A THEORETICAL PICTURING OF THE 03X (SELF, TIME, PLACE) PROJECT AND AN INITIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
A THEORETICAL PICTURING OF THE 03X (SELF, TIME, PLACE) PROJECT AND AN INITIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
2004, "-ISMs & -NESSes": COLECTIA SALONULUI INTERNATIONAL DE CARTE "OVIDIUS" CONSTANTA
From the conference collection, second edition (18 - 21 September, 2003). Coordinated by Eduard Vlad
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The thesis is a quasi-chronological account of my work in 5D – a travel book of sorts. On the way, I will present a number of specific events. In any case, what I shall put forward here is complicated, multiple, intricate and highly saturated with methodological, theoretical and analytical issues. Since some explanations must come before others and some discussions must be taken preliminarily in order to follow my line of thinking, there will be overlaps, rep-etitions, and at times lapses, where explanation must follow. This is a conse-quence of both the empirical material and of the semi-chronological structure I have chosen for the thesis. This structure allows me to centre ini¬tial expla-nations and concerns in the early part of the volume, the theoretical and ana-lytical bulk in the middle, and discussions and perspectives towards the end. Although this chronology is not always entirely true to the sequence in which events actually occurred, the text follows a roughly chronological or¬der. The text oscillates between 5D-stories and theoretical/methodological discus-sions. Theory and methodology are discussed in the order appropriate for a coherent recount of the events in 5D-Copenhagen, and not necessarily in the order they first emerged. It is never possible to represent the present as it ac-tually occurred. However, this thesis attempts to provide a glimpse of the lived through emergence of the research that I conducted. In this Overview, I have given an account of the research questions at play in this volume. In chapter 1 (Introduction), I outline the background, insights and question that lead to this project. I will state my concern and interest, as well as an example of an event that spurred this interest. I will also provide a brief in-troduction to the conceptual framework that I primarily wish to apply in the thesis. Inspired by sources from the cross-disciplinary field Studies of Science and Technology (STS), I seek to work with boundaries as they occur in my material. I will tentatively establish ‘the computer’ as an unsettled (and un-settling) technology - one that is evolving while settling as a socio-material ar-tefact conceptualised as an enzyme that works to blur boundaries of ‘giv¬ens’, such as subjectivity, competence, sociality, human vs. non-human, ‘virtual’ vs. ‘real’. Furthermore, I will introduce the categories variation, equivocality, boundary crossing, event and de-focussed view as categories that flow throughout this thesis both as analytical, theoretical and methodological terms Chapter 2 (5D genesis) is a description and discussion of the 5th Dimension as it is conceptualised, mainly in the works of Michael Cole. In this chapter, I walk though the fundamental principles of 5D: inter-institutional and inter-generational learning, as well as sustainability though local adaptation. I also discuss the status of artefacts in 5D and walk though the 5D artefacts. There seems to be a striking contradiction in the fact that although 5D is nearly al-ways described by 5D authors as locally adaptable, some features seem un-avoidable – albeit not all of them. The question then is how much can 5D change and still call itself 5D? The chapter also includes a discussion of the theoretical embedding of 5D in a framework of Cultural Historical Activity Theory, which serves as an ‘obligatory passage point’ in the conceptualisation of 5D. Intermission I (A tour of Femtedim) is a walkthrough of the 5D-Copenhagen site. I present a description of the FEMTEDIM activity in Copenhagen in 2000-2001, as well as a description of the school partner. Chapter 3 (The empirical strikes back) contains a discussion of Cultural His-torical Activity Theory, especially Engeström’s analytical approach. I discuss the qualities and shortcomings of an Engeström-type analysis in the case of boundary crossing relations as they occurred in 5D-Copenhagen. I discuss this issue through a 5D-story, “The coolest square”. I also offer a preliminary symmetrical approach to viewing relations that cross boundaries. Chapter 4 (Copenhagen genesis) is about the activities in 5D-Copenhagen that led to the opening of the 5D-Copenhagen site where my study took place. This chapter focuses on the opening of contacts to the partner site, as well as the preliminary design phases and some of the variations of 5D that we made, based on the critique that I outlined in Chapter 3. I describe the software ap-plied in the research - Activeworlds, the use of this software, and the transla-tions of 5D artefacts into digital form that we experimented with in 5D-Co-penhagen. Chapter 5 (Humans, things and the social) opens with an empirical example. Here I outline my theoretical approach through a discussion of the relation between humans and non-humans. This chapter seeks to further develop the background for my symmetrical approach to the analysis in order to widen my understanding of subjectivities and competences in relation to 3D virtual environments. I take my main inspiration from Actor-Network Theory, draw-ing mainly on the works of Bruno Latour and his conceptualisation of agency. However, I also employ Brown and Stenner’s concept of “psychology without foundations” and John Law’s interpretation of Althusser’s concept of inter-pellation. In chapter 6 (Interactive research), I outline some methodological concerns about the reasons for choosing 5D as a research field, as well as some of the inspirational sources for the design and development of the site. I discuss ex-perimental methods in contrast to different strains of action-based research and introduce the term interactive research as a conceptualisation of action-based research without foundations. Furthermore, I introduce the notion of ‘letting things strike back’ in relation to action-based research. In chapter 7 (Different kinds of adult), I touch upon some of the ethical, em-pirical and analytical dilemmas of working with children in a non-controlled environment. This includes the multiplicity of the researcher position in rela-tion to children and professionals at the school, which I term “different-kinds-of-adult”, as well as the dilemmas that this multiple position entails. Chapter 8 (Proliferating relations) takes its onset in the after-school activity FEMTEDIM. Through empirical analysis, I further pursue the symmetrical movements in digital and analogue relations. In this chapter, I employ Ivy Schousboe’s play theory and her concept of the ‘connective logic of play’ as an onset for conceptualising competences. Intermission II (A tour of Operation Femtedit) holds an account of the design, setup and negotiations in the second site activity, OPERATION FEMTEDIT (October-December 2001). As a consequence of our involvement in the EU-funded project 5D – Local Learning Communities in a Global World, we took the 5D site into the school. This chapter describes how we contacted the teachers of the 4th grade and the design of the project. Chapter 9 (Equivocalities in proliferating relations) starts out by examining the ways in which Osama bin Laden became a prominent figure at the 5D-Co-penhagen site during the OPERATION FEMTEDIT activity. One of the most interesting issues at hand in this chapter is how non-directedness becomes a problem within a school setting, both for teachers and students. In the mix-ing of non-scholastic and scholastic principles, proliferating connections be-come problematic. From a researcher position, the “different kinds of adult” was troubled when things started to get messy. This chapter also widens the perspective on gender issues touched upon during the FEMTEDIM activity. In the in-school setting, they became even more salient. For the first time, I take an explicit look at how the competent subject was constituted in 5D as a school activity. Chapter 10 (Aligning heterogeneous research materials) aligns the diverse re-search material in this project. I seek inspiration in the “Thousand pages question” put forward by Steinar Kvale and translate the analytical strategy to a project that is designed to ‘let things strike back’. This strategy opens up the depth and richness of the material, but is also problematic because eve-rything is potentially interesting. Therefore, the question is how I can make sense of the heterogeneous and multiple materials that I have gathered. Chapter 11 (Variations) draws together the outlines that I have presented in the thesis in search of the competent subject as it is constituted in relation to 3D virtual environments in and out of school.
2019 •
We consider the two mainstream cosmological models that can be derived from the two physical theories that are the best verified by experiments: general relativity and quantum mechanics, though they are incompatible and a major challenge in physics is to find how to reconcile them. The first model is the block universe, which is considered today as the best way to represent our space-time, if we accept all consequences of general relativity, which seem to imply in particular that our future is already realized and cannot change. The second is the Everett multiverse model, whose most popular interpretation is that it contains all alternative possibilities to conduct our life at our human level (with as many copies of our individual consciousness). Our purpose in this article is to show that the incompatibility between the two mainstream theories could be solved in its global principle via a cybernetical conception of time, through which the block universe would be made flexible. For ...
Social Grammars of Virtuality
Theories in XR, 20232024 •
In 2023, theories were not prominently debated in some of extended reality's (XR)'s most proli c journals. The entire editorial team of Social Grammars of Virtuality tasked all writers of the report to read and analyze all the year's articles from Frontiers in Virtual Reality (N = 91), Presence (N = 13), Virtual Creativity (N=13), and Virtual Reality (N=153). We chose these journals because of their speci c and longstanding focus on virtual reality.
It is elucidated, herein, that the cosmos is, in essence, a gigantic computer with time as the central agent that spearheads the execution of its operating software. It is composed of a core that represents an omnipotent conscious energetic reactor that supports and keeps everything at bay by imposing the constraint that everything must inevitably gravitate towards it. And, it is this very mandate of gravitation to the central SOURCE that epitomizes the phenomenon of time. Time may be depicted as a tensorial quantity, a rotating vector that can stretch while freely flowing spinning about the central SOURCE, giving rise to a continuum that reflects the body of such a Prime Creator that may be referred to as the 'cosmos.' And, as the vector of time stretches within the cosmos while freely subtending revolution about the SOURCE, it progressively congeals to create the said space continuum. It may be regarded that the process of congealment as to create space completes when the vector of time subtends a full revolution about the SOURCE. This gives rise to a curvilinear (spheroidal) surface to depict the space and the radius of its curvature to epitomize the time aspect of creation. Such a continuum of time and space is referred to as a 'dimension.' And, this process of creation of dimensions continues until a nested edifice of spheroidal surfaces is created. It is clear that the process of creation of dimensional space-time occurs in a discrete manner involving the constraint or the requisite of completion
This paper attempts to explore a possibility to visualize the structure of time-consciousness in a knot shape. By applying Louis Kauffman's knot-logic, the consistency of subjective consciousness, the plurality of now's, and the necessary relationship between subjective and intersubjective consciousness will be represented in topological space. For a long time, I believed that time must flow like this, without much doubt: Figure 1 But, does it? What if time's arrow doesn't flow straight forward towards the future? I couldn't be sure if time doesn't flow like this, for example, in the shape of a knot: