What is ideal education in the information age? A project at the intersection of education, technology, design, politics, philosophy and cognitive science.

Our educational system is too far removed from students, from their being both minds and bodies and from the deep human need for autonomy and self-directed growth. The modern pathologization of touch and of the body, its near-removal from our most deeply ingrained practices, limits teachers and healers to the use of abstract thought. We go about our lives in impersonal urban spaces, experiencing learning as codified exercises in standardized classrooms, defining healing within the sterile efficiency of a hospital complex.

In response to these developments, two opposing trends seem to dominate recent scientific exploration of human wellbeing. On the one hand, we are told that most things worth doing can be reduced to the algorithmic. Even direct social contact is developing a reputation as obsolete: virtual therapists and tutors are touted as the necessary next step in a perpetual digitalization of sociality. On the other, much new research into the conditions of wellbeing is arriving at the cumbersome realization that, no matter how powerful our digital tools, we remain tied to our nature as mammals: we are embodied minds, animals that require touch, texture, and movement to engage fully with the world.

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The final iteration of my BLUE project dealt with what it would mean to harness the power of both these directions to open new avenues of learning and creativity. Since both are in a sense obviously true, how can we bring them together? Eventually, a string of conversations at Building 21 steered me further toward design and technology. Speaking with a mentor who expressed his fascination with the question “what is the ideal piece of paper?” crystallized a set of curiosities and frustrations I had explored for years, always confined to the margins of some other pursuit. My fascination with trying out apps and developing the ‘ideal workflow’ or workspace, along with a keen interest in how apps and tech products are made, coalesced with  ongoing explorations into ways of working and learning that allow ‘neurodiverse’ or atypical processes to fulfill the codified demands of traditional education.

Technology is made of products, products are dependent on design, and design is ultimately shaped by people who either do or do not think critically about how it may resonate with the brains, minds, and bodies of those who will access their efforts. A major subset of the apps I tried came from so-called ‘productivity’ tech, or from edu-tech - products designed for the internalization and externalization of knowledge in its various forms. My personal focus on integration in particular, rather than pure functionality, speaks to how we can make learning a more pleasurable, intuitive, and autonomous process. What I aimed to understand was how different thinkers learn and externalize their thoughts, and what interfaces allow them to do so optimally: different classroom setups, various types of analogue notebooks, models of computers or tablets, writing or distraction-blocking apps, and even ’software’ such as habit formation and other people with whom to converse.

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My project began with a focus on alternative models of education, especially via the autonomy or anarchist movement. I found fertile ground in the ideology of collapse, especially in the context of rising anxieties about our ecological future. What do activist communities choose to learn when they no longer believe that traditional education guarantees future survival? At once computer programming and political history, martial arts and agriculture, construction and community organization. This is learning for the ‘whole person’ in a way that traditional education no longer is: an autonomous mind, in a capable body, strongly nested within the collective. Such a holistic and eclectic mix of skill development and knowledge sharing offers insights into learning, education, and wellbeing to which ideology is surprisingly contingent. Perhaps this model could help shape learners into adaptable, innovative, and autonomous individuals capable of sustaining a healthy society, precisely by avoiding the current over-fitting between the modes and content of education to a workforce inherited from a long-gone economic system. A calcified system of education is by definition always chasing its own tail, preparing learners to do what has thus far been deemed necessary rather than preparing them to solve new problems.

I feel very much at the beginning of a line of research rather than at its end. I look forward to continue exploring these questions, through theoretical research as well as design and perhaps by prototyping my own take on the products we use every day to think, learn, and create. These questions are among those that guide my thinking:

• Is it possible to optimize information processing and foster wellbeing at the same time?
• Can productivity and mindfulness coexist?
• How can technology bridge the gap between attention scarcity and information overload?
• Can Augmented Reality and gamification provide a viable update to the Industrial Age model of education, and is it desirable to do away with its reliance on social and physical proximity?
• Is there such a thing as a design flexible enough yet powerful enough to fulfill most users’ needs, whether this is the design of a curriculum or of a product? How do political realities shape learning, and how can our generation address political, economic, and ecological upheaval through autonomous learning?

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