)? 2nd order (cybernetics for (second-rate?) philosophers)? Luhmann? Bateson? etc. It's difficult to claim it all. In order to do that, you would have to have a view of the whole thing, and as time passes, it all gets more obscure.

The truth is, in both cases, although there is a 'moment of birth' - the work of Freud, the work of Wiener - both subjects are much older. The consideration of the relationship between the mechanisms of living things and the mechanisms of the world goes back at least to scholasticism, with its roots in Aristotelian philosophy. There the consideration of the mind as mechanism lies latent in not only in the hands of artists (one has only to look at Sophocles or even Homer to see this) but in Platonic theories of education and society. Freud knew and acknowledged this.

But Freud is considered revolutionary because within the society he lived he had the courage to say something shocking which nevertheless people recognised as valuable and important. He reawoke his society to a primeval concern. He determined an absence which was recognised as a shared, but unarticulated, experience. It is a dialectical move which is perhaps comparable with that of Marx. Indeed, where Marx identified the absences of relationship between human beings, Freud identified the absences within each human being.

Did Wiener do something similar? Cybernetics didn't quite have the same Freud 'moment', but even so, Wiener identified something about 'feedback and control' (and a mathematics to go with it) which allowed a number of thinkers to gravitate around it. Wiener's identified 'absence' isn't quite at the same depth as Freud's emphasis on sex and drives, although it was perhaps a bit more practical in terms of giving rise to technologies.

The depth of an absence identified is related to the impact of a movement. Sex is a deep absence: describing the impact of its mechanisms on everyday life is a powerful move. Because of the depth of the absence, it strikes a chord with many (or at least identifies a question). Jung's archetypes are similarly deep: interestingly producing the same kind of effect. Wiener's 'feedback and control' is less deep, but nevertheless becomes shared between the small group of individuals who understood it. The impact of cybernetics was contained in the impact of what cybernetic thinking produced: advances in technology. It was the technology that was the deep absence that everyone could see. The internet is only the latest instantiation of this. It is important to remember this particular with regard to 2nd order cybernetics and a less practical, philosophical orientation.

I think at the heart of this lies the issue of materiality. Material things produce visceral reactions. Those reactions are shared because the experience of encountering a material object is shared. I know that the way I feel staring at an iPad isn't that different from the way you feel. Because of this, design of such items is possible. This is the shared absence related to the materiality of technology. Similarly, I know, deep down, the way I feel staring at an erotic Japanese print (saw some of these today in the Leopold museum) is not that different to the way you feel (or anyone else might feel). That is the shared absence related to the  materiality of sex.

Freud took the intangible (for example dreams) and turned them into material narratives. This created literary objects which had causal power in making individuals feel things which they knew were shared. The sharedness of the absence had a organisational effect (maybe like Luhmann's contingency formula?). A movement was born. Shared absences produces new concepts, new discourse.

In the case of Freud, once the novelty of the underlying interpretation had lost its shock and the basic principles became accepted, the underlying principle lost its power as a centre of gravity. Other absences emerged within the group that was engaged in psychoanalysis. Tribal differences arose.

In cybernetics, those who concentrated on the material artifacts (computers, for example) gradually split from those wondering about more ancient questions of cognition and being. The remarkable practical discoveries that kicked the thing off lost their power. New absences arose within the group: tribal squabbles separated people.

What now?

Is education the space where cybernetics, psychoanalysis and material technology come together? I'm thinking that "emotional management" may be one of the most important things that goes on in education (when it works). People don't learn new things when they feel bad about their ability to learn new things. Education too often encourages this. Feeling good requires some sort of therapy, which sometimes we might simply attribute to 'good teaching'. But that therapy/good teaching will involve some kind of materially-realised artifacts: resources, tools, etc as well as activites. These may be the technological product of thinking about "feedback and control". Maybe we should be pursuing "higher education for all" with the same passion, creativity and technical innovation as the Viennese Secessionists pursued their artistic ideals!