On the Internet

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Regarding Hubert Dreyfus'
"On the Internet"

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What if the Internet gave us access to a virtual second life? To the extent that we came to live a large part of our lives in cyberspace, would we become . . . infra-human? . . . we might . . . necessarily lose some of our crucial capacities: our ability to make sense of things so as to distinguish the relevant from the irrelevant, our sense of the seriousness of success and failure that is necessary for learning, and our need to get a maximum grip on the world that gives us our sense of the reality of things. Furthermore, we would be tempted to avoid the risk of genuine commitment, and so lose our sense of what gives meaning to our lives. . . . our sense of relevance, our ability to acquire skills, our sense of resistant reality, our ability to make maximally meaningful commitments, and the embodied moods that give life serious meaning.

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Dreyfus lays out the chapters as follows, very directly proposing metrics by which we might judge the value of his preceding statement, which I appreciate.

1 -- "The limitations of hyperlinks" and "How . . . loss of embodiment would lead to loss of the ability to recognize relevance."

2 -- "The myth of distance learning", "Without involvement and presence we cannot acquire skills."

3 -- "The body as source of our grip on reality. How . . . telepresence would lead to the loss of a sense of the reality of people and things."

4 -- "Maximal meaning in our lives requires genuine commitment and real commitment requires real risks. The anonymity and safety of life on the Web necessarily lacks such serious meaning."

5 -- "Unless people in virtual worlds can experience moods, they will not have memorable, focal experiences. . ."

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With those guiding lights in place, I'd like to start taking notes on chapter 1.

Chapter One, The Hype about Hyperlinks
Questions
- What are the limitations of hyperlinks
- How do those limitations lead to loss of embodiment
- How does that loss of embodiment lead to 'loss of the ability to recognize relevance'
- What, according to Dreyfus, are the consequences of not being able to recognize relevance?
- How would I myself recognize the consequences of being able to (or not being able to) recognize relevance, according to my values and worldview?

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. . . the user of a hyper-connected library [such as the Internet] would no longer be a modern subject with a fixed identity who desires a more complete and reliable model of a the world, but rather a postmodern, protean being ready to be opened to up to ever new horizons. Such a new being is not interested in collecting what is significant but in connecting to as wide a web of information as possible.

. . . freeing us from anonymous specialists organizing our databases and deciding for us what is relevant to what. Quantity of connections is valued above the quality of these connections.

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Dreyfus prints the original text of his first chapter along with an additional section effectively admitting/claiming that Google solved the issue. I really, really don't know about that. I think his observations in the original text are quite spot-on; of course we can find what we're looking for with Google, but his doubts about the machines' ability to relate to us remain relevant.

"There is a vast and ever-growing amount of information out there, and it looks like our only access to it will have to be through computers that don't have bodies, don't share our world, and so don't understand the meaning of our documents and websites. // If we leave our embodied commonsense understanding of the world aside, as using computers seems to force us to do, we have to do things the computer's way" (20)

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End of chapter review

That was fast! Still, I'll force myself to ask and answer the questions at the top.

- What are the limitations of hyperlinks?
Hyperlinks don't contain contextual data. Google has solved this with the idea of backlinks and tracking when users go from A to B. The hyperlinks aren't born with contextual data about the nature of the link, but we may infer, deduce, collect contextual data about the nature of the link...

- How do those limitations lead to loss of embodiment
They don't, but the machines themselves don't have embodiment, so following their logic involves denying our own. I suppose I can see how Google resolves that as well, by noting statistical relevance according to the actions of embodied humans, rather than assuming the machine must be able to figure things out on its own, without a body. It uses our bodies, en masse, secondhand.

- How does that loss of embodiment lead to 'loss of the ability to recognize relevance'
I think that is already covered

- What are the consequences of not being able to recognize relevance?
I'm not sure if he touches on this... Dreyfus says "If we leave our embodied commonsense understanding of the world aside, as using computers seems to force us to do, we have to do things the computer's way", but nothing of the consequences.

I won't answer the question posed to myself at this moment, because I think this is a deeper question which will be answered by the whole book rather than this one chapter.

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Chapter Two, How Far is Distance Learning from Education?

""Without involvement and presence we cannot acquire skills.""

I only really have one question, every other question seems too obvious or to obviously flow from the answer to this one question
- What are skills? (That is, how does Dreyfus define skills?)

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. . . the hope is that somehow the power of the World Wide Web will make possible a new approach to education for the twenty-first century in which each student will be able to stay at home and yet be taught by great teachers from all over the world.

I can already see the problems! Dreyfus focuses on 'education,' but I think this is about all sorts of relationships over the internet... I suppose this comes with the assumption that 'education' is relationship-based in the first place. It isn't, for everyone. However, specifically, 'taught by great teachers' certainly implies a relationship. I wonder if Dreyfus allows for these terms to be generalized or disconnected. OK, I have another question.
- What is the connection between learning and human relationships? Does Dreyfus assume this connection without defending it? If not, what is his defense? What is his justification?

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Oh, wonderful. He poses exactly these questions/problems himself.

- "neither side gives us any reason to accept their pronouncements. . . . does learning really require face-to-face engagement, and, if so, why?" (27) -- regarding whether human interaction is or is not necessary to education

- "First, we need to get clear about what skill are and how they are acquired."

Dreyfus, I am so glad we're on the same wavelength.

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I first encountered Dreyfus, a process which lead to my reading of this book, via this interview (todo: link) recommended to me by jack.

He speaks about emotional involvement/investment there, but also here in this book.

paraphrasing for now: TO LEARN, ONE MUST BE EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN SUCCESS/FAILURE. (Benner (nurse)'s anecdote, p32) WITHOUT RELATIONSHIPS, WHERE IS THE EMOTIONAL INVESTMENT? "there is still no class before which the student can shine and also risk making a fool of himself" (p33)

brain sparks; parasocial relationships a result of filling some vacuum, wanting a person to pay attention, seeking success/failure feedback; money +/- a similar result of filling some vacuum, rules, wanting to know concretely, was that good or was that bad? feedback, feedback, feedback.

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End of chapter review

What are skills? Dreyfus dedicates most of this chapter to answering that question. It reminds me of Mastery, but more concise. Skills are rules that become intuitions... memories and experiences balled up into a fuzzy cloud of responses.

His argument is, roughly, that human interaction is a necessary or at least very common form of investment, reward, pressure, and that these things — not necessarily human interaction — are requirements for developing skills past basic competence. You have to get emotionally invested to get past basic competence.


Also other humans are useful because you can learn a lot from them through observation of them applying their skills.

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Dreyfus now enters the realm of telepresence; if indeed human interaction is necessary, and the state of telepresence is now, as he puts it, infra-human, what might telepresence offer us in the future...?

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Chapter Three, Disembodied Telepresence and the Remoteness of the Real