Reset Modernity! , Change Laboratories and a reading of the field book

I will try to understand "Reset Modernity!" (http://zkm.de/en/event/2016/04/globale-reset-modernity)  and what I get to be its scaffolding (its scaffolding towards being transformative experience) by comparing it with Change Laboratories and the approach of Expansive Learning (as I understand it)


There are three parts.

1. In the first part I express what I think is relevant from expansive learning and Change Laboratories for "Reset Modernity!". 
2. In the second part I will see "Reset Modernity!" from the point of view of "double stimulation". What kinds of first and second order stimuli I see.
3. In the third part I will write my comments on the Reset Modernity! fieldbook 

My "bibliography"
Cultural historical activity theory: http://www.helsinki.fi/cradle/chat.htm
The activity system: http://www.helsinki.fi/cradle/activitysystem.htm

Engestrom's EARLI 2015, Keynote lecture in Limassol  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UgBw_4SpP4
Engestrom Interview (Part1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCumH6Q4XKc  , Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgiH_xnwo9E)

Engeström, Y., Rantavuori, J., & Kerosuo, H. (2013). Expansive learning in a library: Actions, cycles and deviations from instructional intentions. Vocations and Learning, 6(1), 81-106.
Engeström, Y., Kajamaa, A., & Nummijoki, J. (2015). Double stimulation in everyday work: Critical encounters between home care workers and their elderly clients. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 4, 48-61.
Sannino, A., & Laitinen, A. (2015). Double stimulation in the waiting experiment: Testing a Vygotskian model of the emergence of volitional action.Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 4, 4-18.
Sannino, A. (2015). The principle of double stimulation: A path to volitional action. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 6, 1-15.
Engeström, Y. (2009). Wildfire activities: New patterns of mobility and learning.International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning (IJMBL), 1(2), 1-18.
Haapasaari, A., Engeström, Y., & Kerosuo, H. (2014). The emergence of learners’ transformative agency in a Change Laboratory intervention. Journal of Education and Work, 1-31.

Part1:

I will start from this talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UgBw_4SpP4 of Engestrom in Limassol. Engestrom speaks about Expansive Learning which seems to me to be the kind of learning that is demanded from the participants in Reset Modernity! (and the reades of the "Inquiry into the modes of existence" book and the co-inquirers in the AIME project http://modesofexistence.org/)
In this kind of learning the participants deliberately go for a change in the Activity System they participate in.
In the case of Reset Modernity! I think that the Activity System we are talking about is the one that produces orientation in modern life, particularly in the direction of Globalization. So perhaps the obejct in the initial activity system (before the influence of Reset Modernity! sets in) is the Land that is transformed into a Globe. This is indeed the initial "image" with which the field book starts the travel of making Earth present.

At 11:25 in the talk Engestrom speaks about "transformative negotiation" as the way to bring to life innovations (according to local needs). In the case of Reset Modernity! there is an innovation but itself is unknown (As Latour says, it is not clear where we will land). Nobody can have good claim that they know what this innovation must be.

This is a first point on which there is a similarity with the claims in Reset Modernity! (where in a sense humans and non humans are called to participate in transformative negotiation) but a disimilarity with the practices in Reset Modernity! as they come from the field book.  There are workstations ( they are mentioned in a7, B3, C9, D4, E3, F7 in the fieldbook)    and a visitor can discuss but the situation seems very asymmetrical between the organizers and the visitors.  It sounds as if the members of the organizing team present in the work stations (if I get it right) are like “human – instruments” which will be maximally affected  (they are maximally changed, perhaps they carry their change to the principal investigator who works like the mother-bee).  But then the visitors leave with not much further support (the tweeter support http://modesofexistence.org/reset-modernity-hashtags/ seems to me not strong enough)

Engestrom puts special attention on critical encounters and on material anchors. 

• critical encounters are interactional situations that engender conflicts of motives. They are expected to be crucial in expansive learning. "A conflict of motives is generally also an inner conflict of each subject". It is also the starting point of the emergence of volitional actions.
• The discussion on material anchores reminded me strongly of the discussion in the Modes of Existence book about how scritps can get innertia by their "collaboration" with materials. It seems to me like a similar concept. What is interesting though is that Engestrom connects these material anchors with the process of double stimulation (a Vigotskian concept that seems very interesting and that in recent work of Engestrom and Sannino is related with the imergence of volition. See Sannino 2015) 

In double stimulation learning is brought forth through the existence of a primary stimulous (often direct conflict, a disturbing situation) but then a second, neutral stimulous, comes and works as an aide, a tool that the learning person uses to transform the disturbing situation and determine a new object for the activity. 
This line of thought leads to the question: Do we see in Reset Modernity! this process of double stimulation that could really support visitors into transformative learning or do we just see first order stimuli? And if we see second order stimuli how good are they and is there further structure that could be put in place and support expansive learning?
(the comparison with change laboratories can be worked much more but I think  Haapasaari et al 2014 helps a lot)

Part 2: 

My best effort by reading the field book (http://zkm.de/media/file/en/2016-zkm-reset-modernity-fieldbook_e.pdf)_

1st order stimuli
(A1, A2, A3, A4  their juxtaposition), A4 (as far as I can guess from the description in the field book), A5
B1, B2, B6
C1, C2, C3, C4, C5 C6 C10
D1, D2, D3 D7
E1
F1, F2, F3, F4, F6

2nd order stimuli
Perhaps A6, A8, A9, A10, A11, A12, 
Perhaps B4, B5
Perhaps C7 C8 C11
Perhaps D5, D6, D8
Perhaps E2 E4 (training field for detecting difference of tone)
Perhaps F5,


I classified these a 2nd order becuase they seemed to me to be more disturbingly artistic (not in the sense of moving us to consider an issue but in the sense of calling forth, of generating in us a potency, a sense that they provoke generative work to come forth)

On the other hand there seems to me that there is not much concrete. improvable, artifact support. The only one I can find is a sequence of diagrams (I've put them together)

which although it looks as a seed for thinking, still one wanders what one would change in them, how can progress, progress made by the participants themselves, the visitors, be depicted ON them

Part 3:

This is a rereading of the fieldbook (http://zkm.de/media/file/en/2016-zkm-reset-modernity-fieldbook_e.pdf) of Reset Modernity!



The field book gives me the following sense at its start:
-We have a navigation problem. Signals that confuse us relative to where we should go to. The “march of modernity” seems to have stoped working well towards our orientation.
-We need sensors that need to be calibrated and we need to be able to interpret the data they give us. (This reminds me of the following in Engestrom 2009 pg 10 “Adrian Cussins (1992) suggests that the foundational mechanism for cognition, concept formation and learningis exploratory movement in space –whether physical, mental, discursive,or virtual.”   )
-Moreover we humans die and new humans have to take over a very problematic inheritance

I think that it is assumed that in this effort to re-orient there will develop a “taste of where “we” want to go”.  This has to do with motivation, something that I think in the companion project AIME is dealt with [ATT] (the mode of “mobilization”) but also through an identification of will with existence (it sounds to me that each existent exist through passages and “wills” this existence- its will is also realized as existence). Anyway this is my impression
In activity theory how motives are born, how volition comes to be is a main issue and has been examined (for example Haapasaari et al and Sannino 2015)

Procedure A:  Relocalizing the Global
Building trails, setting up a “world” , becoming competent in navigating in this world (and thus “Having a Globe available”)  is hard construction work. 

However relocalizing the Global brings,people like me, in front of the following question: Are we in somebody’s presence or are we in possession of the Globe (thanks to knowledge)?   (Cooren)
If it is possible for some people to construct “maps of reality” and for us to learn to identify with features of these maps so that there is a direct link between our navigation and the map, why not forget mediations, why not leave them for the plumbers of reality (scientists) and keep the power of minimizing “bads” and increasing “goods” for our self?
Global is a way to decompose reality into separate views where the calculation of desire and horror can be done separately and recomposably. The cost is “meeting”. We stop meeting others (of all kinds).
To deny this Globe is to deny our separate standing, therefore to start again being more actively connected. 
There still is  a “whole” though! We feel it. What is it?

“When we think we are outdoors, or in nature, what sphere are we really enclosed by?
What is the sphere we select to be enclosed by?

At this point I feel uncertain about the Globe. Globe is not that attractive any more

Procedure B: Without the world or within?

Where are “we”? “we” have been staged. We learned to think the “house of ourself” made by walls of “windows” that separate a “me” from a “that”. 
Andrian Walker draws a “revealed hand” and “opened-up” hand that could be his. Or we can think of a brain surgery where the surgeon asks the patient to detect aphasia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ3_IXuhZxQ

 This is presented at the end of this section of the field book

but I think this is more of the previous stage (a whole that is not Global, that is not linearly decomposable). 

There is another questionmark that can be situated either above the plane or below the plane: The drawing here is a window and there I see myself looking etc etc. 

But who is looking. I am thinking: the whole activity system is "looking"

So one could change the drawing. One can imagine the triangle of activity theory comming vertically out of the plane that is defined by Land-Globe. Land - Globe symbolizes the tension in the old object. Then the questionmark in the previous image is the changed object, the outcome.


The combination of the activity triangle with the AIME-terminology brings forth other interesting visual aids too. One can think the activity system performing in time and bringing forth trails. Which brought in my mind the image of a Turing machine and I imagined the activity system as the head of the Turing machine

Or, since trails make peculiar quilts one may think of activity systems like enzymes and DNAs and RNAs as trails

But this is more of a game as I put it. (I speak too loosely). The interesting thing is how do we produce artifacts that can support the transformative work.


Procedure C : Share responsibility: Farewell to the sublime.

In my opinion, the question here is: What is the future of modelling? 
So we are entering the realm of TOOLS. 
How can we model when the system shakes when we model it? It used to be a feature of the quantum regime but now it is the feature of our life in Earth (Anthropocene)

I move (with my consumer habits for example), millions like me move, and the "Whole" trembles. 
The sublime is grandiose but also conquered. The giant is conquered but it can still kick violently. There is the thrill of being next to the danger. The bull fighter.This whole is violent. It can kick.

But its power is also coming from us. We realize that we are mirrored in this violence. It turns our action back to us like an Aikido master. We are mirrored horizontaly to this that seemed alien.
“How do we react today when faced with examplesn ot of nature’s immensity but of the immensity of human industry?” Our tools tend to be huge, though we are small. We move huge entities in order to produce the means for small ends.

We can force this huge body to tattoo itself! We can make the large obey our small actions, we can make the distant obey our close actions. Out tools alter the “solidity” of our world.

We are also next to huge “tools of monitoring”. The world is so big and interdependent that part of our tools are just there so that we don’t loose track.
Our tools make the world shake and we depend on our tools so that we don’t feel totally unconnected to reality.

Procedure D: From lands to disputed territories

DIVISION OF LABOR. 
Complex systems of interdependence. Humans and non-humans together.
Critical zones as stabilized centers. 
Borders that divide labor.  What about the chartography of resources. What about tools needed to detect the flow of what we care for? New roles appear and demand to be respected if we are to manage to orient ourselves

(But what about the past? What abour keeping our (moderns') dominant position? What about translating our current dominant position in a new dominant position in what is coming? )
Old minds asking to be carried by new territories.
New territories – new regimes of body governance (ascetic governance?).  A connection is built between the Earth and the body. Governing the earth- governing the body.

Is a territory something we depend on it in order to subsist?
What happens when due to our action the solid earth moves under the feet of our brothers? When the role of non-humans change and they stop holding the weight they used to? The division of labor has made us responsible for “holding the earth”!!!
If some move the earth we stand on to push  forward their concerns, how are “we” going to navigate? Are we responsible for the ability of other people to navigate in this world?

Inside the critical zone it is the relations among the elements that make it shrink here and expand there like a living body. It may even turn here and there. But they still want to keep intact their property rights!

Rich people may contemplate. Contemplating may be a fool’s play for the rest of us. We are born in debt or forced to clumsy movements that lead to debt. Bounded by chains of complicatedness and complexity and subdued by rhetorical and physical power.

Soil is the living skin of the earth. What kind of soil for the new earth? Simbiosis with soil. Soil as a servant that mast not be maltreated. The basic health. 

What are the territories we go for? Why does Latour search for an entity? What is the division of labor we go for? The procession (li? In Konfucianism)


Procedure E: Secular at last
COMMUNITIES.
 Religion and Politics building communities. 
“a new baseline exists that could be used as a yardstick to measure spiritual ambitions and
new material attachments – a new foundation, still unrecognizable, down below.

Procedure F: Innovation not Hype

We have a relation with artifacts 
“they never enter into the world as objects but always as projects” 
They have a history, they are full of conflict, they overflow with unintended consequences, they zigzag into the world.

Taking care of techniques

Techniques are expected to help us “detect” Earth, produce new kinds of relations with maps so that we experience new “territories” that we will care defending and that can envelope valuable identities.

“How can we love our techniques, really love them?”
Is this not like asking how can techniques alter our bodies? Become parts of our bodies so that we and them become “one flesh”? 
To me it sounds like too much. Not a move of love towards technologies but a despondency to love people. 

Because there is denied a traditional trajectory that decomposes the body, that sanctifies the body, that makes the body a project (as with the ascetics). 
To me all this is about RULES AND NORMS. Mastering innovation, robots as companion species.

Therefore (possibly in a forced way) I see in the procedures of Reseting Modernity! the presence of elements of activity systems and I think that this may be a way to support the visitor further.