That said, we’re still a ways off from this technology working well, and there isn’t enough meta information attached to content or individuals yet for it to work on a grand scale. But this seems to be the direction we are moving in.

To answer your question, in the context of education and in terms of your project (starting your own university) I think it would be a really interesting study in the learning process if you could build a semantic layer into your technology, so that each individual student receives the information that is most relevant and useful to them.

How do our personal interests in hands-on, stimulating education meet with the hacker / DIY culture?

I think it’s something we’ve been circling around for a while. This is what I driving a little bit talking to Brady Forrest yesterday — is there a conference or meetup for people who create tools like Scratch, think in similar “get kids deigning/making and the concepts will come” lines, or have cool science/engineering apparati that they would love to make kid accessuble? He didn’t know of one, but it would be cool to somehow focus on creating a culture of educators with this DIY you-can-learn-or-do-anything spirit, rather than the traditional you-can-prepare-to-do-anything-educational mindset.

What would some first steps in that direction be?

1.) I think that to actually understand science, philosophically speaking, is extremely difficult. To get your head around what it means to “do science” rather than just affecting science is way harder than getting your head around what it means to “do music” (though there’s still a difference between “doing music” and “affecting music”). I think it’s kind of dangerous (culturally) for people to just start doing science on their own.

2.) Practically, I can’t imagine what your layman could even accomplish. Maybe (probably) this is my own naivety/ignorance coming out, but what could your lay electrical engineer do in a week that Alex3, for instance, could not do with a flick of the wrist?

Are you thinking something more along the lines of long-term development of scientific talent/understanding?

I guess both of the above questions (the former being the “ideal” and the latter being the “pragmatic”) really have the question “What is science?” at their base. What is science?

I’m not entirely sure how to approach your comment. I would like to clarify my points, because I’m sure that I was unclear in some places, but I don’t really see how your response even relates to my comment.

You seem to be objecting to political discussion in general. For example, if I said that I wanted the Democrats to gain power, since the Republican Party has an essentially Fascist conception of executive power, would you tell me that abstractions like “fascism” versus “democracy” are less important than necessities?

The reason that I talk about abstractions is because a higher-level understanding of a problem is necessary to bring about any change. Everyone is interested in solving problems like famine, ecological destruction, violence, poverty, political oppression, etc., but they are not at all being solved. Evidently, they don’t know how to solve these problems. I am trying to talk about possible strategies that could be adopted to solve some of these problems.

Eating is a priority of humans. Preservation of the “rich relationship between humankind and its food” could only be a priority of someone with the time/resources/education to cast “liking to eat good food with other people” in such terms.

Profit in any business is a means of abstracting value, buying even those who do not profit in cash the luxury of focusing energy in a direction other than sustaining life. Agribusiness supplies what people will eat- sometimes at an awful cost in collateral damage to the environment, but cheaply, and despite the fussing of intellectuals, it supplies what people prefer. “Food culture” does not exist for most people. It’s an arid and vacuous term to anyone who has to figure out how to afford to eat.

Culture’s pre-occupation with symbolic reasoning Which you demonstrate by reifying ‘culture’. People reason. They reason with concepts, symbolically. This is a property, not a symptom.

Someone who is dirt poor knows well what progress is, even if others have forgotten. ‘Is-ought’ comes after the basics are provided. Then one has the luxury.

So to long for days when everyone toils for her own bread is crazy. If it is just the option you want, you have it. DIY. Just don’t prescribe it for everyone.

It’s also an area of inquiry where there’s a lot of complete nonsense getting in the way of a reasonable theory. The two dominant ideas are both ridiculous, in completely different directions. Namely, there is the “abstract rational agent” who merely uses information, and is not affected by it; and then there is the “abstract educational subject,” the “blank slate,” who is merely affected by information (“indoctrination”).

The techniques (technologies, types of labor, use of land) which agribusiness uses are more productive than the techniques which can realistically be used by a small-scale “DIY” farmer. The problem of course is that the priorities of agribusiness (profit) conflict with the priorities of humans (care for the health of the land, biosphere, and the human population; preservation of the rich relationship between humankind and its food).

Having said that the problem is the priorities of agribusiness, I now have to turn around and say that the real problem is the fact that the techniques of agribusiness are in some ways indissociable from the priorities of agribusiness. That is, certain social assumptions are built in to the techniques: use of mass-scale technologies implies that land, workers, and consumers are all interchangeable. This necessitates that everyone eat the same stuff, all land is capable of supporting the same crops, all workers do the same work. And of course this is only possible given the (highly negative) systems of fertilization and pesticide use to homogenize land; work supervision and training to homogenize labor; consumerism to homogenize consumption.

“Assume DIY farming becomes mainstream. Even if DIY farming is empowering, market pressure will want to divide labor. And I don’t see how we can then avoid climbing back up the balkanization ladder - or even if there’s a reason to resist that ascent (other than avoiding our current situation).”

Market pressure is not an abstract force. The pressure to have cheaper tomatoes acts in concert with the pressure to eat bland, consumer-focused crap, and the pressure to give over land for industrial use. It is difficult and questionable to fight the pressure for cheaper tomatoes, but the other two tendencies can be fought on a social and political level, respectively.

The assumption that natural resources such as land, air, or petroleum should go to the highest bidder is certainly not a precondition for a system of free-market competition. And consumer culture is highly unhealthy - already there is a backlash. If these two tendencies were counteracted, then farming would change even under a free market system. It wouldn’t necessarily become entirely small-scale, but agribusiness as it exists today would certainly die. A DIY farmer probably is able to produce “a cheaper tomato,” given that the tomato farming respects a democratic system of collective land ownership, and integrates into a food culture which demands high-quality, healthy produce.

How does this relate to the larger question of progress as such? I have questioned the definition of agricultural “productivity”; and I would similarly question any particular definition of “progress.” Progress is only well-defined in the context of a particular system of production; and systems of production always include certain assumptions about the role of the consumer, etc. To me, “progress” is almost a useless term. As you say, it is at the wrong level: we need to be talking about how we are approaching food, how we are approaching science, how we are approaching medicine. Progress for the sake of progress is certain to be a waste, when the same energy could be expended towards a concrete goal in the realm of human needs.

In other words, why not to climb the Balkanization ladder has several concrete answers: consumerism is alienating, industrial work is alienation, fertilizer is environmentally harmful, etc. Similarly in an area such as medicine or law. Why to climb it, on the other hand, has only the most self-justifying sort of answer.

I hope these quickly written thoughts are helpful in your “weekly” essay on this subject. I’m looking forward to reading it.